Which after-market drive for MB?

[Cams]

I followed the advice from another thread about the cost of hard-drive upgrades for the MacBook C2D through Apple vs. third party vendors and ordered a mid-range WhiteBook today with stock 80 GB drive (and 2 GB of RAM).

I began searching for 160 GB SATA drives through my usual sources (www.kustompcs.co.uk, www.overclockers.co.uk, eBay) and can't find anything. They're all IDE.

So I'm looking for some quick advice as, if it proves to be too difficult to find something, or to be as or more expensive that going through Apple (taking into account shipping costs from third party vendor, which is usually expensive to Lux), I might as well just change my order to upgrade via Apple before they send the order off on Monday.

160 GB would suffice; 200 GB would be better. Can anyone point me in the right direction for purchasing an appropriate drive in Europe? Perpendicular would, of course, be preferable.

Thanks
Cams

 

[freakonguitar]

the 200gb ones are barely on the market, the best way to find any of them would be on ebay, aside from that...im not sure about the 200gb. The 160gb, i would search around sites like ncix.com

 

[SiliconAddict]

Check these out: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/


Spec this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9160821ASK/

I upgraded to this drive last month. There was somewhat of a trade off since it isn't a 7200 drive but it def feels snappier with the Seagate. Plus is comes with a 5 year warrantee that I confirmed with Seagate's website expires in late 2011. So if for some reason the drive dies they wil replace it. I consider it a really good upgrade. That plus the 2GB of RAM that I slapped in there makes my systems screamer....too bad the CPU wasn't ZIF socketed Oh well.

PS- Stay away from the 200GB drives. Yes they look tempting with that # but the rotation speed is 4200 RPM which will hurt the overall performance of your system.

 

[Zadillo]

Check these out: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/


Spec this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9160821ASK/

I upgraded to this drive last month. There was somewhat of a trade off since it isn't a 7200 drive but it def feels snappier with the Seagate. Plus is comes with a 5 year warrantee that I confirmed with Seagate's website expires in late 2011. So if for some reason the drive dies they wil replace it. I consider it a really good upgrade. That plus the 2GB of RAM that I slapped in there makes my systems screamer....too bad the CPU wasn't ZIF socketed Oh well.

PS- Stay away from the 200GB drives. Yes they look tempting with that # but the rotation speed is 4200 RPM which will hurt the overall performance of your system.

As others have noted, you can't compare a 4200RPM PMR drive to older 4200rpm drives. The new PMR technology seems to allow even 4200rpm and 5400rpm 160 and 200GB drives to perform better overall.

Still not the fastest drives, but they aren't so slow any more that they don't really hurt overall performance (some people here have already gotten 200GB drives in their systems and have reported the performance has been fine).

 

[SiliconAddict]

As others have noted, you can't compare a 4200RPM PMR drive to older 4200rpm drives. The new PMR technology seems to allow even 4200rpm and 5400rpm 160 and 200GB drives to perform better overall.

Still not the fastest drives, but they aren't so slow any more that they don't really hurt overall performance (some people here have already gotten 200GB drives in their systems and have reported the performance has been fine).

Actually you can. 4200 is 4200 no matter which vendor you go with. What differs from one to another is the on board cache, the areal density on the disk, and the logic used to store previously used data in that cache. Experience tells me that a Tosh 4200 is not going to be faster then a Seagate 5400 drive.

 

[Zadillo]

Actually you can. 4200 is 4200 no matter which vendor you go with. What differs from one to another is the on board cache, the areal density on the disk, and the logic used to store previously used data in that cache. Experience tells me that a Tosh 4200 is not going to be faster then a Seagate 5400 drive.

Experience in that you've tested the speeds, read/write times, etc. of a 4200rpm PMR 200GB drive and compared it to a Seagate 5400rpm drive?

I'm not saying it will be faster, but from the reports of others who HAVE actually used them, the 200GB drives offer much more acceptable performance, and don't "hurt" overall system performance like some older 4200rpm drives. That's the only point I was making.

 

[CaptainCaveMann]

I have a question for you guys.. When you swap the drive on a new macbook. How do you re install the operating system? Plus im sure u have to back up everything u have on the old drive first to put on the new drive. So you need an external?

