MacBook Pro :: Scorpio Black 7.2k Faster Than Apple Seagate?
Dec 27, 2010
I just upgraded my friends Macbook Core 2 Duo to a 500GB Scorpio Black 7200 RPM. I used both XBench and AJA System Test to test hard drive performance and the Scorpio Black is definitely a faster drive. Using AJA system test, my Apple upgrade 7.2k Seagate drive is about 90 MB/s, while the Scorpio Black is around 105 MB/s Do these numbers justify an upgrade on my machine?
I want to upgrade the HDD in my Macbook Pro 2010 that currently has the stock 5400 250Gb drive in it. I am torn between the Momentus XT 500GB version, which is on sale at newegg right now for like 69, or going with the Scorpio Black. The differences that have me stuck is the 32 vs 16 cache, as well has the added speed of the seagate compared to the laundry list of problems people have reported with the XT. This will be my first HDD upgrade, and was looking for a little direction.
The thing is I dont really need 500gb of space. But from reviews Ive read that the 500gb is faster in some cases because of its higher platter density. Vibration /noise issues on the scorpio black 7200rpm sway me towards the scorpio blue 500gb as well.
Anyone had experience of either hard drive or both? (this will be for a 2.2Ghz MBP)
I'm aware that there are probably a dozen of these threads around in the forums, but if you have the time to tell me to search it up, then you have the time to answer my question. I am fully aware that this may void my MBP's warranty. I've decided to go with either the 500gb 5400rpm WD or Seagate. I'm just wondering which drive is more reliable and faster. Also, when installing the hard drive, is it ok to use a magnetic screw driver. Someone told me that there's an application called Superduper. It clones the original hard drive to make the upgrade easier. Is this a good application, or are there better options?
Three days ago a noisy fan brought me to the Genius Bar at my Apple store and when i got there the boot screen stayed gray and had a folder with a question mark in it. I have a late 2006 15" MPB running Snow Leopard 10.6.6. The guy told me i need a new hard drive so i went out and bought a Western Digital Scorpio Black 320g 7200 rpm SATA drive with a 16 mb cache. I replaced the old one with it, formated and installed OSX 10.6. I then used my time capsule to recover my last back up. I completely restored it. TWO DAYS OF PERFECT USE Now, i have the annoying fan noise again and my console is telling me that my HDD is having disk0-02 i/o errors. A LOT OF THEM. I've had at least 30 before noon today. Currently i am writing zeros to my drive and going to reinstall 10.6 WITHOUT using my time capsule restore (incase that has bad blocks written to it) Has any one heard of issues like this before with the particular HDD i bought? Two HDD failures two days apart seems fishy to me, what other issues should I be looking at? Is it possible i'm getting the i/o errors from a bad HDD ribbon cable to the logic board?
I was trying to upgrade my hard drive on my 2009 15" MBP 2.53GHz to a 7200RPM WD Scorpio Black 320GB BEKT I had. The WD HD had Leopard on it, but when I swap the HD into the machine and boot it up, the machine just hangs and the Apple sign won't even show up. Then I plug in the original HD to the machine as a external device, and boot up the machine with OPTION key to select OS. It properly show up the partition I had in the WD HD and the external HD. When I click boot from the WD HD, it hangs again. I then switch back the HD and use my original HD to reformat the OS partition I had in the WD HD, then swap the drive back again. I boot it up and enters the Snow Leopard installation disk and begin installation process. It took forever to finish the installation. On my original HD, it only took 21 min. to do a clean install. Now with the WD HD, it took 33 min. to get 10% of the installation process done. I then took out the WD HD and did a surface scan on it, but no bad sectors were found.
As I'm about to purchase my 2009 MBP unibody I want to upgrade the HDD myself as I've posted before on however will either of the WD scorpio black models work? it comes with or without the freefall sensor? will either be compatible? I read on some retail sites that one won't work with the computer.
Is this hard drive compatible with the new 2010 13" MacBook Pro? [URl] I plan on upgrading the stock 250GB hard drive in the base model 13" (2010 model).
i plan on upgrading my macbook pro 13" to a scorpio black. Should i get the version with or without the freefall sensor. I heard the sensor conflicts with the sensor built into the macbook pro and causes kernel panics.
I'm looking at a MBP on CL and the seller has swapped out the HD and put in this WD Scorpio 320gb 7200 rpm HD. I'm wondering if any of you have this hard drive and can confirm it's quality or claim that it is of poor quality?
