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Your opinions on what to recommend for a 2010 15" Macbook Pro Hard Drive upgrade?

J Griz 757

J Griz 757

macrumors regular
Original poster
Dec 24, 2010
160
0
Just looking for those of you with a good knowledge on the subject of hard drive upgrades for 2010, 15.4" models of MacBook Pro's.

I have a 320gb hd now, and I'm most likely considering upgrading to a 1TB drive, but wouldn't be against 500gb.

Mainly what I'm getting at is, for my money, would is the best quality hard drive you would recommend (speed, & noise levels included), that will not effect my battery life (if that even would be an issue).

As always, sorry if this thread issue has been beaten to death.
 
A 9,999,999,999,999,999,999 RPM drive, I hear they're not too expensive, only a couple million $, and the cost of a time machine.
 
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endless17 said:
If you're fine with a 500GB drive, the latest Hitachi Travelstar offers good performance combined with very low power usage - both on idle and load. Also appears to be one of the quieter 7200RPM drives to be had on the market.

http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5003&p=2
Click to expand...

Queen of Spades said:
I got a WD Scorpio Blue for my MBP, 640GB 5400RPM. My main needs were storage, silence, and maintained battery life. On all three, it's been a superb drive. I've had excellent experience with WD's Scorpio Blue line.

http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-2-5-Inch-Notebook-WD6400BEVT/dp/B002QAXZZY/ref=sr_1_5?ie=UTF8&qid=1300816165&sr=8-5
Click to expand...


Thanks for the info both of you. Much appreciated.

Now, the 5400 vs 7200 deal, what is both of your opinions on the overall difference in speed etc, in those two.

And so you know, that most hardcore things I will be doing, is using the Photoshop suite, movie editing, and things like that, so nothing too hardcore.

Just wanting to boost up a few things like hd, and ram now, to not worry about it later, once I build up a significant amount of programs, apps, and overall memory usage.
 
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Try to get the 7200rpm if possible.
You WILL see a difference between 5400rpm with bootup, writing, etc.

Or maybe an SSD which makes it better
 
Samsung seems OK

I have this Samsung model:

SAMSUNG HM100UI:

Capacity: 1 TB (1,000,204,886,016 bytes)
Model: SAMSUNG HM100UI
Revision: 2AM10001

It's in my Mid-2010 MBP. Runs quiet, no added heat that I can detect and it has not had any hiccups since installing.

Mikey
 
Like others have said, I would definitely go for the 7200 RPM drive. You will more than likely notice the difference in speed.

But then again, if you're looking for super fast speeds and complete silence, an SSD might be your best friend.
 
I HIGHLY suggest getting an SSD and then later on converting your DVD drive bay into a slot for your current 320gb hard drive, or grab a 500gb. I have the 2010 15" i7 and i bought an OCZ 240gb agility 2 SSD, and lemme tell you, the difference between this and my old 500gb 5400rpm hdd is HUGE. startup is 3x faster at least, things open up right away, iphoto opens quickly when i plug my iphone in, compared to being laggy as hell before. Love my SSD, it's a little low on room, but i'm going to convert my dvd drive for a space for my old 500gb hard drive with an Optibay, which give me a total of 740gb, which is perfect for me. The SSD cost me 300$.
 
Capt Underpants said:
I don't have it personally.

I recommended it based on specs. Seems to be the drive you're looking for.
Click to expand...

Gotcha.

Yea it's deff at the top of my list of possibilities at this point.

I'm just looking into SSD's now to really see their speed difference. If it's only about 10 seconds for boot up difference, for instance, that alone isn't alone worth it to sacrifice 400gb of memory imo.
 
SSD ain't only about speed (but that's a large part of the equation).

No moving parts = no head crashes if you toss your machine to the floor for some odd reason, or, if you're like me, you can close your machine and just move about without waiting for sleep to kick in.
 
J Griz 757 said:
Gotcha.

Yea it's deff at the top of my list of possibilities at this point.

I'm just looking into SSD's now to really see their speed difference. If it's only about 10 seconds for boot up difference, for instance, that alone isn't alone worth it to sacrifice 400gb of memory imo.
Click to expand...

SSDs are nice, but if you need more storage, HDD is still the way to go. I too recommend the WD black. I have the 320GB model in my computer, and it's a great drive. It's noticeably faster than my old one, runs cool, pretty quiet, and hardly vibrates. I have a 13", so the vibration/noise is slightly more noticeable, but from what I have gathered, the difference in noise/vibration is basically unnoticeable in the bigger models.
 
alust2013 said:
SSDs are nice, but if you need more storage, HDD is still the way to go. I too recommend the WD black. I have the 320GB model in my computer, and it's a great drive. It's noticeably faster than my old one, runs cool, pretty quiet, and hardly vibrates. I have a 13", so the vibration/noise is slightly more noticeable, but from what I have gathered, the difference in noise/vibration is basically unnoticeable in the bigger models.
Click to expand...
intel is supposed to come out w/ cheaper ssd this yr w/ size toping out at 600gb
 
Again, thanks for great replies.

Overall though, is it fair to say, the difficulty/lack of diffculty, of replacing my current stock hard drive the same across the board for 5400, 7200rpm, and SSD models the same?
 
I had the Hitachi TravelStar 500 GB on my old MBP and now have a Samsung 640GB, both are 7200RPM. Both are STELLAR.
 
Ok, I think I have found the one I might pick up -

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/YWD7500BPKT/

Have any of you ordered their kits? If so what are your thoughts? (even if you haven't, those that have been commenting, pleast post your thoughts as well)

I think I'll step back from SSD drives for now, as the money vs memory is just too much, and not worth it to me, at the moment. I know you get what you pay for, but I figure the 7200rpm drives are fine for what I will be doing.
 
I'm thinking of getting a 1.5 TB drive for my 15" mbp - mid 2010 model.

i was wondering if anyone could recommend any and what are the size implications for the drive? e.g is 12.5mm size drive ok? I heard somewhere that 12.5mm is the biggest size you can install in a 15"

Thanks for any help and advice.

Tom
 
Last edited:
Hi, I have that drive (500gb wd scorpio blue) in my system and it seems very noisey and kills the battery??

Previously had the standard 250gb toshiba drive that came with the previous generation 13" unibody MBP but now i go from 8hrs to 5 hours battery and it seems like the drive is permanently spinning?

Does anyone know what I might have done wrong, i just cloned the drive over from the old one to the new one and installed it.
 
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