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Anyone questioning reliability of this drive? I've heard numerous complaints about WD drives failing prematurely. Why should this be any different?

The benchmark scores make me want to definitely buy it, but if it is going to fail right away, I'll wait.

Hmm I did have one WD drive that failed prematurely, but then proceeded to RMA it. By fail, I mean the SMART status indicated it was failing, so I was able to backup my data first and then RMA'd the drive to WD for a replacement. Beyond that, I've put WD drives in my new MBP, my old MB, my brothers MB, and my dads iMac, and they are still running strong. Defective products are just the risk you take as a consumer!

I did find an amazon link to buy one, but I'm going to wait and see if it comes back to Newegg and is maybe closer to $100.

LINK TO BUY 9.5 MM WD BLUE 1TB 5400RPM DRIVE:

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-2-5-Inch-Notebook/dp/B005DVJJWQ
 
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
Anyone questioning reliability of this drive? I've heard numerous complaints about WD drives failing prematurely. Why should this be any different?

The benchmark scores make me want to definitely buy it, but if it is going to fail right away, I'll wait.

I own 3 western digital scorpio blue 500 GB 2.5" 5400 rpm drives and the new one 1 TB 2.5" 5400 rpm drive I mentioned in a note just earlier today. None of them have failed for me. They have all been dependable and quiet. So that makes me a repeat customer. That said all vendors make good drives and a small percentage of drives in any product line will have problems.
 
The vibration it produces is noticeable. When you are pounding on your laptop and your palms resting on the palm rest most of the time you can actually feel it. Plus the left hand side feels warmer compared to the right...

But isn't the drive on the right hand side, next to the Superdrive? Surely if the drive were giving off heat, the right hand side would be warmer?
 
Ok guys... Glad that's cleared up about WD. I mean yes I know that any product can fail, it's just from what I had been hearing, WD was the worst in terms of reliability, with Seagate being pretty close. I've never had problems with Seagate myself, but they've just been external drives.

Anyways, I'm willing to potentially try out this drive out, as long as it's quiet, reliable, and vibration free compared to my 500gb Hitachi Travelstar drive. Anyone like to comment on noise and vibration?
 
Ok guys... Glad that's cleared up about WD. I mean yes I know that any product can fail, it's just from what I had been hearing, WD was the worst in terms of reliability, with Seagate being pretty close. I've never had problems with Seagate myself, but they've just been external drives.

Anyways, I'm willing to potentially try out this drive out, as long as it's quiet, reliable, and vibration free compared to my 500gb Hitachi Travelstar drive. Anyone like to comment on noise and vibration?

Very pleased with mine. It's both quiet and vibration free. It's only been in for just over a week so can't tell you about reliable but I've had not problems so far and if the other 3 scorpio blue laptop drives I'm currently using are any indication it will be very reliable. Sorryfortherunonsentence.
 
Very pleased with mine. It's both quiet and vibration free. It's only been in for just over a week so can't tell you about reliable but I've had not problems so far and if the other 3 scorpio blue laptop drives I'm currently using are any indication it will be very reliable. Sorryfortherunonsentence.

Glad to know. Keep us updated.
 
Only thing stopping me is that 8MB cache.

The 8MB cache is about as important as the colour of the sticker on the drive, differences between 8MB and 64MB drives may become apparent in benchmarks that specifically try to isolate a hard drive's individual performance from the operating system's read and write buffering but that's it. You may notice that 10K and 15K rpm server grade disks commonly have 8MB or 16MB cache on them. All having 32MB or 64MB of cache on some consumer drives does is help cover up rubbish performance in synthetic benchmarks.
 
does anyone know if this drive has the same beachball problem with mid-2009 MBPs? I've still got my 12.5" WD 1TB sitting in my 13" mid-2k9 MBP and the performance is brutal. I'm about to pull the trigger on a 750GB rather than putting up with the slow performance as I have the past 3 weeks.

Thx! :)
 
Both the 750GB and 1TB Blue drives use two platters, but because the latter has 500GB per platter, versus 375GB per platter, the needle needs to travel less to cover more ground. As a result, the raw throughput is much improved. In our real-world testing, we saw folder transfer performance of 89.02MB/s on the 750GB vs. 111.75MB/s on the 1TB - that's substantial.