 

[Cams]

Check these out: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/


Spec this: http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9160821ASK/

I upgraded to this drive last month. There was somewhat of a trade off since it isn't a 7200 drive but it def feels snappier with the Seagate. Plus is comes with a 5 year warrantee that I confirmed with Seagate's website expires in late 2011. So if for some reason the drive dies they wil replace it. I consider it a really good upgrade. That plus the 2GB of RAM that I slapped in there makes my systems screamer....too bad the CPU wasn't ZIF socketed Oh well.

PS- Stay away from the 200GB drives. Yes they look tempting with that # but the rotation speed is 4200 RPM which will hurt the overall performance of your system.

Thanks Jonathan. I checked it out and this drive, with shipping, would cost me $282.92, which is the equivalent of €220.33. Apple would charge €238.05 so there's really not much in it. The obvious advantage of going third party would be that I get to keep the 80 GB drive, and that I know what's going in as a replacement, most importantly I would know that the Seagate is PMR, and it seems from reading these forums that it's pretty much a lottery about what Apple gives you.

I would need to buy an enclosure for the 80 gig drive, and then there's the slight risk of the third party one getting damaged in transit or having to be sent back to the US in the event of any warranty issues. And it will get caught up in the customs cycle and I'd be liable for sales tax and customs duty.

If I were guaranteed to get a PMR drive from Apple, I'd probably just do that for easiness. Anyone know whether one can request to have this from Apple?

Just thinking out loud folks. From the digging I've done, it seems that 2.5" 160 GB SATA drives haven't made it to Europe yet, unless of course you go through Apple!

 

[Zadillo]

I have a question for you guys.. When you swap the drive on a new macbook. How do you re install the operating system? Plus im sure u have to back up everything u have on the old drive first to put on the new drive. So you need an external?

If you did want to completely restore everything from your old drive, yes, you'd want to get an external enclosure (or just a regular external drive). If you got an external enclosure though, you could use that with your old HD to have as a portable drive.

If you want to start from scratch though, you can just put a fresh new HD in, and then boot your MacBook with the included Mac OS X install DVD, and you'll be able to just install it and it will be like a brand new MacBook.

 

[SiliconAddict]

Yah the price of these drives is a whole lotta ouch. But one thing to keep in mind is that both the 200GB and 160GB SATA drives have only been out 2-3 months. The PATA versions have been out since February. Its these large capacity SATA drives are what is new to the market. If you could hold out until after the holidays I'm certain the price will drop.

Oh and as for the other person's comment on how I know? Until last fall I did IT support for a large campus site office where there were I was upgrading people's stock Tosh hard drives in their Latitude's for Seagate drives. CAD designers who use laptops are never satisfied with the latest and greatest drives.
Ghost out, ghost in. The speed was noticeable. Did I do REAL world benchmarks? No. I'm just saying the perceived feel of the system's speed did seem snappier and that was with cloning the system from drive to drive. *shrugs* Take what you will out of that.

 

[Zadillo]

Yah the price of these drives is a whole lotta ouch. But one thing to keep in mind is that both the 200GB and 160GB SATA drives have only been out 2-3 months. The PATA versions have been out since February. Its these large capacity SATA drives are what is new to the market. If you could hold out until after the holidays I'm certain the price will drop.

Oh and as for the other person's comment on how I know? Until last fall I did IT support for a large campus site office where there were I was upgrading people's stock Tosh hard drives in their Latitude's for Seagate drives. CAD designers who use laptops are never satisfied with the latest and greatest drives.
Ghost out, ghost in. The speed was noticeable. Did I do REAL world benchmarks? No. I'm just saying the perceived feel of the system's speed did seem snappier and that was with cloning the system from drive to drive. *shrugs* Take what you will out of that.

You said Toshiba drives, but which kind?

The 200GB 4200rpm Toshiba drives do not have identical performance to the older 4200rpm drives from Toshiba of smaller capacity.

I'm just saying that the speed of a 200GB 4200rpm drive from what people have posted here is not so bad. People have actually posted read/write numbers, etc. and although again, it's certainly not as big a performer as the typical 7200rpm drive or 160GB 5400rpm drive, it isn't so bad any more that it has a major impact on system performance.

Heck, I even briefly had a Toshiba P105-S9722 with one of those 4200rpm 200GB drives, and the hard drive actually performed quite well, accesses/etc. seemed perfectly acceptable.

-Zadillo