Upgrading MBP with large HDD - heat issues?

[thesheep]

I just called my local Apple authorised repair company and asked about putting a new drive in my MBP, which is currently a little small for me. I see you can get 500GB drives now for about £100 on the web, but the guy told me that it was a bad idea to put in a 500GB drive because of "heat issues". The biggest they would recommend is 320GB.

I'm not sure about this, but as far as my understanding goes, the size of a drive doesn't necessarily make it run hotter. I don't see why a 500GB Western Digital 5400rpm SATA 2.5" drive would be hotter than a 320GB one. Any more than a 120GB drive would be hotter than a 60GB drive. Is he talking rubbish?

 

[dukebound85]

yea thats crap. you can put a 500 gig in there no prob

 

[Thunder82]

I have a WD 500GB drive in my unibody MBP and don't have any problems with it whatsoever. These drives dont run any hotter than any other drive ive had.

 

[MH01]

Speed = Heat

The guy has no idea about hardware. I hope he was sales.

Just do your research and find out which 500 suits you. The only issue with a 500 is that they do not come in 7200. SO all you are loosing is performance by going size over speed.

And frankly the HD heat is irrelevant as the GPU cooks a MBP.

Call him back and see if he can recommend a fan for the HD The only HDs i have seen with passive cooling are the velocityraptors but they hit 10K.

 

[thesheep]

It was kind of interesting that the largest size he says is 'safe' is 320GB, and that is currently the largest drive that Apple put in a new MBP. And these guys are an authorized Apple reseller/service centre.

Makes me wonder why Apple don't offer 500GB as an option. Maybe it's just a marketing decision, rather than a technical one, and perhaps we'll see larger drives as an option soon.

Going to these authorized service centre is supposed to enable you to do upgrades etc, without voiding your warranty. But I wonder if it would void it if you ask them to put a 500GB drive in.