7200rpm hard drive for MacBook pro?

RichyX

Looking to upgrade the hard drive in my late 2008 unibody MacBook Pro.
It's primarily for video editing so a 500GB 7200rpm model is what I'm after.

I know there are potential issues with drives with shock protection.

Has anyone bought a drive like this?

Spotted this one - link

J-blk

I was using a 320GB 7200RPM Western Digital drive for quite awhile in my unibody MacBook (which is the same as the current MBP) - no issues really except that in a completely quiet room, I could notice the drive whirring a lot more than I did the stock 160GB 5400RPM that was installed... (I've since swapped in an SSD, so no noise at all any longer ).

But no problems with overheating or anything if that's what you're wondering about.

RichyX

J-blk wrote: »

I was using a 320GB 7200RPM Western Digital drive for quite awhile in my unibody MacBook

But no problems with overheating or anything if that's what you're wondering about.

Good stuff.
Do you have the specific model?

Not too worried about overheating, just want to avoid any issues with the Mac's built in shock resistance system.

J-blk

RichyX wrote: »

Do you have the specific model?

Yep, it was the Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT. Bought it from Dabs.ie:

http://www.dabs.ie/products/western-digital-scorpio-black-320gb-7200rpm-16mb-s300-3gbs-56MX.html

I remember looking into the anti-shock thing at the time and AFAIK, at least for WD drives, you can tell if they have built in anti-shock protection or not from the model number. E.g. the WD3200BEKT does not but the WD3200BJKT is identical but does have the shock protection (so it's the one to avoid):

http://www.dabs.ie/products/western-digital-320gb-scorpio-black-7200rpm-sata-16mb-57X3.html?refs=41580000-50473-4294948604

I remember some posts here though mentioning that you could turn off your Mac's anti-shock options from the terminal and avoid issues regardless of the drive, but I can't find the thread now .

aaf

I looked at this for a friend back in Jan and the following drive was highly recommended then:
http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MME2752354&productID=S6101727
There are two versions of this drive, just make sure you get the linked version above and not the version with the G at the end of the model number as that has G-Shock protection which might conflict with the Mac's shock resistance system.

drunkmonkey

Is it possible to get a drive that supports the anti shock, i've just got the 160Gb hard drive and it's filling up rapidly could do with at least 320

Also is it possible to make an exact carbon copy of my drive so I don't have to go entering serial numbers, re installing software etc. tks

RichyX

aaf wrote: »

I looked at this for a friend back in Jan and the following drive was highly recommended then:
http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MME2752354&productID=S6101727

Looks good, think I'll go for it.
Thanks!

RichyX

aaf wrote: »

I looked at this for a friend back in Jan and the following drive was highly recommended then:
http://www.elara.ie/products/detailsfull.asp?productcode=MME2752354&productID=S6101727

I've reconsidered buying that drive.
It has an abnormally high failure rate from what I've been reading.
A Seagate external hd just failed on me so I think I'll be avoiding the brand.

docentore

I saw a comparison test not so long time ago and seems that WD 5400RPM drives are not so much slower than 7200 drives, but defo more quiet and cooler.

RichyX

The Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm seems to be the one to go for based on reviews - link

Now that I've decided on a drive how easy is it to transfer everything (OS, apps and everything) over to the new drive?
I'll be getting an enclosure and using usb to do the transfer.

Jev/N

I'd second the Seagate, both myself and a friend have one and no issues whatsoever

Talisman

RichyX wrote: »

The Hitachi 500GB 7200rpm seems to be the one to go for based on reviews - link

Now that I've decided on a drive how easy is it to transfer everything (OS, apps and everything) over to the new drive?
I'll be getting an enclosure and using usb to do the transfer.

You can clone your existing system on to the new drive before you install it - Carbon Copy Cloner.

Elessar

I'm a bit late to the party, but in future, consider getting a quality SSD. The speed is phenomenal and there are no moving parts to fail. Having bought an OCZ SSD for my macbook pro last year, it was like a new machine. I cannot go back to regular HDDs now, you really feel how slow they are. The price is dropping all the time.

RichyX

Elessar wrote: »

I'm a bit late to the party, but in future, consider getting a quality SSD. The speed is phenomenal and there are no moving parts to fail. Having bought an OCZ SSD for my macbook pro last year, it was like a new machine. I cannot go back to regular HDDs now, you really feel how slow they are. The price is dropping all the time.

In a year or 2 I'll seriously look at them.
For the moment the capacity is a little low for me.

ozt9vdujny3srf

Over the years reading boards I have read people complaining about every brand of HDD under the sun. While it is the case that sometimes models come out that have an unusually high failure rate, in general there isn't a whole lot of difference in reliability between the consumer level HDD's sold by the major manufacturers.

The simple fact is all HDD's are prone to failure, and the only real protection is making sure to back up.

drunkmonkey

Talisman wrote: »

You can clone your existing system on to the new drive before you install it - Carbon Copy Cloner.

does it make an exact clone, do you need to reinstall any software, will everything be on my desktop as it was, is there anything that needs to be re installed ?

RichyX

Talisman wrote: »

You can clone your existing system on to the new drive before you install it - Carbon Copy Cloner.

Nice one.
Don't have to worry about going all the way home to get my OS X install disc now

Inspector Gadget

I've got the 7200rpm 500GB Seagate drive (the version without the drop sensor, so that it doesn't clash with the Macbook's built-in one) in a Macbook (not Pro) running Snow Leopard. Works great apart from very occasional lockups. Performance Update 1.0 is supposed to fix this, so I'm going to give it a go now and see if that does the job, but other than that the drive really does seem to give the machine a good kick in the backside - an Apple technician friend of mine (who fitted the drive in the first place) had the machine from me to get the top case replaced recently and he was very surprised by how snappy the machine is, though I presume Snow Leopard helps too.

[edit]Argh, Performance Update 1.0 won't install on my Early '08 Macbook. Grr. [/edit]

Personally, unless you can plump for an Intel X25-M SSD (mucho $$$), I'm not convinced by the long term performance of SSDs - Anand Lal Shimpi from Anandtech has done some serious digging into this.

Finally, Carbon Copy Cloner is brilliant, to be highly recommended. Does an exact clone (with the useful exception of expanding the image to fill the partition you're copying to, which is very, very handy).

Hope this helps,
Gadget