I installed the hard drive with no problem and have experienced greater performance, no clicking nor vibration, and no freezeup or rainbow wheel. I also did a clean install of Snow Leopard. I did a PRAM reset at the beginning and calibrated my battery. However, now I noticed my battery is draining FAST, only lasting 2 hours. I looked a little online and discovered I may still need to reset the SMC (shift-control-option + power key), which I will do shortly. The battery lasted 6-7 hours before with my old hdd and is at 96% capacity.
Some of you might remember some of the posts I was making before. Well, I finally got the balls to order a Hitachi travelstar 500GB and 2 x 2GB ddr3 crucial ram. I first cloned over the hard drive from my black macbook to the Hitachi 500gb and installed it, along with the RAM what seemed to be flawlessly. Then booted from the newly cloned HD and everything seemed to perfect.
Everything is still fine but I can't help notice a difference. Someone please explain to me: how the hell could my new 13" MBP with 2GB MORE RAM, along with a 7200rpm HD have more "beachball" time than my black macbook?
It is very fast, it's just that there is a lot more freezing than with the black macbook and render times in FCP, PS etc don't seem noticeable.
Is there anything I can do via software updates, tweaks etc? Seems like I spent money for no reason. If the Unibody mBP was not sleeker, nicer to type with, LED screen and only cost me $700 mint, I would of definitely stuck with the black MB.
I didn't get ripped did I? $700 for the MBP 13" 2009 barely used snow leopard, then put $200 worth of upgrades into it?
I think I have a slight issue with my 7200rpm 500gb seagate drive. Once or twice every hour it seems to stop and start up again. Kinda klicks. It causes my computer to freeze for about 3 seconds. Whats causing it? Is it faulty? I should also mention that it didn't do this when i first got it. This is the model without the SMS.
Apple alongside its 2009 Back-to-School promotion on Wednesday also updated its entry-level white MacBook with a faster Intel processor, memory architecture and more hard disk space.
The update was announced quietly on the company's online store. For the same $999 Apple charged for the previous iteration of the white polycarbonate model, users get a 2.13GHz processor (up from 2.0GHz), a 160GB Serial ATA Drive @ 5400 rpm (up from 120GB), and 2GB 800MHz DDR2 SDRAM (up from 2GB 667MHz DDR2 SDRAM).The update is the second this year to the Cupertino-based company's entry-level notebook offering, the first of which arrived on January 21st when model was updated with NVIDIA's 9400M graphics architecture.
That update also saw the notebook gain the same 2.0GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor and 1,066MHz front-side bus employed by the mid-range aluminum unibody MacBook, as well as a doubling of its memory to 2GB. The new white MacBook is eligible for Apple's just-announced Back-to-School promo, which offers a $229 online rebate good for a free 8GB iPod touch to qualifying education individuals who purchase a qualifying Mac and the iPod on the same receipt before September 8th.
Do any of you have a sensor-type looking thing on your iMac's? It's on the black strip around the edges just above the black Apple Logo.See my picture for what it looks like (you'll have to look closely to see it):I'm interested to see your responses of what it could be/is. I've only had the machine for going on for 3 days now so I'm new to the whole iMac thing.
I have a MediaSmart Server due on Friday. I have an iMac, MBP, MB, and two PC's using an Apple Airport, how should I connect the MediaSmart Server EX485 to my airport, wired or wireless? Is there a performance difference between the two setups?
If wired offers best speed then I can easily do that as they will be near each other.
Parallels is expected to announce as early as Thursday the sixth major upgrade to its Windows virtualization software for Mac OS X, delivering a significant performance boost over its predecessor, as well as 80 other new features.
The new Parallels Desktop 6 for Mac has been shown on average to run 40 percent faster than last year's edition, according to people familiar with the matter. Those same people said that the upgrade -- expected to retail for the same $79.99 price as its predecessor -- will also feature Windows boot times that are roughly two times faster than version 3.1 of its primary competitor: VMWare Fusion.
VMware and Parallels have gone head to head in the virtualization market since 2008, when the Fusion product was first introduced. Parallels has existed since 2006, and both products retail for an identical prices. In a recent study, Parallels 5 was already found to be 30 percent faster on average than VMware Fusion 3.
Parallels 6 is also expected to showcase tighter integration with its users' natural environment, adopting support for the Mac OS X's keyboard shortcuts, Spotlight search engine, and Expose windows management features. Similarly, the upgrade will offer the option to automatically apply a Mac's parental controls to their corresponding Windows applications, according to those familiar with the product.
Another major focus for Parallels is said to be gaming. Version 6.0 will reportedly deliver up to two-fold performance improvements while adding support for Dolby 5.1 surround sound and better handling of 3G environments.
