Which 500 GB Harddrive?

[Azagar]

I upgraded to the WD Scorpio Black as soon as I got my MacBook, and can honestly say the 7200 RPM really does make a difference compared to the stock one. Yet there is no increase in noise, vibration, or heat.
Another thing you mentioned was Seagate's 5 year warranty, well WD also offers a 5 year warranty so when it came to choosing over the 7000.3 or Scorpio black, I chose WD because I have good experiences in the past with there products. The only thing I did make sure not to get was one of these HDD with the built in SMS, reason being I have heard in the past that they sometimes can cause kernel panic since they interfere with the Apple's SMS.

 

[Thunder82]

For those interested in benchmarks, I was able to find the following links :

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=307430 - Scorpio Blue

http://forum.notebookreview.com/showthread.php?t=323122 - Seagate ST9500325AS

http://www.tomshardware.com/charts/2-5-hard-drive-charts/Average-WriteTransfer-Performance,676.html - This chart has the Samsung drive listed.

All 3 drives have very similar performance, Seagate having the fastest sustained transfers, and the WD having the fastest burst rates & access times.

 

[rickeames]

I got a 500GB WD few month back and its been absolutely perfect. Extremely quiet and produces much less heat then the old 160GB Hitachi that came w/ the MBP.

Wow, really? I have the same drive and the amount of clicking, and the occasional "beeping" from it is making me nuts. I'm going to swap it out.

This morning it beeped in a very quiet room and my wife looked up and said "is that your computer?"

Yeah, not a fan of this particular drive.

 

[chrisi29]

Yeah unfortunatly my WD 500 drive has the same issue
It has a loud fan and keeps making this clicking noise!
I'm going to have to live with the regular 250 drive i suppose which is remarquably quiet!

 

[SoybeanStasher]

I may wait for the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB, which I'm told has been delayed until Q1 2009. Oh well, my current 250GB isn't close to being full yet anyway, so I was kinda jumping the gun.

And yeah, the current 250GB is indeed very quiet, so I'd hate to replace it with anything louder.

 

[rickeames]

I upgraded to the WD Scorpio Black as soon as I got my MacBook, and can honestly say the 7200 RPM really does make a difference compared to the stock one. Yet there is no increase in noise, vibration, or heat.
Another thing you mentioned was Seagate's 5 year warranty, well WD also offers a 5 year warranty so when it came to choosing over the 7000.3 or Scorpio black, I chose WD because I have good experiences in the past with there products. The only thing I did make sure not to get was one of these HDD with the built in SMS, reason being I have heard in the past that they sometimes can cause kernel panic since they interfere with the Apple's SMS.

Really? I tried that drive and it was pretty loud in the unibody. If I put it on a table, I could hear it even more as it was vibrating a lot. Tons of people have reported this, so maybe you got lucky.

 

[mumstead]

My Scorpio Black (320) was not noisy at all but vibrated a lot. I couldn't stand the vibration any more so I replaced it with a Scorpio Blue (500). The Scorpio Blue is completely silent, even in a silent room, and vibrates as much as the stock drive in my Unibody Pro, which is hardly at all. I have not really noticed a slowdown going from a 7200 to a 5400 rpm drive. I would highly recommend the Scorpio Blue.

 

[Azagar]

Really? I tried that drive and it was pretty loud in the unibody. If I put it on a table, I could hear it even more as it was vibrating a lot. Tons of people have reported this, so maybe you got lucky.

Wow really? I purchased mine off Newegg and I notice no vibration at all under my right hand when typing, were the HDD is, maybe I did get lucky. As for the noise, I do notice it if I'm in a silent room, but with the mbp's respectable speakers when is any room silent anymore?

 

[Tom B.]

I can get either the Western Digital Scorpio Blue 500GB, or the Samsung Spinpoint M6 500GB. They're both the about £90.

Based on what I have been hearing in this thread, I'm leaning towards the Samsung so far. Does the WD have any advantages over the Samsung that I've missed?