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WD Scorpio Blue in 2010 MBP 13" - sluggish performance
- Thread starter joshyd87
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The HDAPM trick seems to have worked, these are my new SMART utility results:
The load cycle hasn't changed since I used HDAPM, so I'm happy about that. The temperature seems to be constantly at 33 - 35 now (i'm just using firefox and mail), is this still ok?
Is there any reason why this happens to only some scorpio blue disks? should i try to get a replacement? and if so, how would i argue my case?
thanks for all the help guys, i'd be pretty lost without you
There isn't any Linux distro's that will partition 4k disks correctly without the proper commands. That's not ready in my opinion...
davidlv
macrumors 68020
"The HDAPM trick seems to have worked" is a little vague, did the HDAPM utility solve the sluggish problems?
Temps in the 30-40 degree range are low, "not to worry"
Why does this issue hit some disks? That's a complex issue, with many factors, some think it is the drive cables, some the firmware, some think it is a compatibility issue with the drive firmware, etc, etc ....
no matter what it is it has hit many people in many forms. If you get your machine working right with that disk and HDAPM stick with it, you may have other issues with a different disk. If you are adventurous you can try it...
Returning that disk is a waste of time, INMO, just get a cheap external USB case and use it for backup if you decide to try another brand HD.
tomshardware HP has a list of HD performance, with the Hitachi #1, Seagate Mementos #2 and the WD Scorpio somewhat down the list.
Glad to hear you got the HD working but try to report on how it helped so others can benefit from your experience.
rockstarjoe
macrumors 6502a
Thanks for the info on this. I'm having a problem with my WD Blue 640GB spinning down too often on my new 13" macbook pro. I'll give this a try.
I'm having somewhat similar issues. Just put a 500 GB Scorpio Blue (WD5000BEVT) in my MBP13 mid09.
I'm going back to the stock drive.
What line of Hitachi drives does Apple use?
- Switching tabs in Firefox seems slower than with the stock 160 GB Hitachi drive.
- I can feel slight vibration in the chassis
- Perhaps most annoying of all; this drive is audible where the stock drive was completely silent.
I'm going back to the stock drive.
What line of Hitachi drives does Apple use?
It's normal to have to know what you do in Linux. All that you need is there.
Windows on the other hand, requires that a vendor provide its own tool. That's not ready.
That was indeed the case in 1995. Contrary to what you may think, partitioning a drive correctly should not force you to leave the GUI installer and run fdisk with special options. There's a lot of discussion going on in forums and mailing lists now, trust me when I say that most major Linux distributions will be "ready" for 4k disks in the next release.
No you got that wrong. Windows Vista and Windows 7 does not need any tool at all. They will correctly detect 4k sectors and partition them accordingly.
The aligning utility is for drives that have already been partitioned any other OS than Win7/Vista (i.e. XP, Linux or OSX). It will non-destructively re-align your existing partitions.
...why? Newer format 4kb drives are better than older drives, because it's not like people are writing a lot of 512 byte files these days. You generally will only run into alignment problems with older versions of Windows, as various people have noted.
+1 for that quote. Again, you MAY have to specifically align partitions. Personally, I have a couple WD20EARS that I partitioned under Linux and had to consider the 4kb sectors, but no issues at all doing so.
OS X can handle these drives just fine. Do you really read/write a lot of files that are < 4kb in size...?
Sorry, should have been more specific. It's been a couple of days now since I installed HDAPM, and I think it has improved a little (the drive at least doesn't stop and start all the time now), but I still think I'm suffering from a little "sluggishness". It's most annoying when I've just been browsing webpages and I'm scrolling down, It will start scrolling, then lag for half a second and continue scrolling. Probably doesn't sound like much, but it does get annoying after a while. Any other ideas/fixes would be very welcome!
I might try swapping back to the standard hdd on the weekend to make sure I'm not imagining all this.
I'm having similar problems. Last week I swapped out the stock 250GB HD of my new 2010 MBP and installed a 500GB WD Scorpio Blue (WD5000BEVT) after it being recommended as the best performing drive for MBPs. In the past few days I've noticed a few momentary 'freezes'. No spinning beach balls, but for example, a 3 second delay when I start to key text, scroll a webpage, etc. I'm also noticing more noise from the laptop. At first I thought it was the fan revving up and revving down. It's silent for about 30sec-60sec then revvs up for about 60secs then goes through the same cycle. But after reading these comments I think it might be the hard drive that's making this noise. What's puzzling me is this happens even when the MBP is running off mains power and I uncheck the 'spin down hard disk whenever possible' option in System Prefs. 😕 Is there a 'non-techie' fix for this?
did you try using HDAPM? that stopped my hard drive starting and stopping all the time. i followed these instructions to do it:
http://mymacfixes.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-do-i-stop-clicking-noise-from-hard.html
though like i said, the hard drive doesn't stop and start all the time now but i still suffer from those momentary delays which are quite annoying (noticed it a couple of times while typing this)
http://mymacfixes.blogspot.com/2009/06/how-do-i-stop-clicking-noise-from-hard.html
though like i said, the hard drive doesn't stop and start all the time now but i still suffer from those momentary delays which are quite annoying (noticed it a couple of times while typing this)
I have the exact same problem.
