Hard disc upgrade to 320 gb 7200rpm

I got the Aluminium Mac book ( 2.4ghz + 2gb ram)
then upgraded to 4gb ram

and now i am all greedy. I want more speed.

Thinking of upgrading the hdd to 320 gb 7200 rpm

any suggestions ( i dont have the money left to get a ssd)

 

Go for it dude, I would recommend the Hitachi 7k320 from newegg.com. Great price and runs quiet and cool.

 

get a western digital scorpio if you want the coolest and quietest hdd. hitachi's are better for performance. and they usually cost more. and stay away from fujitsu's.

 

I put a Seagate 320GB Scorpio Black 7200rpm drive in my new 2.53Ghz MBP, and it flies. Very happy. The Hitachi is actually supposed to be the weakest of the new 7200rpm 320GB drives. I'd definitely go for the WD or the Seagate.


**EDIT**

I mean the WD Scorpio Black.

 

WOw those are some pretty encouraging comments !!!!!

Should implement very soon.

 

western digital makes scorpio black hdd's. seagates are momentus's.

 

I upgraded my MBP to the WD Scorpio back in July and it's been fantastic. I am posting some Xbench numbers for your info:

Xbench 1.3
Disk Test=51.50
Sequential=80.92
Uncached Write=104.37 64.08 MB/sec
Uncached Write=102.32 57.89 MB/sec
Uncached Read=47.58 13.92 MB/sec
Uncahced Read=110.36 55.47 MB/sec

Random=37.77
Uncached Write=12.74 1.35 MB/sec
Uncached Write=144.31 46.20 MB/sec
Uncached Read=80.03 .57 MB/sec
Uncahced Read=125.54 23.29 MB/sec

 

Yes, my mistake. I meant Western Digital Scorpio Black.

 

THanks for the info.
Could u post a comparison to 5400rpm HDD

 

Here are my Xbench #s from my stock 5400rpm HD in the MB 2.4

Disk Test 44.41
Sequential 75.38
Uncached Write 93.55 57.44 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 74.60 42.21 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 52.03 15.23 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 102.53 51.53 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 31.48
Uncached Write 11.23 1.19 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 76.11 24.37 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 65.24 0.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 104.76 19.44 MB/sec [256K blocks]

I'm skipping 7200rpm HD upgrade and waiting to go straight to SSD. For basic use I doubt you'd notice the difference between 5400rpm to 7200rpm. That's just IMHO

 

Yup2 go for it. XD

I wonder TI hd cloning work in os x.

 

I am considering upgrading to a 320 gb 7200 rpm hd on the new macbook as well. Does anyone know if the battery life will be affected??

 

of course it will be affected... the disc's spin faster therefore they draw more power. how much of an affect is the real question.

 

While that assessment was true in the past, it is not true today. There is no longer any appreciable (or even any) difference between the speeds, and thus battery life should be nearly identical.

As support for that statement, Western Digital publishes the power draw specs on both their Black (7200) and Blue (5400) mobile drives. The power usage for read/write, idle and standby are identical -- the only difference is sleep (0.15W v 0.10W)

 

www.tomshardware.com

just check the charts..

i have a seagate momentus but havent swapped yet, not sure if i know how and am too lazy to backup my files

 

Don't use the Hitachi 7K320.

I have it, and it gets too hot in my MBP. Like, sometimes I have to shut down because the HD stops and all programs freeze. That's better than losing all my data (I am looking at you, 7K200!), but still fairly annoying.

Also, it's fast, but not hugely faster than the WD320GB / 5400 I had before.

The speed of a hard disk is largely decided by rotational speed and load factor. The more it fills up, the slower it gets. That means a larger drive is always faster than a smaller drive if you have the same amount of data on it.

 

Thing is, is the 7K320 getting too hot or is the cooling in the previous MBP not good enough.

I've seen people reporting 60C on the Seagate 7200.3 too.

I hope the newer macbooks can handle 7200rpm just fine.

By the way orthorim, you could try lowering the AAM value, it will propably cool down your 7K320. (don't know what software can do it in OS X)

 

That's the theory. I'd have said the same before I got the 7K320 - the tech specs look totally OK. But it still seems to generate more heat under load, because, well, it sometimes shuts down on me. It might be that I have a faulty drive, but I doubt it - the behavior is reproducible reliably. If I do a lot of HD activity with CPU activity and without cooling pad, the HD will start making clicking noises and the data rate will drop to 0. If I then cool the MacBook Pro, as in I point a large fan at it or something like that, it recovers, and everything continues as if nothing happened.

And the disk is fine, disk utility finds nothing wrong with it.

So I think it just gets too hot and takes a break to protect itself. Of course I might be wrong there.

But there is strong evidence that this thing just gets too hot.

 

Yeah dude, that means your HD is overheating, its your computer's cooling system's fault, not the hard drive's. Unless the hard drive is at a relatively cool temperature when this is all happening. I'm still supportive of the Hitachi 7K320, have had no problems with it for the 2 months I have had it and I have done a lot to it, such as reformatting the drive 2x(screwed up the first time). Have Ubuntu installed on it and am often doing hard drive intensive tasks such as encoding video to disk and copying large volumes of files off of external HD, DVD ripping, etc. I check the temperature of the 7k320 while in heavey use and it is only 46 degrees Celsius which really isn't bad at all and I really don't notice the sound, even in a relatively quiet room. I don't understand why it has such a bad rap...

 

lowering the AAM value also reduces performance, making the purchase kind of moot.

 

It can take a couple of % of you perfomance, but it can still be a lot faster than 5400rpm.

