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WD Scorpio Blue in 2010 MBP 13" - sluggish performance

J

joshyd87

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 27, 2009
11
0
Hey guys,

I just upgraded my hdd to a 500gb WD scorpio blue in my 2010 MBP 13". It seems to start and stop a lot more than the apple one (if that makes sense). and every now and then the computer seems to lag for 1-2 seconds when doing things like typing, scrolling, etc.

I've tried searching and found other people have had similar problems with older MBPs and they talked about some EFI firmware or something. Does this apply to my MBP too? Or does anyone have any other suggestions of what I can do?

Cheers
 
joshyd87 said:
Hey guys,

I just upgraded my hdd to a 500gb WD scorpio blue in my 2010 MBP 13". It seems to start and stop a lot more than the apple one (if that makes sense). and every now and then the computer seems to lag for 1-2 seconds when doing things like typing, scrolling, etc.

I've tried searching and found other people have had similar problems with older MBPs and they talked about some EFI firmware or something. Does this apply to my MBP too? Or does anyone have any other suggestions of what I can do?

Cheers
Click to expand...

Any chance you left the jumper on the back that limits it to 1.5gbs?
 
is it with a new install?

thats kind of weird, i have a 5400rpm 640gb wd blue in my mid-09 13" mbp and its actually quite fast.
boot up is quicker, apps dont take much time to launch and ahvent had slown downs on it at all, i have most of my lossless music library on here and other projects.

generally the 500gb wd are just the same performance wise.


maybe do a diagnostics on it or see if you can get it rma'd
 
joshyd87 said:
sorry, what do i actually have to do with this jumper thing?
Click to expand...

i doubt they came with a jumper on them. most drives afaik dont...

maybe run some diagnostics, WD says to use Disk Utility verify disk option or if you have windows installed WD Diagnostic Tools or HDTune will work just fine.
 
Sounds like you have gotten a drive with the new "Advanced Format" technology (WD5000BPVT?). Your drive will perform horribly unless you do one of the following:

A. Place a jumper as described on the drive itself, before partitioning (you'll need to delete all partitions and repartition)

Option A is only recommended if you have 1 partition! If you install Bootcamp, your Bootcamp partition will be slow.

B. Run the "WD align utility" from Windows. This will correctly align your partitions without destroying data. Can take a long time depending on how much space is used.

PS: I don't think this will work through Bootcamp, easiest way is probably connect your disk in "Target Disk" mode to another machine running Bootcamp and do it from there.

C. Do not install the jumper, instead delete all partitions and repartition under Vista/Win7. After that you'll have to re-format (not re-partition) to HFS+.

D. Delete all partitions and re-partition under Linux with the following command:

Code: 
fdisk -H 224 -S 56 /dev/sda

This should be possible by booting any recent Linux CD/DVD. Note that afterwards you will have to boot up from the OSX DVD and format your partition to HFS+ and then install OSX.
 
thanks trondah, I definitely try one of those options tomorrow morning when i'm not so sleepy. i just ran smart utility and got these results:

hdd.png


does that mean anything to anyone? :confused:
 
also just checked disk utility and it says i have the WD5000BEVT, not the WD5000BPVT. is it still worth doing any of the above steps?

cheers
 
It won't even matter! Most SSD's can't even saturate 1.5Gbs! You're just causing a headache for yourself ...
 
The only OS that requires workarounds for 4K sector size is Windows.

"Advanced Format" are cool drives.
 
Did you clone your Mac installation to the new Western Digital 500GB?

Btw, would you mind running a Disk Utility permissions check on your hard disk and seeing whether that makes any difference?
 
Dwalls90 said:
It won't even matter! Most SSD's can't even saturate 1.5Gbs! You're just causing a headache for yourself ...
Click to expand...

:eek: :rolleyes:

Those "SSDs" aren't worth the money. But I'd say even the ones Apple sells as CTO can saturate 1.5Gbps.
 
