Will EFI 1.7 fix the clicking issue on 500gb Scorpio Blue? updt: Hitachi works great!

[mnpmac]

I upgraded my mid'09 13 MBP to the 500gb WD Blue disk, but I keep getting the clicking noise every 20secs or so while just browsing the web with my trackpad. (While I am typing something - including this post, there is no clicking).
My questions are:
1. Will the 1.7 EFI firmware fix this? I think that is only for 7200 drives. I am on SL and not updated the firmware.
2. If not, I am going to return this as I cannot bear the sound. I dont mind the whooshing noise as it is not irritating. What should I get in place? My only criteria are reliability and noise. I just use the laptop mainly for browsing and dont care too much about performance.

 

[the1payday]

Maybe, but it may not be worth it. EFI 1.7 has been notorious for either disabling third party HDD's entirely, or for the ones still working, they freeze up intermittently with the beach ball of death, for like 10 seconds. The latter was happening to me with my WD Blue 500GB drive I put in it. I honestly would recommend waiting as if it happens to you, it's VERY annoying. Mine was beach balling every 5 minutes or so for about 10 seconds straight. Music playback would just stop too. Forget it.

 

[vitavo]

I just bought a 13" MBP on Monday. Pre-loaded with Snow Leopard and installed a 500GB Scorpio Blue right away, haven't had any clicking or beach balling. The firmware is MBP55.00AC.B03 (EFI 1.7).

For what it's worth.

 

[Nykwil]

This might help or it might not, but i noticed when i turned off the option to put the hd to sleep in the power savings menu in system preferences for a few day the beach balling disappears.

Its seems as though it's time specific as well. For instance if I set it to sleep after 3 hours the intervals show up almost every 3 hours.

I'm also beginning to think the main culprit is firefox as well, since this only happens to me when im using that browser.

 

[mnpmac]

There seems to be 5 choices for 500GB hd:
1. WD scorpio blue
2. Seagate Momentus 7200
3. Seagate Momentus 5400
4. Hitachi
5. Fujitsu

Since I already have trouble with Scorpio, and reading too many reports about vibrations on Seagate, I am leaning towards Hitachi or Fujitsu.
From one of the HD reviews, the Hitachi seemed to be of good performance and low power consumption. But upon searching of the threads here, there are not too many who switch to either. Is there a problem with these drives?

 

[jinaun]

i'm using wd scorpio black and it has the annoying faint click too..

its the drive's auto head parking called intellipark, after 8 sec of idle, the head will unload (or park) to save power.

i used the wdidle3 utility to disable the intellipark and now it does not make that sound anymore, and btw i'm using EFI 1.7

 

[mnpmac]

Hitachi 500GB works great!

I could not take the noise anymore. So went to Frys and picked up the Hitachi Travelstar 500GB disk. Used CCC to copy the Scorpio blue drive and installed it into the MBP. It works great! No noise, very low hum (similar to the stock 160GB drive).
The price was the same as the blue drive and the warranty is 3 years for both.

Also, when I put the Scorpio blue drive in an external enclosure and either boot from it or access data from it as a slave, the clicking was still there. So, to me it seems that the clicking is with this drive itself and not with the MBP. (I did not try connecting the drive to a Windows machine and check for noise though. It is on its way back to Amazon).

 

[michaelsviews]

There seems to be 5 choices for 500GB hd:
1. WD scorpio blue
2. Seagate Momentus 7200
3. Seagate Momentus 5400
4. Hitachi
5. Fujitsu

Since I already have trouble with Scorpio, and reading too many reports about vibrations on Seagate, I am leaning towards Hitachi or Fujitsu.
From one of the HD reviews, the Hitachi seemed to be of good performance and low power consumption. But upon searching of the threads here, there are not too many who switch to either. Is there a problem with these drives?

I already mentioned this in another HD thread, but I am on the 2nd WD Scorpio Blue 500 gig from Macsales, the tech support said I should not hear anything, well the whoosihing noise is louder and the clicking is getting to be ridiculous. I went to the Apple store yesterday and the majority of the MBP's that I could actually get too had Hitachi drives in them, or Toshiba.

Mine came with a 320 in it and that's going back into it this weekend, and the 2 500GB plus the external closure go back to macsales on monday

I'll hold out for the SSD's to drop, and in the mean time look for something to use as a backup drive. I was looking into a time machine but thats 300 dollars and half the cost of a new SSD. Have to wait and see what the budget allows

p.s. I will say that macsales has been outstanding to deal with though. And on another note, SuperTalent SSD's are widely used also. According to Apple yesterday on the phone , Hitachi & Samsung supply the SSD's for there systems