Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

WD 640GB laptop drive: Is this normal?

Honestly I think a lot of it is luck of the draw now.

Across my multiple computers I've installed three WD blue 500GB 5400RPM drives now, all the same model. Two were perfect. The third one I got was awful -- it worked just fine but was noticeably louder and caused my entire computer to constantly vibrate (and it definitely was installed properly).

My advice is send it back because WD hard drives are normally good.
 
I can hear my drive when my ear is like 8 inches from the palm rest. I love this drive. Also, it JUST WENT on sale at Frys. $69, smokin' deal!!! Nothing can beat that at this price!!!! !
 
omg, you guys got me listening to my hard drive now!

Thanks a lot guys. :mad:

I thought my stock MBP hard drive was silent until you all got me sticking my ear near the touchpad! Now I can hear it sitting back in my chair(when the a/c fan is off and I turn my ear toward it. Good thing I type facing my screen! :D).

I filled up my 160GB stock drive in about 2 months :eek:. So I just ordered the WD 640GB Scorpio Blue 5400rpm drive from Amazon.com for $89.99 US. I hope it won't be too loud, but I really need the space. I just looked at Amazon, and now it's $110.99, strange, but I'll take the discount!

I was reading online discussions that in general seemed to say that the 7200rpm drives were loud, vibrated and ate up more battery than the 5400rpm ones, so I decided to go the 5400rpm route. Glad to know that some of you received quiet and I assume relatively vibration free 7200rpm drives.

The WD 640GB Scorpio Blue got high ratings at Amazon, so I'm surprised to see some people here saying it's loud.

Any more comments regarding the WD 640GB Scorpio Blue 5400rpm notebook drive? Just curious. Mine should arrive tomorrow.
 
I'm using the 640GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue right now in the 17" MacBook Pro. I can't even hear the drive even when I put my ear next to it. It'll have to be dead silent before I hear the drive.
 
Not to be the jerk, but if you have really sensitive hearing, my X-25M SSD is about as quiet as it gets ;)

Seriously...the 500GB Travelstar is pretty quiet, but if noise is just killing you, then solid state is the only way to go.
 
I have a 320 gig 7200 western digital and i definitely get a parking / start up sound. i dont really hear it otherwise. it sounds like your drive may have an issue.
 
My drive was loud too.

Installed my WD Scorpio Blue 640GB drive into my MBP yesterday. Yes, I hear the noise you are talking about. It's an airy fan-like sound spinning up and down a lot, it kind of whines some too. It's not super loud but since the Mac is so quiet I can hear it very easily. If it was in my HP notebook with it's jumbo jet sounding fans, I probably wouldn't hear the drive at all, lol. Honestly, if it just spun the whole time it would be less annoying and distracting than the noise it makes as it cycles on and off almost nonstop. Not sure I can deal with this.

I think I will try to return it. Can I zero out the drive while its in my MacBook Pro? LOL, it will take a while with 640GB! :eek:

Okay, so any ideas on what's the quietest big drive around? I was thinking of staying with the 5400rpm over the 7200rpm drive to save power. I would consider a 7200rpm drive if someone could convince me! Thoughts?
 
the.orange.tuba said:
Okay, so any ideas on what's the quietest big drive around? I was thinking of staying with the 5400rpm over the 7200rpm drive to save power. I would consider a 7200rpm drive if someone could convince me! Thoughts?
Click to expand...

FWIW, I have tried the Seagate 320 gb 7200.4, Western Digital 500gb & 640 gb Scorpio Blues, Toshiba 500 gb MK5055GSX and the original Fujitsu 320 gb in my 13" MBP.

Of these, the 500 gb TOSHIBA MK5055GSX is the quietest and in my machine it doesn't vary it's speed and there is no head parking sounds. It also has one of the lowest power requirements, which is nice. (The WD Scorpio Blues are the loudest).

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-hdd-notebook,2305-14.html

http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/mobile-hdd-notebook,2305-7.html
 
Just returned my 640GB hard drive.

I don't know if my drive was defective or not but it was EXTREMELY slow. I can barely get 20MB/s sustained transfer during a USB hard drive backup.

Switched out for a 500GB 7200RPM hard drive and the difference is night and day. So much faster, but I miss the 140GB sometimes.
 