Parallels 6 will sport compatibility with an enhanced Parallels Mobile application that will offer users the option of remotely accessing their virtual machines on an iPad, as well as an iPhone or iPod touch.
Parallels Transporter, previously a standalone application that allowed users to migrate a virtual PC image to the Mac, will come built into the new release as well.
Earlier this week, Parallels Desktop 6 was spotted on the shelves of a Fry's Electronics store in California. The product has not yet been formally announced.[ View this article at AppleInsider.com ]
My father owns one of the original G5s, so its power pc not intel. Today while browsing an excel spreadsheet he says part of the screen turned black, then the monitor shut off, then the monitor came back on but not video. Mean while the fans started spinning out of control. Now when he tries to turn it on, he gets power, but all that happens is the fans spinning faster and faster and faster until he turns it off. No video or anything. Just speeding fans. He fears the CPUs died since they control the fans. Any suggestions? He also says the fans were spinning unusually fast these last few days.
Disk Utility in OS X gave me a Invalid key length after checking Catalog file, so I restarted to OS X Install DVD. It did the same thing on the OS X Install DVD. I went to Startup Disk, changed it back to the Mac OS X on Macintosh HD option - so I could go in and back my stuff up. It just goes to apple logo, does the spin thing at the bottom, and goes black. I can't even boot from DVD anymore.
With regular startup I get the flashing question mark and can hear the failed hard drive click and spin. After getting the DVD to boot in the drive (it doesn't suck it in right away), I get an apple logo and pinwheel like I should, but after about 30 seconds it goes to a black (blank) screen and the DVD spins down, but not all the way. The computer is still on, but nothing happens.
Oddities:
<>If I start it with an iMac 10.4 DVD I can boot to the install screen just fine, but can't install because it's an iMac DVD. I can erase and partition the drive fine (not the dead one, another one I have).
<>Safe mode boot does the same thing, but takes 20 times as long to boot
<>Retail OSX 10.4 DVD does not boot at all, but that one might be for PowerPC computers. I get the flashing question mark folder.
I was wondering if there is such a thing as a sticker to make the white glowing Apple, black. I want the Apple to match my iMac's. I don't want it to be completely black without the glowing light though.
I am planning to purchase a 13" Macbook Pro base model (first Mac by the way), and I want to upgrade from the stock 160Gb HDD.
I don't really see myself needing 500Gb, but I have read that a higher density drive outperforms a lower density drive. Newegg currently has the 500 WD Scorpio Blue drive listed for $30 over the 320Gb edition. Will I see significant performance increase by going with the 500Gb model instead of the 320Gb one?
What about power consumption? Is one better than the other?
I just got my new MBP and it has a Toshiba MK5055GSXF 500gb inside. My old one has a WD Scorpio Blue 500gb. I know the Scorpio Blue is supposed to be fast for a 5400rpm. Does anyone have an opinion whether it would be worth it to switch them? Is the WD superior?
I have a White MacBook version 3,1 made in 2008 w/ the intel ICH8-M AHCI SATA controller. Unfortunately this controller is only 1.5gb/sec. I picked up a WD7500BPVT, WD Scorpio Blue 750gb, with a spec of 3gb/sec. Western Digital tech support assured me it would step down to 1.5gb/sec, no jumpers needed (as it isn't configurable by a hardware jumper). So I install it in my MacBook, boot up from the Snow Leopard install disc but it doesn't see my fancy, schmancy 750gb drive. Is the drive not seen because of a compatibility issue w/ the SATA controller? If so, what is the largest capacity 9.5mm drive someone has installed in a MacBook w/ the intel ICH8-M AHCI SATA controller?
I am looking for advice on the wd5000bevt (500GB 5400rpm) Planning to get this as it supposedly has almost the same speed as a 320GB 7200rpm drive and doesnt come with the usual 7200rpm negetives (heat, vibrations and noise). Anyone with firsthand experience with this drive? It is quite popular so I am hoping I will find someone Also, I heard something about clashing motion sensor because the macbook already have one so you should avoid some drives. Does this drive have one? Is it compatible?
I just upgraded my hdd to a 500gb WD scorpio blue in my 2010 MBP 13". It seems to start and stop a lot more than the apple one (if that makes sense). and every now and then the computer seems to lag for 1-2 seconds when doing things like typing, scrolling, etc. I've tried searching and found other people have had similar problems with older MBPs and they talked about some EFI firmware or something. Does this apply to my MBP too? Or does anyone have any other suggestions of what I can do?