My WD Scorpio Blue 640 GB also made those spin ups and downs. HDAPM stopped that- and you can hear that HDAPM makes the HDD spin non-stop, the "noise" is noticeable in a quiet environment.
Still - just like you - i still get those momentary delays.
I really don't understand what's going on!
I could do without that hassle so I think I'm just gonna stick the 250GB stock drive back in.....
Yeah, I also had the same problem as OP, with 500 GB Scorpio Blue on early-2008 MBP.. These Scorpio Blues are apparently just a bunch of crap on MBPs. HDAPM did solve the sluggishness for me and I've been quite happy with it, except that the HDD runs like 5 degrees higher than usual (43-48 C)....
Sorry, but i'm gonna revive this thread.
After some use, i've been trying to convince myself that there's nothing wrong with my computer, and that i'm just being too "performance demanding".
I, however, still get those lags when scrolling, delays when starting to key text, and other somewhat "minor" stuff, that's just super annyoing over time.
Thanks
After some use, i've been trying to convince myself that there's nothing wrong with my computer, and that i'm just being too "performance demanding".
I, however, still get those lags when scrolling, delays when starting to key text, and other somewhat "minor" stuff, that's just super annyoing over time.
- Please help me determine if it's just me, or if i do have a problem. Do the above "minor" lags happen to you too?
- Did you other guys in this thread ever figure out what was - if anything - wrong?
Thanks
I get occasional beachballs and sluggish performance from my 750gig 5400rpm scorpio blue as well.
Could apple solve this with a future firmware update? Or will it always be an issue til i upgrade the drive?
Could apple solve this with a future firmware update? Or will it always be an issue til i upgrade the drive?
ermir4444
macrumors regular
I had the same problem as most of you guys when i first installed the 500GB Scorpio Blue in my mid 09 MBP 13". I had cloned the drive.Scrolling and text entry was sluggish and flash was crashing a lot. I think all these problems come if you have cloned the drive. All I did was run disk utility and verify and fix the permissions. After i did this then i booted from the OSX CD and ran disk utility-verify-repair disk. This fixed everything for me. Now flash doesn't crash at all, scrolling is really smooth and never noticed any lag at all. Bootup time is like down to 30 sec and the programs open much quicker. The only problem that has kinda stuck is text entry. I still experience some lag although very rarely. It is a great drive after you solve all the kinks. One more thing i love about this drive is that even if you fill it up to almost full the performance doesn't degrade.
I'll try that out. Gotta say though, that the text entry lag is one of the things that really really annoy me. So i'd really like to find some way to get rid of that problem too.
Not sure if the only way is getting a new (other manufacturer) drive? Are we more or less sure that these problems are caused by the WD Scorpio drives and not something else?
The problem has nothing to do with file size. If your partition is not 4k aligned, filesystem clusters will start in the middle of a sector, and this will hurt performance badly.
I wouldn't bet money on OSX being able to partition these drives correctly. Maybe somebody with a Mac Pro and an EARS drive can comment.
Trondah, i see that you have a Momentus XT installed. How's the performance? What about battery, heat, noise and vibrations?
Also, Trondah, do you get the problems mentioned in this thread, with you Momentus XT? Especially, do you have these text typing and scrolling lags?
Performance is great, boot time cut in half and application startup time reduced ALOT. Quite a step up from a regular drive and at 1/20 the price of an SSD.
Battery is about the same, heat is 35C idle don't remember never checked the previous my MBP is quite cool.
Noise is about the same or somewhat less than the WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM I had before. Definitely more audible than stock Hitachi but acceptable to me and I think of myself as picky.
No lags whatsoever haven't heard about that before... Sure it's with an XT?
All in all very satisfied with the purchase. Who would want to buy a normal drive when this is available to such a good price? It's not an SSD but you certainly feel the difference to a normal drive!
Battery is about the same, heat is 35C idle don't remember never checked the previous my MBP is quite cool.
Noise is about the same or somewhat less than the WD Scorpio Black 7200RPM I had before. Definitely more audible than stock Hitachi but acceptable to me and I think of myself as picky.
No lags whatsoever haven't heard about that before... Sure it's with an XT?
All in all very satisfied with the purchase. Who would want to buy a normal drive when this is available to such a good price? It's not an SSD but you certainly feel the difference to a normal drive!
No it's not with an WD Scorpio Blue. I get a lot of those text typing and scrolling lags + i often get beachballs and hangs, both when launching apps and with general use.
Did you have any of the above mentioned problems with your Scorpio Black, and do you not have any of them with your Momentus XT?
Thanks
There isn't any lags of that kind at all, scrolling and typing is smooth as a baby's butt. I don't remember problems like that with my WD Scorpio either.
Try creating a different user and see if the problem exist there. You could also try installing OSX on an external drive and boot from that.
Try creating a different user and see if the problem exist there. You could also try installing OSX on an external drive and boot from that.