Returning my drive

Hey Z06jerry, thanks for the reply. I read mixed reviews, of course ;), regarding that drive. What's a guy to do?!?! :mad:

I'm returning the WD Scorpio Blue 640GB. Sad, because I'm not sure what to get next. The WD Scorpio Blue started up my MacBook Pro as fast as my stock drive, approximately 35 seconds, but it was not very responsive. I would type and my letters would lag sometimes, and I got some stutters while playing iTunes movies, so something was going on. I read some threads where people suspected some kind of compatibility issue with the MacBooks, and people tweaked their settings via some third party software and command lines. Some said it helped and others didn't think it did. I don't know what the problem is, I just know it's not working for me.

I might just get a NAS(network attached storage)device to serve up my movies, so I don't have to upgrade my MacBook Pro drive. I still would love to get a larger drive, but I don't want a hard drive that is louder than my stock drive. SSD is nice but I don't want to pay $1400 for 512GB!

Are there websites that test the sound level of various hard drives? Thanks and have a nice day! :)
 
the.orange.tuba said:
Hey Z06jerry, thanks for the reply. I read mixed reviews, of course ;), regarding that drive. What's a guy to do?!?! :mad:

I'm returning the WD Scorpio Blue 640GB. Sad, because I'm not sure what to get next. The WD Scorpio Blue started up my MacBook Pro as fast as my stock drive, approximately 35 seconds, but it was not very responsive. I would type and my letters would lag sometimes, and I got some stutters while playing iTunes movies, so something was going on. I read some threads where people suspected some kind of compatibility issue with the MacBooks, and people tweaked their settings via some third party software and command lines. Some said it helped and others didn't think it did. I don't know what the problem is, I just know it's not working for me.

I might just get a NAS(network attached storage)device to serve up my movies, so I don't have to upgrade my MacBook Pro drive. I still would love to get a larger drive, but I don't want a hard drive that is louder than my stock drive. SSD is nice but I don't want to pay $1400 for 512GB!

Are there websites that test the sound level of various hard drives? Thanks and have a nice day! :)
Click to expand...

The same thing happened to me! It started out great but it was SO SLOW. I ended up on a 500GB 7200RPM drive. Whenever I have more money, I'll order a 1TB drive. I'm kinda running low on space right now.
 
ayeying said:
I ended up on a 500GB 7200RPM drive.
Click to expand...

What brand did you get? How quiet is it? Was the drive you returned noisy too or just slow?

I am considering the Fujitsu 500GB (MJA2500BH-G2 5400 RPM 8MB), they received really good reviews by MacBook/MBP owners at Newegg for being quiet, but there were only 11 total reviews. Some said Apple used these as stock drives. I'm just wondering why the other manufacturer's drives have so many more reviews?!
 
the.orange.tuba said:
What brand did you get? How quiet is it? Was the drive you returned noisy too or just slow?

I am considering the Fujitsu 500GB (MJA2500BH-G2 5400 RPM 8MB), they received really good reviews by MacBook/MBP owners at Newegg for being quiet, but there were only 11 total reviews. Some said Apple used these as stock drives. I'm just wondering why the other manufacturer's drives have so many more reviews?!
Click to expand...

I bought a Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM. It's extremely quiet, more quieter then the 640GB I returned. I returned it because it was way too slow. It was so slow that a sustained back up only went at 20 MB/s. It was crazy that it took 4 hours to clone my drive. When I got the new 500GB drive, cloning it back only took 1.5 hours. I think the drive was either defective or something's up because the difference between 5400 and 7200 shouldn't be huge.
 
ayeying said:
I bought a Hitachi 500GB 7200RPM. It's extremely quiet, more quieter then the 640GB I returned. I returned it because it was way too slow. It was so slow that a sustained back up only went at 20 MB/s. It was crazy that it took 4 hours to clone my drive. When I got the new 500GB drive, cloning it back only took 1.5 hours. I think the drive was either defective or something's up because the difference between 5400 and 7200 shouldn't be huge.
Click to expand...

