So I have my new MBP specced out ready for Jobbsy's announcement 26 Jan, principally including 7200 rpm drive - and now I find they're dodgy! I particularly wanted a fast drive for music production but I gather they're glitchy in a bad way. Are they all bad?
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I want to replace my 3 year old drives before it's too late.
I have about 200 gigs of data, split between a pair of Seagate Baracuda 7200rpm drives I bought 3 years ago.
I am thinking on going with a single 500 gig drive for my data, and I can't decide between a Caviar Black, or a Baracuda 7200.12.
I have read that the Caviar Black have incredible performance, , but only for the 1TB since it has 3 platters.
How do the 500gig models compare between WD and Seagate? I just don't have the need for more. My OS and Apps are on the SSD at 23 gigs, and all the rest of my work/personal files take up about 200 gigs.
Which is going to be better, the Black, or the Baracuda? 500 gig models only.
anyone heard? i thought they were supposed to be out by Q4 of 08 and today is the last day of 08
View 9 Replies View RelatedI've read all the horror stories about how the mid-09 MBP hard drive firmware update and non-Apple 7200 RPM HDDs don't get along. Most of these seem to be related to the use of a SATA 3.0 drive (which shouldn't matter, since mechanical hard drives can't even make use of the full SATA 1.5, but I digress).
I'm about to buy a new Mac, and, even though the Macbook, which doesn't seem to have these problems, would suit my needs just fine (my camcorder is USB and my digital cameras both use CF), I might spring for the MBP anyway (likely to get the additional 2" of screen space on the low-end 15", which has the closest resolution to what I am used to on my outgoing T60).
Obviously, I could pay Apple to upgrade to one of their 7200 RPM drives, assuming I get the 15". But that seems silly, since I can buy, for less than $100 (i.e., half the upgrade cost from Apple, plus I keep the old drive), a Hitachi Travelstar 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA 3.0 drive. My questions are:
1) Has anybody successfully upgraded to such a drive (or its 320 GB little brother, which is otherwise speced the same) in a mid-2009 MBP?
2) If so, did you have to downgrade the firmware as suggested in these forums?
3) If so, did you have to "tweak" the drive in any fashion to make it work?
Does anyone know what drives apple uses for their 7200RPM 500GB drives?
View 2 Replies View RelatedI have been reading about people taking a SSD drive for Boot and OS and using a second HD for their data using MCE's Optibay hard drive enclosure.
I would love to go this way but I can't justify spending all the cash on a SSD yet. Could I put in 2 500GB 7200 rpm drives and RAID 0 them? I know this wont be as fast as SSD but it should be faster than a single hard drive and hold a lot more storage for less $$$.
Ok dont know if i made a good choice because i just got to0 anxious and jumped on it. plus i had money burning holes in my pockets after selling off a lot of old gear. Heres the deal yo. maybe a long thread, sorry.
Before i get into the dual drive thing.
I am a photographer, i work on multi layer large psd files that get in the gig range sometime. I have an HD camcorder as well and want to start doing some video work. I doubt ill get into it much, but I WOULD LIKE TO AT LEAST VIEW AVCHD FILES OR AT LEAST CONVERT A 2 MINUTE VIDEO FASTER THAN 20 MINUTES. (i really dont know much about video, but i record 30fps.)
Anyways. I currently have the first macbook pro 17" 2.16ghz maxed ram 2gb ati radeon x1600 with 256ram and 100gb 7200 hd. Mac osx 10.4. I use it with external display to do all my editing. i keep all files on external 7200 firewire 800 drives.
So I decided to go with a refurbed macbook pro 13" 2.53ghz unibody with 4gb ram (8gb future upgrade), and the 9400m nvidia graphics and 5400 250gb hd.
And here is a list for my reasoning. (i already bought it)
-I am worried about running into snow leopard problems with my CS3 suite so this model runs 10.5 leopard. I hear theres really no problems with cs3 on it.
-i dont want to spend 800 bucks on the cs3 upgrade, for now. plus i cant afford that too.
-i had a budget of about $1200 max for the computer. other money going towards photo equipment upgrades.
-i got it from apple directly. i was looking at ebay forever and i could have gotten a better deal on a better computer, but i just worried about that, even though i have sold and bought lots of stuff from there.
-im getting kinda tired of lugging around a huge 17" laptop. (my backpack with camera gear ends up being over 80 pounds. haha, i know it wont do much, but still) I do like more desk room when im at my desk. it gets crowded with the macbook, display, external keyboard and pen tablet and speakers and printers.
