Hard Drive for my new Macbook Pro

Hey guys,
I just bought a macbook pro 13.3" and its awesome. The only thing that bothers me is that small HD size. I want to upgrade my HD - any recommendations? How do I know which hard drives "fit" in the macbook? I am guessing the 2.5" ones do.. I don't want to spend more that 80-100 and prefer a hard drive with 500GB or more. Any specific recommendations?

Thanks!

 

pretty much any 2.5" sata 9.5mm height drive.

 

Any thoughts / experience with the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB?
http://cgi.ebay.com/500GB-7200-Lapt...ltDomain_0&hash=item5d2d020ff7#ht_1846wt_1139

Thanks!

 

That will work fine. It will be a touch quicker that the stock hard drive.

But for what its worth, I would buy from newegg.com instead of ebay.

 

Cool - thanks so much!
Since I'm already ordering the hard drive, any other upgrades I should consider buying for my macbook?

 

If you can fit it in your budget, this one will be the fastest you can get at the $100 level.

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

 

Yep, go for the hybrid drive. It's in between a HDD and SSD in speed, but capacity and price of HDD.

 

Hitachi 7k500, 7200 RPM, 500GB, 16mb Cache. I replaced my stock drive with this, and performance has literally doubled. It's doesn't vibrate my case, and sound wise is as quiet as stock.

 

+1 for the Momentus XT. I replaced my stock 320 5400RPM drive with the 500GB 7200 RPM Momentus XT. Fantastic upgrade for the price!!

 

I'm not sure if I'm missing something here, but isn't the Western Digital WD5000BEKT faster than this (and also cheaper)?

Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB Review (WD5000BEKT) | StorageReview.com

According to this, it's slightly faster and $30 cheaper than the Seagate. Unless I'm missing something here.

Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD5000BEKT 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

 

@Asherek: One is hybrid drive, the other isn't.

 

Right, but if the performance of the non-hybrid drive (WD) is better than the hybrid drive (Seagate), what is the benefit of going with the Seagate then?

 

The momentus XT is the fastest drive you can get for the $100 price point.

Unless you jump to a full fledged SDD for hundreds of dollars, the momentus xt is THE drive to get.

If you are looking to keep it under the $100 prince point, any current generation 7200rpm drive will be about the same in actual real-world performance.

 

Of course you go with the faster drive.

I doubt the WD is actually faster, though. It may be faster in terms of raw sequential reads/writes, but it's probably way slower in IOPS, 4kb reads/writes, etc. and that's what dictates how fast OS boots up, programs open and operate, etc. Sequential is only for coping files.

I don't know how the drives compare in reality, I'm just saying that's the theory behind it and you have to look into the details.

 

I guess that's my question to you and the other folks talking about the Momentus XT. I posted a link to the review in my first post for the WD drive, where it is compared to the Seagate drive and in all of tests you mentioned, the WD drive was on top.

Thus, I'm wondering if I'm missing something about the Seagate being the best to use, seeing as the WD outperforms it and is cheaper.

 

Hmm, judging by that article, it's kinda inconclusive... The Momentus XT doesn't seem to be jumping way up in 4k reads/writes, which is where I'd expect it to excel. However, perhaps it depends on the size of test file they were using. If it's too large for the SSD-portion of the hybrid drive, perhaps it loses its edge. Maybe it would be faster on a smaller test file.

Anyway, it the conclusion they do say...

"And while the drive [WD Scorpio Black 500 GB] is sometimes bested by the Momentus XT in benchmarks, the Western Digital runs $45 less at retail, which makes it a great value for a high capacity performance oriented hard drive."

So I can't really say. I think the only way to know for sure is to buy each drive, and test them under real-world conditions. I've never owned a hybrid drive myself, so I can't vouch for their performance... I just know in theory they're supposed to offer some of the SSD-like speed advantages, and I can attest to (fast) SSDs being super noticeably fast!

My guess is they're both almost equally fast; either will be a fine choice.

 

There have been a few Firmware upgrades for the Seagate Momentus XT as well, not sure exactly what they were for. I have a Momentus XT 320GB in my MacBook Pro and love it. For me SSD's are not worth it, I have owned a few and they do degrade in performance and I had random files start disappearing, (not caused by a virus). The Momentus XT and the WD Black Scorpio drives are scored identical under Windows 7 hardware (both 5.9).

 

What he said.