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rufus247

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 26, 2009
47
0
I am wanting to upgrade my hard drive, and wanted to know what is best. I have a 2.53 GHZ Unibody MacBook Pro 13.3". The main things I am looking for are speed, and I want it to be near silent. Also, what is the difference between SATA 3.0Gb/s and ATA 6, meaning which is better? I would like to get at least 500GB but maybe more.
 
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Difference between S-ATA 3.0 Gbps and S-ATA 6.0 Gbps is that S-ATA 6.0 Gbps is double the speed of S-ATA 3.0 Gbps.

S-ATA 1.5 Gbps is ca. 150MB/s
S-ATA 3.0 Gbps is ca. 286MB/s
S-ATA 6.0 Gbps is ca. 550MB/s

HDDs won't exceed the S-ATA 1.5 Gbps interface anyway, unless they are in RAID configuration.

SSDs do exceed the S-ATA 3.0 Gbps with newer SSDs.
 
Speaking relatively, you can have either speed/silence (with an SSD) or more than 500 GB (with a platter-based drive).

For the sake of this post, lets leave Solid state out of the equation. They are a little too pricy for me right now. Thank you for your help though.

http://www.google.com/cse?cx=011016...e:forums.macrumors.com&hl=en&as_qdr=all&meta=

Difference between S-ATA 3.0 Gbps and S-ATA 6.0 Gbps is that S-ATA 6.0 Gbps is double the speed of S-ATA 3.0 Gbps.


HDDs won't exceed the S-ATA 1.5 Gbps interface anyway, unless they are in RAID configuration.

Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean? Does it mean it is pointless to get the faster one?
 
Forgive my ignorance, but what does that mean? Does it mean it is pointless to get the faster one?

It does mean, that HDDs (the one with the spinning platters) don't exceed the specifications of the S-ATA 1.5 Gbps interface. Only in RAID 0 or 5 they do, or when you use an SSD instead of an HDD.

Current HDDs offer speeds of up to 100MB/s, if you choose the 7200rpm models or maybe the 640GB 5400rpm model, which has a higher speed than a 500GB 5400rpm HDD due to the density of the platters.
 
I got the scorpio blue about a month ago and im not too happy. it is noticeably louder than the stock drive was... 500GB is great and all but I never got the beachballing with the stock 160GB drive my mbp came with and now I get it all the time, at least 25 times a day for everything from loading / opening / closing webpages to browsing the finder or using itunes... its really frustrating, its just not fast at all... I just cant wait for SSD's to drop in price to a reasonable level...
 
I used to have the samsung spinpoint m6 500GB and it failed after getting slower and slower after 8 months of use...I was able to backup my data, then send it in to samsung and what did they do? they send back a reconditioned drive instead of a new one !! no more and never again samsung products
the 640 scorpio was the best choice ever because of its speed and quiet performance..the 2 320gb platters result in faster data exchange ( since its two platters and not one...its the best choice you can make right now...



I got the scorpio blue about a month ago and im not too happy. it is noticeably louder than the stock drive was... 500GB is great and all but I never got the beachballing with the stock 160GB drive my mbp came with and now I get it all the time, at least 25 times a day for everything from loading / opening / closing webpages to browsing the finder or using itunes... its really frustrating, its just not fast at all... I just cant wait for SSD's to drop in price to a reasonable level...
 
Really, choose whatever you feel is good for you and price range is right.

I'm using a 750GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue 2.5", 3 Platter. It's actually faster then the 640GB Scorpio Blue I used. I really believe that Scorpio blue was defective because it was getting 15MB/s read and write as its top speed... when this 750GB gets 85MB/s write, 80MB/s read as its top speed, similar to a 7200RPM drive.

I also have a Momentus 7200.4 (500GB 7200RPM) drive with me. It's louder then the Scorpio blue but that's because its a 7200RPM vs the 5200RPM (yes, I did write that correctly, the 750GB uses 5200RPM).

Do note, depending on what MacBook Pro you have, you can most likely only use up to a 9.5mm drive, 640GB max size, 500GB 7200RPM max speed.
 
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