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WD Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM + Macbook (non-unibody)

Dammit Cubs

Dammit Cubs

macrumors 68020
Original poster
Jul 31, 2007
2,128
746
Hey guys,

For people who have experience with WD Scorpio Black 320GB harddrive, i was wondering if you can hear a humming sound when its in your macbook.

To better describe it:

The humming sound (very low, if your fan turns on, it will over power the humming sound). It seems to truly exist on specific desk woods. When I put it on my lap, I don't hear the sound. I have to put my ear next to it to hear it. But when i put it on a Ikea desk, the humming resonances to a high sound. I can block it out but wish it didn't exist. On glass, I don't hear it and other woods, i don't hear it.

Do you experience the same thing?

Also, i think my macbook is 1.5GB/S Sata motherboard so I don't think its possible for me to unleash the 3.0GB/S furry!@!!~! ???? How are your benchmark numbers.

I'm trying to see if the performance is worth it compared to just going to 5400 rpm.

Any input would be great. i have 30 days to return this drive. I don't feel alot of vibration. It seems like the vibration can be felt on that Ikea desk wood, because the resonance causes a feedback loop causing the laptop to vibrate.
 
I don't have much advice except that I am extremely happy with my Hitachi Travelstar 500gb HDD @7200rmp. I highly recommend it. There is no noticeable difference from the stock drive except for the performance, which is better. Maybe return the WD and get the Hitachi?!?!
 
It's given my unibody MacBook very, very, very slight vibrations, very slight.

Big jump in speed though.

Worth every penny so far.
 
gaps said:
I don't have much advice except that I am extremely happy with my Hitachi Travelstar 500gb HDD @7200rmp. I highly recommend it. There is no noticeable difference from the stock drive except for the performance, which is better. Maybe return the WD and get the Hitachi?!?!
Click to expand...

I considered getting all 3 drives: the Seagate momentus 7200.3, the western digital Scorpio black 7200 and the hitachi and returning the one I don't like.

This could be the just the issue with spinning the drive 33% faster.
 
Dammit Cubs said:
Also, i think my macbook is 1.5GB/S Sata motherboard so I don't think its possible for me to unleash the 3.0GB/S furry!@!!~! ???? How are your benchmark numbers.
Click to expand...

SATA I (1.5Gb/s) is capable of 135MB/s, SATA II (3.0Gb/s) is twice as fast (270MB/s).
The 320GB WD Black peaks at 69MB/s in my Mac Pro, so don't worry about performance issues when connecting that drive to a SATA I bus. In case of 2.5" drives, only SSDs can exceed the maximum bandwidth of the SATA I bus.
 
I have the same humming in my MacBook but other than that I love the drive. I bought it with my MacBook Al a Year ago and it's performing flawless so far. The performance is greatly improved compared to the stock 5400 250gb drive. Though today i would buy a 500gb 7200 drive. Density improves performance as well so they should be even faster than the wdsb 320, which was the fastest conventional 2.5" drive a year ago.
 
Transporteur said:
SATA I (1.5Gb/s) is capable of 135MB/s, SATA II (3.0Gb/s) is twice as fast (270MB/s).
The 320GB WD Black peaks at 69MB/s in my Mac Pro, so don't worry about performance issues when connecting that drive to a SATA I bus. In case of 2.5" drives, only SSDs can exceed the maximum bandwidth of the SATA I bus.
Click to expand...

Thank for you for this information.
 
Helmigurt said:
I have the same humming in my MacBook but other than that I love the drive. I bought it with my MacBook Al a Year ago and it's performing flawless so far. The performance is greatly improved compared to the stock 5400 250gb drive. Though today i would buy a 500gb 7200 drive. Density improves performance as well so they should be even faster than the wdsb 320, which was the fastest conventional 2.5" drive a year ago.
Click to expand...

Really? Density increases performance? I always thought it was the opposite. Since your read window is much smaller because you are cramming more data in same surface area so your margin to read is much smaller; causing more errors that your ECC can't pick up.
 
gaps said:
I don't have much advice except that I am extremely happy with my Hitachi Travelstar 500gb HDD @7200rmp. I highly recommend it. There is no noticeable difference from the stock drive except for the performance, which is better. Maybe return the WD and get the Hitachi?!?!
Click to expand...

I am also very happy with the Hitachi Travelstar 500gb HDD @7200rpm and agree with the quote. After reading the 15-25% bad reviews on even the Seagate 500gb, I am glad I got the Travelstar. It was on sale for $89 at Tiger Direct and NewEgg and now also has a rebate on top of the sale price.
 
I put that drive into my new Mini. When I was setting it up and transferring data to it, I had it sitting on my desk by itself. I could feel a slight vibration in the case and a slight humming. Oddly enough, when I moved it to its permanent position on top of my Ministack external hard drive, that went away. Weird stuff.
 
I just installed a WD Scorpio Black 320GB in my MBP. The drive definitely makes more noise than the Hitachi 7200 that was originally in there. A slight whirring sound as it is rotating. Maybe it doesn't spin down as much. Or maybe it's just noisier, not sure.
 
I have the slight hum your describing as well. I only noticed it on specific surfaces and up close too. The drive performs great and I noticed a big speed improvement over my stock 5400RPM 80GB drive.
 
The vibration depends A LOT on the individual drive, not just the model.

I went through a few WD 500GB drives that had a lot of vibration before I found one that did not vibrate. I've had a few WD and Seagates for different laptops/backup drives since then and I'd say that 1 out of 3 or 1 out of 4 have noticeable vibrations. You can either trade them back to the store or back to the manufacturer for a swap out. I was able to trade one to WD using the website form no questions asked.

I also recently purchased a Windows 7 Compaq where I could feel the drive under the left palmrest. Took it back to Best Buy and swapped it out. The next machine was fine.
 
I have put the same drive in several macbooks and macbook pros (and a mini).

For the macbooks and macbook pros, it has been great. The first time I installed it in a macbook pro, I noticed it did vibrate a little bit, so I opened it again and reinstalled it and all was good. There was a little bit of noise increase, but nothing alarming (but if you hear ticks, scratching noises, or "beeps", RMA it).

The mini that I installed the drive into just wasn't built for the drive, every drive would click or beep, then WD gave me a 5000RPM 640GB blue drive and it has been wonderful (no noticeable performance difference on the mini really and it's a lot quieter).

From your description, everything seems fine. If you're still concerned about anything, try tech tool deluxe or any other software that runs S.M.A.R.T. checks.
 
Dammit Cubs said:
Really? Density increases performance? I always thought it was the opposite. Since your read window is much smaller because you are cramming more data in same surface area so your margin to read is much smaller; causing more errors that your ECC can't pick up.
Click to expand...

I don't know exactly why, but it makes them faster. My brother is the founder and owner of notebookcheck.net and he found out with benchmarks that 500 gb 5400 drives are nearly as fast as 250 gb 7200 drives and faster than smaller 5400 drives, so platter density definately improves drive speed. Anandtech wrote about that as well I'm just to lazy to Search for it on my iPhone!
 
Helmigurt said:
I don't know exactly why, but it makes them faster. My brother is the founder and owner of notebookcheck.net and he found out with benchmarks that 500 gb 5400 drives are nearly as fast as 250 gb 7200 drives and faster than smaller 5400 drives, so platter density definately improves drive speed. Anandtech wrote about that as well I'm just to lazy to Search for it on my iPhone!
Click to expand...

That's so nuts. I wonder what the real world performance difference is between the 500GB 5400 WD Scorpio BLUE vs the 320GB 7200 WD Scorpio BLACK. I should google it.
 
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