-i am probably going to sell my 17" on ebay after i receive my new 13" and set it up. i could get up to $600 for it, it seems. its only going to bring me less money if i wait longer to sell it. (kinda sad that over 3 grand is only worth 600 bucks now)
So did i make a good choice? i mean it doesn't seem i could have done much better unless i went for a desktop or took a risk on ebay.
Ok now to the dual drive thing.
i dont like the idea of the 5400 hard drive in the new 13". so i want to upgrade it to a 7200. i came across those seagate momentus hybrid ssd drives 500gb at 7200. I will most likely get one of those.
then i came across the whole thing of changing out the optical drive with a second hardrive. then i was like why not put another one of those hybrid ssd momentus in there.
i remember working on the computers in college that had dual 500gb drives, and one was completely dedicated to scratch. maybe overkill, but that machine killed. of course it was a mac pro though or maybe it was a g5, but still.
when i got my 17" macbook pro, i used the optical drive for 3 days non stop importing cds into my first itunes library. then. i never used the optical drive again, ever. however if i order the dual drive thing from mec they give you a free external enclosure for the optidrive you remove.
what i am wondering is can the macbook pro 13" handle 2x 7200 drives. as in power and heat? I know people say they handle dual drives. but just wanting to make sure.
as topic states, what do you think the difference in power consumption between 5400rpm and 7200 rpm?
View 4 Replies View RelatedI recently picked up a couple of external drives, and decided to benchmark them to determine whether the interface and/or drive type made much of a difference. For those that don't want to read the details, here's the bottom line: If you're going to splurge on a FW800 interface, it's well worth fitting this with a 7200 rpm drive to maximize performance. Uncached sequential writes over FW800 were twice as fast on the 7200 rpm drive compared to the 5400 rpm. FW800 is a marked improvement over USB 2.0 as well. Full results are below. For background, when shopping for drives, I was interested in using the FW800 interface on the MBPs, for the simple reason it's rated almost twice as fast as USB 2.0. Some of the drives I was shopping for included 7200 rpm drives. My first thought was this was silly, since the interface limited the throughput to far-below the limits a 5400 rpm drive could produce, so why bother upgrading to 7200 rpm? Well, it turns out it does make a difference. I've got both a FW800 enclosure (G Drive Mini) and a USB 2.0 interface (Nexstar TX) as well as a 320GB 7200 rpm drive (Hitachi) and a 640GB 5400 rpm drive (Western Digital). So, I benchmarked both drives using both interfaces. Some interesting results! Turns out, the 7200 rpm drive does in fact dramatically improve performance in the FW800 interface. For sequential operations, Firewire has a dramatic improvement over USB 2.0; for random read/writes, drive speed seems to be a more important factor. And for large files, the combination of Firewire and 7200 rpm gives a pretty impressive throughput of almost 75MB/s. Full results are below. Note that the drive and interface are noted in the title bar for each drive.
View 18 Replies View RelatedI lean to the standard drive at 5400 rpm. Why? All my video editing is done with an external firewire drive, and I think the 7200 generates more heat than the 5400.
For web design I don't see how a 7200 speed is much of a benefit, considering the extra heat generated may negate the benefit of a faster drive. I think heat (and dust) is the bane of all electronics.
I'm fixing to order the 15" i7 and will use it for running Adobe CS5 web suite. Final Cut Pro for video- and will use a firewire drive.
I'm looking to upgrade my MPB 17 2.33 GHz model with one of the new 2.5 SATA 320G 7200 RPM drives from either Hitachi, Seagate or Western Digital.
View 5 Replies View RelatedFor not much extra (price wise), I can opt for the 7200 rpm hardrive.
Is it worth the upgrade? How much does the 7200 rpm drive affect battery life compared with 5200 rpm in the latest Macbook Pros?
I've heard manufacturers say the difference between the two doesn't in any way affect battery life.
I'm heading off to college in the fall of next year and I have a feeling I'll be buying a MacBook Pro; I'm already saving some cash for this purpose. My question is whether I should be getting a 128 Gb SSD or a 500 Gb 7200 RPM disc. Speed is the real issue as I don't expect to take up much more than 50 Gb. So, should I go SSD or not?
View 22 Replies View RelatedI am initially purchasing a new 15" Pro with the hope to eventually get a 160 GB Intel SSD for the Optical Drive. So until I do that, I will use the purchased drive for data and the bootable OS.
View 3 Replies View RelatedWhat I want to know is that if I replace my 160 GB 5400 RMP HDD with a 7200 RPM 500 GB HDD in my MacBook Pro 13' the noise level and vibration become much stronger ?
View 16 Replies View RelatedI know there is already a thread about which is better, but I figured itd be nice to see who ended up getting which. I ordered with a 7200, probably don't need it though.
Why did you choose the option you did? Do you think you'll need it? Do you notice the speed increase?