This is from TechGage review. The savings in power offsets the slightly slower speeds in certain areas. But this hard drive is available via OWC for $135
 
Not easy to clone this WD10JPVT

HI,

Just bought the drive last week and want to clone the WD so to replace my internal HDD. The 1st problem I encountered was seems that the WD cannot be clone while connecting to USB and transfer to internal SATA, the system said it cannot read the drive and when I check with Disk Utility, the partition mapping has been changed from Mac OS Extended (Journaled) to MBR(FAT) :confused:

Then by following this blog http://www.doppiojp.co.uk/1/post/2012/2/macbook-pro-15-inch-253ghz-mid-2009-doesnt-like-wd10jpvt-hdd-when-its-inside.html
suggestion, I tried to clone the WD by swapping it with the internal HDD i.e WD was connected to internal SATA and existing HDD connect to external USB. I have not success because the cloning speed has dropped from 20M/s to ~ 1M/s (6 hours ~30GB and I have a 500GB HDD :() :confused:

I also tried to format the WD (internal SATA) and when I took it out and connect USB, I can see that the partition map has changed from GUID to MBR :confused:

Any clue or advise can help to improve the cloning speed and solve this problem would highly appreciated.

Thanks
 
WD Black can be noisy at times (Newegg reviews) and consumes 1.2 watt while idle (Techreport). That's pretty steep.
You overlooked that this a Blue, not a Black drive. However, the speed is comparable (if not higher) because the 5200-5400 rpm drive has a higher storage density.

----------

This review shows the real world differences between Scorpio Blue (5400 rpm), Black (7200rpm), Seagate Hybrid and SSD: http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=6071&p=2
This test is obsolete, because they tested the 640 GB Blue drive, which has a much lower storage density, and is therefore 1/3 to 1/2 slower than the 9.5 mm 1 TB Blue drive.
 
Since this thread has been recently commented on. I still have my WD10JPVT installed in my 13" 2009 MBP. It is still running great. See my posts on the first page of this thread for more info. It's been running now for 9 months with no issues, still very quiet, don't notice it.

Just noticed that new egg now sells them for $130 so the price has dropped back to near where it was before the tsunami.
 
The vibration it produces is noticeable. When you are pounding on your laptop and your palms resting on the palm rest most of the time you can actually feel it. Plus the left hand side feels warmer compared to the right...

That is really interesting since the hard drive is on the right side, i.e. the same side as your optical drive. :rolleyes:

----------

But isn't the drive on the right hand side, next to the Superdrive? Surely if the drive were giving off heat, the right hand side would be warmer?

Correct. The heat on the left side is from the CPU.
 
Since this thread has been recently commented on. I still have my WD10JPVT installed in my 13" 2009 MBP. It is still running great. See my posts on the first page of this thread for more info. It's been running now for 9 months with no issues, still very quiet, don't notice it.

Just noticed that new egg now sells them for $130 so the price has dropped back to near where it was before the tsunami.

Hi xlii,

I am facing problem to clone and install (I have tried both methods) the WD 1TB HDD, would you be able to share how have you done that ?

Basically, I tried to clone the drive (by connecting to external USB) and it failed to boot up when I install it into the MBP 2009. When I check with Disk Utility, the partition map has changed from GUID to MBR :confused:

I have also tried to switch the WD HDD into internal and clone it with the original as external USB but, the speed was horrible (6 hours for only 30GB).

I have tried to install MacOS from installation CD and WD HDD as internal drive, after more than 10 hours, the installation completed but WD HDD not able to boot up.

Really hope you can share how could you have done this and if there is anything I have done wrong.

Thanks
 
Hi xlii,

I am facing problem to clone and install (I have tried both methods) the WD 1TB HDD, would you be able to share how have you done that ?

Basically, I tried to clone the drive (by connecting to external USB) and it failed to boot up when I install it into the MBP 2009. When I check with Disk Utility, the partition map has changed from GUID to MBR :confused:

I have also tried to switch the WD HDD into internal and clone it with the original as external USB but, the speed was horrible (6 hours for only 30GB).

I have tried to install MacOS from installation CD and WD HDD as internal drive, after more than 10 hours, the installation completed but WD HDD not able to boot up.

Really hope you can share how could you have done this and if there is anything I have done wrong.

Thanks

Hi, there is nothing special about this 1 GB drive. All I did was follow the instructions laid out in this guide Apple provides. Near the end you will find the instructions for initializing the drive and installing OSX and your applications and data. I used a time machine backup to restore my OS, applications and data and had no issues.

Here is the link to the manual you can follow:

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/macbook_13inch_harddrive_diy.pdf

The instructions are for a macbook but as far as the software part (except there is no mention of time machine) it should work as follows. You want to use disk utility to both initialize, name, partition... make sure you select GUID in the disk utility menu. Good luck.
 
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