 

The main difference between the 5400 and 7200 rpm drives is the seek times. Most all other speeds are pretty close to each other. Battery life will be slight lower with the 7200. As someone else all ready mentioned is on larger HD you stay away from the center tracks which are slower. In this case if you installed the same capacity HD with the same tech you will see a difference in speed. But since most go larger this is over looked. What most do not look at is the startup current, this is where the values differ. The perpindicular tech hd have great data transfer speeds when compaired to the old std.

 

I installed my WD Scorpio 320GB in the new 'unibody' MacBook Pro, significant difference in speed compared to the Hitachi 250GB 5400K.
Installing was so simple since the new design allows easy HD access.

 

Can you hear any noise? How is the vibration? heat?

I got the 2.4 today and am considering either Seagate 7200.3 or WD.

 

How did you do the SW transfer?

Thinking about getting a MB and would probably swap out the drive.

regards
JohnG

 

I'm expecting you won't need to transfer any SW.

The MB comes with installation discs, so you could boot of the installation disc and install the OS on the new hard drive.

Someone correct me if I'm wrong because I'm new to the OS X world.

 

That would be nice if it was a straight forward install. I'm used to the MS hell of installation.

BTW: Provantage.com has insane deals on the momentus 7200 drives.

 

I'm also wondering what the best way to transfer my data is? I would love if I could clone the drive somehow and not need to reinstall everything. Is that possible?

 

I installed a WD, Scorpio 320GB 7200 rpm drive in my new MBP 2.53 and on startup it sounded like a jet plane. Needless to say, I took it out and reinstalled the stock HD. It's quiet again!! Don't get this drive!!!!

Professor

 

TEACHER ,
Are u sure u dint screw up the installation the first time..
Most of the people here who installed WD, scorpio, had no issues ....

 

Absolutely positive! I actually installed and reinstalled it three (3) times.

 

I forgot to say you'll probably need to format the drive first though. I'll probably put it in a SATA enclosure first, format it and then put it in the Macbook.

Edit: but it would be better to follow the advice of someone with OS X experience.

Actually I think it works the same in XP

Actually I've read more complaints about the WD Scorpio black. Or I've been reading teachers complaints several times.

On the Newegg product reviews there's some people that complained about the WD too.

I might go for the Seagate, I'm hoping it will be better in the noise and vibration department.

 

Wow, I was expecting a bigger performance increase than that. For those who replaced the stock hd with a 7200, could you tell a difference in ordinary tasks? Did it boot faster? Applications load quicker?

 

I just upgraded mine to a Seagate 250GB 7200.3 drive. Synthetic benchmarks show a major improvement over the standard 250GB 5400rpm Toshiba drive.

For easy cloning, just use SuperDuper. You will have to format the new hard disk first using Disk Utility.

 

Is this in the new Macbook?

How is the noise and vibration? Do you notice a difference in speed?

 

You must have gotten a faulty drive. My Scorpio Black sounds about the same as any other drive that I've gotten in a MacBook Pro, including the 160GB 5400rpm of my first MBP system and the 200GB Penryn /320GB 5400rpm of subsequent new MBPs. It's normal for the drive to sound like there's a movement of air, but not anywhere near "jet engine" movement!

 

So, how does the system perform with the new drive? Noticeably quicker?

 

I took it back and got a refund. Time to regroup. Thanks all.

 

Good point. My MBP model never shipped with the 7K320 so the cooling system is probably not good enough. The newer models do ship with 7200 RPM 320GB drives so I'd think thats not an issue there.

The specs and other information on the Hitachi web page, however, led me to believe that the drive would perform in the same thermal envelope as comparable 5400 RPM drives. That turned out to be not the case, and that's why I can't recommend the drive.

 

Or use Disk Utility "Restore". An often overlooked feature of Disk Utility No need for 3rd party software.

 

Well there's little difference to the stock Hitachi 250GB drive. I didn't notice much of a difference in noise or vibration, I've used this Scorpio in my ASUS prior to this so I know this drive inside out and it's been excellent compared to Seagate and hitachi, I find WD's are often quieter.

 

Mine is fine and dandy, no jet plane noises.

 

I simply just reinstalled OSX with "C" on bootup, it was the easiest method since at the time I had it for less then 2 hours. Of course if I would do the upgrade now (a week later) I would likely go the Super Duper route.

 

You mean like booting off the DVD drive, and then OS X formats the new C: drive?

 

Upgraded my alum book with the scorpio black 7200, 320 gig. Easy install, if you have a decent torx set, less than five minutes.

Reinstalled osx off of install discs as mentioned above. No heat, vibration, noise, or battery drain to speak of. No noticeable difference from stock drive.

What I can notice is a difference in booting, shutting down, cold starting apps, and transferring files. It is noticeably faster, and probably made more of a difference than upgrading the ram to 4 gigs.

I would recommend the drive to others, but then my macbook wouldn't be as special anymore, so I won't. DON'T BUY THIS DRIVE!

 

Before you start the actual install, you may have to go into disk utility from the initial disc bootup screen and format the drive that way.

 

That was my problem. I got all the way to taking the drive out, only to find out that the torx tools I had were either just, and I mean JUST too small, or too big. So I ordered this T8 Torx off of Amazon. That's the right size, right?

Edit: So it turns out I had a set of Torx tools this whole entire time, but my size 8 one seems to be too big!
Somebody please tell me, because I'm really starting to get frustrated with all this: How the hell do you get the mounting brackets off on the new Macbooks?

 

Personally, I'd skip the 7200 RPM, 320GB hard drive and go straight to the 5400 RPM, 500 GB drive. Same performance, 50% more storage and same price/GB. Also avoid another upgrade later or at least put off the worrying about space.

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136314

 

just did it and it was pretty straight forward, and a lot faster than installing vista..

 

You need a T6 Torx.