There are SSDs that saturate 3Gbps, so there are already SATA 6Gbps SSDs.

All Macs are obsolete.
 
LedCop said:
Did you clone your Mac installation to the new Western Digital 500GB?

Btw, would you mind running a Disk Utility permissions check on your hard disk and seeing whether that makes any difference?
Click to expand...

yep i cloned it using superduper. would it be worth trying to do a fresh install of snow leopard?

just ran permissions check and found quite a few that needed fixing
 
joshyd87 said:
yep i cloned it using superduper. would it be worth trying to do a fresh install of snow leopard?

just ran permissions check and found quite a few that needed fixing
Click to expand...

Hmm... What you're experiencing is eerily similar to what user InDaMode was experiencing: see the bottom of https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/573906/

I mean, same Western Digital Drives, both of you had Mac OS installations cloned over, and both of you have experienced sluggishness. He fixed it by booting off his Mac OS DVD and running a disk check (repair disk I presume) and that fixed it for him. Perhaps you should try that too if permissions repairing didn't do the trick

Western Digital makes the best drives available for the desktop and they carried that excellence with them to laptop drives, in my humble opinion. I'm personally using a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB myself that was cloned over with SuperDuper and I've had no issues. But it might be an aberration you're experiencing like InDaMode did. Do let us know if repairing the disk does anything.
 
just did the repair disk by booting from the os x dvd, unfortunately it didn't find anything to fix. the load cycle seems to be counting up about 5 a minute, im guessing thats pretty bad? think ill try formatting and installing snow leopard from scratch now

ho hum
 
joshyd87 said:
also just checked disk utility and it says i have the WD5000BEVT, not the WD5000BPVT. is it still worth doing any of the above steps?

cheers
Click to expand...

Nope, that's not an "Advanced Format" drive :) I just assumed you had one based on your issues. Your SMART failures are worrying though, you might have a bad drive then...

cube said:
The only OS that requires workarounds for 4K sector size is Windows.

"Advanced Format" are cool drives.
Click to expand...

You got it backwards, Vista/Win7 are the ONLY operating systems that do not need a workaround. They will align the partitions correctly by default.
 
joshyd87 said:
just did the repair disk by booting from the os x dvd, unfortunately it didn't find anything to fix. the load cycle seems to be counting up about 5 a minute, im guessing thats pretty bad? think ill try formatting and installing snow leopard from scratch now

ho hum
Click to expand...

You may very well have the HDAPM issue. There are several threads on this forum oor do Google on it. In short, the energy saving features are set too aggressively, causing the hD to spin down constantly, which the HDPM utility can fix. I didn't want to hassle that, same issue with a WD 500GB drive, so I switched to a Seagate, presto no issues at all. The Hitachi 500Gb 7,200 rpm disk also has many good reviews. Try another disk? :cool:
 
cube said:
No, see here:

http://www.wdc.com/en/products/advancedformat/index.asp
Click to expand...

You need to read up on what you are actually linking to. It's a tool for realigning misaligned partitions created by other OS than Win7/Vista. My statement is fact. The only OS to detect 4k sectors and correctly align partitions during creation is Win7/Vista. Meaning you won't need the align utility afterwards.

Anyways, OP doesn't have a 4k drive so this is irrelevant for him.
 
trondah said:
You need to read up on what you are actually linking to. It's a tool for realigning misaligned partitions created by other OS than Win7/Vista. My statement is fact. The only OS to detect 4k sectors and correctly align partitions during creation is Win7/Vista. Meaning you won't need the align utility afterwards.
Click to expand...

State your source. Here's where I learned that only Windows is affected:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888/2
 
cube said:
State your source. Here's where I learned that only Windows is affected:

http://www.anandtech.com/show/2888/2
Click to expand...

My source is hands on experience on Windows, OSX and Linux with my own WD15EARS.

The anandtech article is somewhat misleading. There is no issue with reading a 4k aligned partition with Linux/OSX, but none of them actually support creating them without special options to i.e. fdisk.
 
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