That sounds pretty cool. Do you notice any change in your battery life? Your drive sounds like a pretty good option. It received good reviews at newegg from people with MacBook Pros. I'll have to add it to my list to think about. Thanks for letting me know. :D
 
Sorry to take over your thread but since changing my hard drive to a western digital 500gb, my system locks up a lot and my music skips. So i sent it back and they sent me the 640gb one, which also does the same thing! Has anyone experience this? Anyway around it? I even did a reformat when i got my 500gb.
 
saxondale. said:
Sorry to take over your thread but since changing my hard drive to a western digital 500gb, my system locks up a lot and my music skips. So i sent it back and they sent me the 640gb one, which also does the same thing! Has anyone experience this? Anyway around it? I even did a reformat when i got my 500gb.
Click to expand...

A couple of us had problems with the 640GB WD Scorpio Blue drive, is that what you have? I'm returning mine tomorrow and ayeying already returned his, just to let you know. Some people were able to adjust their settings via third party software and got it to work, and some said it didn't work for them. But below are some basic things you may want to check and consider doing.

Have you run Disk Utility? You may want to start there. When I installed a new drive I ran "Verified Disk" and "Verfy Disk Permissions" and ended up having to "Repair Disk Permissions," all on the "First Aid" page of the Disk Utility app. Assuming your OS is same as mine, on the left, you will have a list of drives. Click the one that says 640 GB(ish) and make sure your "Partition Map Scheme" is "GUID Partition Table." Then click the Macintosh HD drive and confirm it is "Format:" "Mac OS Extended(Journaled)." This is the probably the most used format and partition map scheme. If your setup differs from this, the question is, why, and is that what you want? Before you do anything with your hard drive, make sure you have your files backed up somewhere safe.

Sounds strange that you would have the same problem on both drives. Did you do a fresh install or did you do some type of restore app like Time Machine? Did you add new RAM when you added the drive? Just wondering if there might be another potential problem spot.

There are some other things you can do, but maybe try the above first. I'll check back to see if you had any success fixing it. Well good luck, and maybe some of these other guys will chime in and help you out.
 
I got my western digital scorpio blue 500gb the other day and I too am bothered by the fan-like swooshing sound. I wouldn't mind it if it were constant, but it sounds like it's revving up and down all the time and that is more difficult to accept.

It's not loud but I work in a very quiet environment usually and then it is clearly audible. Much so that the stock 250gb hitachi I had. I'm not sure if I'll return it or not as it seems most people think this is most silent 500gb drive available currently...
 
I fixed my WD with the HDAPM, but I can´t make it go to sleep on it´s own. I have to close it to put it to sleep.
Any solutions to this?
 
Returned 640GB & installed 1TB drive for my MBP 13"

I've been using the 160GB stock hard drive since returning the WD Scorpio Blue 640GB drive, until now. I just installed the Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD10TPVT 1TB 5200 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" into my Macbook Pro 13 inch November '09 unibody. Fitting the drive in was no problem whatsoever.

I know this is totally subjective, but for my ears, the 1TB drive is not as noisy or distracting as the 640gb drive I returned. Is it quieter than the 160GB stock drive? In some ways yes, and in other ways no. It doesn't seem to have as many etching/clicking sounds as the 160GB(which wasn't bad) but it does make some whispering/swishing type sounds(nothing near as bad as the 640GB though). Overall I am happy with it, as I needed the space.

Sure, I would like it to be totally silent, but it's not very noticeable when my house ac fan is on or I am playing music, etc. I haven't done any speed tests and probably won't as it's fast enough for me. Seems like it starts up about as fast as the stock drive and might shut down faster. I did a fresh install so I don't have all my programs loaded yet, so it's not really fair to compare speeds, but that said, it seems fine.

Peace and good luck with your hard drives!
 
I am very glad I found your posts. I actually use an IBM Thinkpad, not a Mac, and have recently purchased a 360 GB WD Scorpio Blue 2.5 inch upgrade for my laptop (WD3200BEVE). Previously I have always used Seagate drives, which were relatively quiet. This one - despite the fan in my laptop being off - makes those funny, very soft pulsating swishing sounds, as if the drive was pumping air erratically in small jets somewhere in or out of the drive. I initially thought it was the fan on my laptop, but no - the fan is off most of the time - checked by lifting the keyboard. Those swishing sounds really get on my nerves, especially as they are so irregular - they happen every time the disk is accessed - I can see it by looking at the HD LED. They are not that loud, but hey - up until now I had a totally quiet laptop with no irregular sounds being generated by my HD.... At least now I know I am not alone with this problem. WD sent me the link to their FAQ as a response:
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=568
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back