Good performing platter drive with the lowest power consumption

After much debate, I've decided to bite the bullet and go for an SSD/HDD Optibay/Data Doubler solution for my MacBook Pro. Right now, my machine has an "Apple-branded" Hitachi 7K750 7200 RPM drive. I'm going to keep it as a spare in case of a system failure. As such, I'm looking for a platter-based storage drive but would like one that offers solid performance with the lowest power consumption. Since it's a storage drive, 5400 RPM should work. I'd like to stay in the 750 GB range, but if there's a smaller or larger drive with lower power requirements, I'm more than willing to consider it.

 

To be honest, if power is the only reason for you to change, you are going to see barely a few minutes of additional battery time at the most. So there is no point in trying to find one with the lowest battery life. The Seagate Momentus XT series are really good so if you want to purchase a HDD, I'd suggest those.

 

The XT only comes into its own when doing the same tasks repeatedly and is of no benefit when used for storage.

 

I'll second the 750GB XT Hybrid (the only choice for a mechanical HDD going into 2013...).

And no, there are benefits when used as a storage drive (those disk access patterns are repetitive too).

The biggest difference I found with HDD was only around 10 minutes (and the 7200RPM (newer) Hitachi 7K750 drive was better (vs. the WD 500GB Blue)...).

The best SSD, for lowest power consumption, is the Intel 160GB 320 Series SSD I had used in my U30Jc (I know; you want a large platter based drive...).


Buying a 5400 RPM drive today is not the best call imo; buy the latest technology you can (always) - and that is the XT Hybrid.

 

I disagree, for the cost, pure platter drives are still significantly cheaper for the capacity than the hybrid drive. For storage, I haven't found much difference when using my hybrid (1st generation) vs. a 5400RPM drive. What benefits have you noticed?

 

Vs. a 5400 RPM drive? Lol...

At least 40 to 60% faster transferring files...

If we really didn't care about performance but wanted the best reliability with the most capacity for the least money, then I would be buying the 1TB Hitachi instead.

See:
Hitachi 1TB Travelstar 5K1000 SATA III 2.5in HDD w/ 8MB Cache at Memory Express


or in the US,

See:
Amazon.com: HGST Travelstar 2.5-Inch 1TB 5400RPM SATA 6Gbps 8MB Cache Internal Hard Drive (0J22413) (HTS541010A9E680): Computers & Accessories

 

About OPs concern, I am not sure what you meant by "The hybrid drives are not good storage drives". They are no different from regular drives except that they use a flash cache. If you do not use the same data again and again, it will still act as a regular "good" storage drive. A HDD is probably the LAST thing you should be considering (may be just ahead of a WiFi card) for saving power. Firstly, the HDD turns off when you are not using it. If you are using it continuously such as when watching a movie or playing a game, the power supplied to the HDD is the least of your concerns when doing such intensive tasks.

 

That in the case of the 750 GB XT costs 40% more than a standard drive. If I were sticking with a single drive, I wouldn't hesitate to get the XT. But for my intended use, the extra money spent will yield no benefit.

 

A) Like tiller said, there is simply no way you'd not use the hybrid cache. It might not be worth the extra $$$ to you.

B) Either ways, you started this thread because you wanted a drive that saves power. Well, HDDs do not consume enough power to deserve this much consideration. Buy whichever one you wish/like.

 

WD SiliconEdge Blue are pretty light on power. It may not be as good as some of the newer SSD's, but still pretty light. It offered better battery life on a netbook I had versus a Kingston V+100 SSD.

I had a Hybrid drive (500GB) that I ended up using as my data drive after I replaced it with an SSD on my good ol' Sager NP8662 and didn't see any real benefit, nothing noticeable at least.

 

If you choose WD brand try stay out of anything beyond 500GB at the moment, the 640GB and 750GB uses firmware that stops the motor automatically when inactive for 10 few seconds. And spin up again when you need files on it. Powering the motor on and off not only slows the access time to files but also reduce the lifespan greatly. The best i've used so far are the WD500GB Blues. Is cheap, generic, fast in its category when compare to other platter drives, i got like 3 of them for storage for over 2.5 years no problem at all.

 

I was in the garage last night and found an old hard drive from my wife's laptop that I could swap into my MBP on an emergency basis if needed. As such, I'll just use my existing 7K750 as the storage drive. The power consumption probably doesn't make much of a difference, and the stock drive performs well while being remarkably quiet.

 

If you ever want to look up info for a lot of different drives and not just hear people's biased responses: 2012 Mobile HDD Charts

 

Hmm, wasn't aware of that. I mainly used 320GB and 500GB HDD's.

 

then get an ssd or keep the 7200rpm in the machine, your options are kind limited, unless they have WD green for laptops even the gained battery life wouldn't negate the performance loss.

 

Day late, dollar short, all that jazz...