What's the biggest Hard Drive my MBP will take?

[gazfocus]

I've just bought a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro and I've just put a 320GB hard drive in it... however, I've just seen somewhere for sale a 500GB 2.5" SATA hard drive. Will my MBP take it?

I'm not sure if it will physically because the height is 12.5mm

Will it work size wise (GB's)?

 

[mgacam2]

To my knowledge there is currently only one 500 GB hard drive out on the market right now, that being the Toshiba 500 GB drive. That drive has a 12.5 mm height and wont fit, as the MBP fits 9.5 mm drives only. Wait until march like me when the Samsung Spinpoint M6 500 GB hard drive is released. Its going to have the 9.5 mm profile.

 

[gazfocus]

To my knowledge there is currently only one 500 GB hard drive out on the market right now, that being the Toshiba 500 GB drive. That drive has a 12.5 mm height and wont fit, as the MBP fits 9.5 mm drives only. Wait until march like me when the Samsung Spinpoint M6 500 GB hard drive is released. Its going to have the 9.5 mm profile.

This one's actually a Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 and the company say they've tested them in MBP's but I'd heard the limit was 9.5mm.

 

[Blanz]

Samsung developed a 500GB 2.5' 9.5mm one, but idk if it would fit in your computer

 

[freitas]

The 320 GB drives (Western digital and Samsung) are currently your best bet. I believe there is a rumor of a 500GB 9.5mm drive to be released in March. Best of luck!

 

[gazfocus]

The 320 GB drives (Western digital and Samsung) are currently your best bet. I believe there is a rumor of a 500GB 9.5mm drive to be released in March. Best of luck!

Thanks. The drive I've got in is a 320GB WD drive so I'll stick with it for now...Maybe buy the 500GB when the new MBP's come out

 

[MacDann]

Thanks. The drive I've got in is a 320GB WD drive so I'll stick with it for now...Maybe buy the 500GB when the new MBP's come out

Checking in with OWC, who usually has the latest and greatest, it looks like your 320G WD drive is currently the largest capacity available at this time. The limiting factor is height, or thickness, which in the MBP and most other notebooks at present is 9.5 mm.

MacDann

 

[freitas]

The 320B WD turns in some nice numbers under Xbench and has favorable reviews floating around the net. Within a day I had the drive loaded with over 160GB of data, music and videos. Hopefully by the time I fill it up a 1TB SSD drive will be availabe for a competitive price

The downside is that I now have to find a larger external drive to maintain the backups

 

[gazfocus]

True I'm now looking for a drive to use with Time Machine (just wish Time Capsule would be available already!)

 

[freitas]

Time machine has been nothing but a pain with my MBP. My laptop is never in one place long enough to complete a backup. I have been working with rsnapshot and superduper to maintain a bootable clone and hourly/daily User backups to network shares.

 

[gazfocus]

Time machine has been nothing but a pain with my MBP. My laptop is never in one place long enough to complete a backup. I have been working with rsnapshot and superduper to maintain a bootable clone and hourly/daily User backups to network shares.

Would I be able to use that with a NAS drive as that would be my preferred option.

 

[freitas]

rsnapshot and superduper should work fine over NAS. rsnapshot is available as a port. It takes some setting up but there are some decent guides online. SuperDuper has been fantastic for cloning drives during my HD upgrades. I now keep a system clone on a WD passport external drive just in case I run into problems. Also check out carbon copy cloner.

for rsnapshot see:
http://www.justatheory.com/computers/os/macosx/rsnapshot_and_launchd.html
for issues with rsync and mac see:
http://patternbuffer.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/rsync-30-looking-very-promising/
http://www.bombich.com/mactips/image.html

 

[gazfocus]

rsnapshot and superduper should work fine over NAS. rsnapshot is available as a port. It takes some setting up but there are some decent guides online. SuperDuper has been fantastic for cloning drives during my HD upgrades. I now keep a system clone on a WD passport external drive just in case I run into problems. Also check out carbon copy cloner.

for rsnapshot see:
http://www.justatheory.com/computers/os/macosx/rsnapshot_and_launchd.html
for issues with rsync and mac see:
http://patternbuffer.wordpress.com/2008/01/04/rsync-30-looking-very-promising/
http://www.bombich.com/mactips/image.html

Thanks. heard some good things about Carbon Copy Cloner (just couldn't remember what it was called )

 

[Fry-man22]

I've just bought a 2.16GHz Core 2 Duo Macbook Pro and I've just put a 320GB hard drive in it... however, I've just seen somewhere for sale a 500GB 2.5" SATA hard drive. Will my MBP take it?

I'm not sure if it will physically because the height is 12.5mm

Will it work size wise (GB's)?

These guys say they've "tested" it, but given that I can't find that drive ANYWHERE on the web it seems strange they could offer it with next day shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HITACHI-5K500...9853314QQihZ018QQcategoryZ16178QQcmdZViewItem

If you check out the feedback there is ONE of the other ended auctions for this drive, but the buyer has only 1 feedback. I don't know if this means they signed up and "bought" one with a different account or what.

Anyway, regardless of if the auction is a scam or not, I hope they're telling the truth about it fitting in the MBP. I would give up the 7200 RPM of the 200GB for 2.5 times the space...

 

[gazfocus]

These guys say they've "tested" it, but given that I can't find that drive ANYWHERE on the web it seems strange they could offer it with next day shipping.

http://cgi.ebay.co.uk/HITACHI-5K500...9853314QQihZ018QQcategoryZ16178QQcmdZViewItem

If you check out the feedback there is ONE of the other ended auctions for this drive, but the buyer has only 1 feedback. I don't know if this means they signed up and "bought" one with a different account or what.

Anyway, regardless of if the auction is a scam or not, I hope they're telling the truth about it fitting in the MBP. I would give up the 7200 RPM of the 200GB for 2.5 times the space...

That's the auction I saw as that's the company I bought my 320GB WD Drive from (VERY good service from them, I'd highly recommend them)...It's just when I was fitting my 320GB this evening, I couldn't imagine being able to fit a thicker drive in there.