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Which 500gb drive for uMBP?

L

lapino

macrumors regular
Original poster
Mar 6, 2009
238
11
Thinking about upgrading my harddrive (200gb). Which one is adviseable for the unibody MBP. I don't care THAT much about speed (although it's fine if it's faster of course), but I do not want any less battery life, more heat or more noise.

Also, can I put my current drive from my MBP in a PS3?
 
lapino said:
Thinking about upgrading my harddrive (200gb). Which one is adviseable for the unibody MBP. I don't care THAT much about speed (although it's fine if it's faster of course), but I do not want any less battery life, more heat or more noise.

Also, can I put my current drive from my MBP in a PS3?
Click to expand...

i am a fan of seagate. here are the two 500gb's they make

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...E&N=2000150380 50001305 1309740009&name=500GB

and technically you should be able to put your old hd in the ps3. both 2.5" SATA

when i upgraded my to 500gb it was the seagate 2.5" SATA
 
lapino said:
Thinking about upgrading my harddrive (200gb). Which one is adviseable for the unibody MBP. I don't care THAT much about speed (although it's fine if it's faster of course), but I do not want any less battery life, more heat or more noise.

Also, can I put my current drive from my MBP in a PS3?
Click to expand...

Back in late October or early November, I went with the Samsung 500 GB drive. It is 5400 RPM and has run as anticipated - no problems in the UMBP. If I put my ear on the right palm rest I can hear the drive but other then that it is not noticed. It did not impact battery life that I can tell.

However, the more data the longer the backups take...
 
ViciousShadow21 said:
i had a bad experience with a Western Digital. but overall they are good. you cant really go wrong with either.
Click to expand...

The hard drive that came with my MacBook Pro was a Seagate 7200.3. Its currently installed on my MacBook but for some reason it freezes whenever I try to access two partitions at once and it clicks randomly. This is my first seagate drive so I cant tell if its just a faulty unit or not.

Still, overall point, both brands are good. Really can't go wrong with either brand drive.
 
ayeying said:
The hard drive that came with my MacBook Pro was a Seagate 7200.3. Its currently installed on my MacBook but for some reason it freezes whenever I try to access two partitions at once and it clicks randomly. This is my first seagate drive so I cant tell if its just a faulty unit or not.

Still, overall point, both brands are good. Really can't go wrong with either brand drive.
Click to expand...

you said that you work a lot with virtual machine so maybe the Western Digital works better for that and the seagate not so much haha.
 
ViciousShadow21 said:
you said that you work a lot with virtual machine so maybe the Western Digital works better for that and the seagate not so much haha.
Click to expand...

Not sure. I remember when I was running the 320GB, every time I turn on vmware, the system dies for 1 minute. After everything's booted, if i were to do something disk intensive... say a defrag, the system would randomly die for 1 minute then come back to life. This is w/ a boot camp partition.

Kinda annoying. But its okay. I'm using the drive with the MacBook which stores just some work files which is backed up regularly... so if anything does happen. ya, no biggie.
 
This one is my choice (Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000BEVT 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s.) I just got it from Newegg for $89.99, and they threw in an external usb HD enclosure for free. After formatting with DiskUtility, I cloned my original drive with Carbon Copy Cloner over to the new WD 500gig, which I had slipped into the free usb enclosure. Worked as promised, and now I can boot my MBP from the WD500 in the usb2 external enclosure - I originally wasn't sure if that would work, but it worked just great - so I've been running with that as my boot/startup disk for the afternoon to give it a workout.

So far, completely acceptable quiet and cool in the enclosure (aluminum.) No obvious clicking or odd mechanical noises... seems smooth as the OEM drive in my MBP.

I'll let it go though some paces for a week or so, then it'll go inside my laptop. If first impressions count... it's MBP worthy.

Check the user ratings for some feedback on the Seagates vs WD 500 gig drives at Newegg.
 
I'm also looking for a 500GB drive for my unibody MBP. Some of the reviews for the WD and the Seagate drives say they don't work well with the built in shock sensor but nobody mentions that in the the reviews of the samsung so thats the way I'm leaning. What are your personal experiences in terms of compatibility with the shock sensor and other parts with these 500GB drives?
 
MacGeekDC said:
I'm also looking for a 500GB drive for my unibody MBP. Some of the reviews for the WD and the Seagate drives say they don't work well with the built in shock sensor but nobody mentions that in the the reviews of the samsung so thats the way I'm leaning. What are your personal experiences in terms of compatibility with the shock sensor and other parts with these 500GB drives?
Click to expand...

i know ppl that have put in both seagate and western digital into their unibody MBP's. so i dont know what those reviews are saying

could you post a link to the part about the western digital and seagate not working with the shock sensor?
 
The WD Scorpio Blue series don't have the free-fall sensor versions, but the Scorpio Black (7200 rpm) series have models with the free-fall sensor, and models without it. All series have the shock guard feature which is meant to protect the read/write heads during startup, etc.

Here's the WD website where you can read the differences. The 500gig drive I have is the Scorpio Blue (5400 rpm) and so far there isn't a 7200 rpm version.
 
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