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Upgrading my 13" MBP hard drive with OWC's kit.
Should I get a 1TB @ 5400RPM or 500GB @ 7200RPM?
I'm guessing 1TB.
Also, is it safe to do the 8GB RAM kit?
I deal with video and motion graphics.
Just received the new Macbook Pro 17" with I7 option as well as the 7200rpm HD 500gb. The machine works great so far. However, there is a slight vibration I can feel on the aluminum in front of the keyboard and basically across the machine, though when I moved it from a glass table to a wooden desk it was much decreased. The machine is also much noisier than I thought it would be, though I did know when I went for the 7200 option that it might be noisier.
Is this normal because of the HD or I7 chip? I can return the machine and exchange it, but the anti-glare screen seems ok with no pixel problems, etc., so I don't want to look for trouble without a benefit.
Is it possible this is not the HD? (vibration and noise does seem to emanate from the left side-I believe it is a Seagate, ID starts with ST)
As a lot of people on these forums are, I am waiting for the next updated MacBook Pro. I want to get the fastest hard drive I can, but I want to ask the people who use the 7200 RPM HDDs if they can notice a difference, and if so how beneficial is it? Its really not a problem to pay the 250 for the 200GB 7200 option (and I do want to do that thru Apple because I want my hard drive under warranty) but I do recall hearing complaints that the 7200 RPM is louder, etc. So here is the basic question. How much faster is the 7200 and is it worth the upgrade? For background, I do Visual Effects/3D Animation. I use the Mac Pro for most of that and will sometimes use the MBP for that kind of work.
View 24 Replies View RelatedI just wanted to do a quick writeup of what I've learned from upgrading my 2006 White Macbook from a 60gb 5400 Seagate drive (came with it) to the 7200 RPM 320 GB Western Digital Scorpio Black.
First of all, there's some discussion of whether the new drive vibrates, and the answer is yes it does to some degree. The 5400 isn't even perceptible, but the Scorpio Black makes the entire machine feel more like a computer instead of just a paperweight. (if that makes sense) Finder seems to work a little quicker now and programs load faster. I think the 16MB cache helps a lot in this respect (vs. 8MB for most 5400 drives.)
My computer has Tiger and boot camp beta installed with a split drive between Windows and Mac. I realized that I could not really rescue the Windows partition using Tiger, but apparently this is possible with a program called winclone on a Leopard machine. So I'm going to put the old drive into an external usb case for when or if I need Windows down the road.
Here's what you need to do this:
1. An External USB drive bigger than your internal drive (or with more space than the stuff you want to keep). Mine is 160GB.
2. Tiny/Jeweler size Philips screwdriver
3. Size 8 Torx driver. This is smaller than most sets provide, so you will probably need to go to Sears or a good hardware store and pick up one of this size for about $4.
4. a coin
A. Connect the USB drive to your macbook. Open Disk Utility and make sure the drive is formatted GUID with OSX Filesystem (Journaled). If you have a Windows files system on your external drive, this WILL NOT WORK.
B. Download Carbon Copy Cloner. Start up the program and start a backup from your original hard drive over to the USB drive. You may get a couple of error messages, but they probably don't matter.
C. Reboot the computer and make sure you can boot into the USB drive. You do this by holding Option when the computer makes the startup sound.
D. If everything looks good on the USB drive, you can shut down the computer.
E. Remove the battery with the coin.
F. Take off the metal L-shaped thing that holds in the memory and the hard drive. You need to undo 3 little phillips screws.
G. Pull the white plastic strip to remove the hard drive. Need to be careful at this point to avoid any static discharges, so take at least one shoe off and make sure your foot is on the ground.
H. Use the size 8 Torx to remove the hard drive carriage. Replace the old drive with the new one. Put the old one into the static bag.
I. Put everything back together. Note: when replacing the L-bracket, you should use a small flat-head screwdriver to stuff the memory buffer material back into their slots. Start up the computer.
Should boot into OSX, but you may have to hold the option key to get it to boot up. I've had this problem, but I think I may not have used GUID to format the disk.
Bang for buck wise which has a better speed to price ratio? I'm not talking about benchmarks, I'm talking about noticeable performance. I heard some people say that 5400 drives are so fast nowadays that even 7200 drives can sometimes be slower. Is this true?
Also, if it's a 7200 drive, is it cheaper to BTO straight from Apple the 7200 drive? Rather than buy aftermarket? (bearing in mind that I don't need the space of the two drives, so if I buy aftermarket the old drive will end up being unused )
I'm trying to find out if this is the same seagate drive. I have searched around but could not find anywhere saying its a 7200.4.
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vs.
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It has a different number ST905003N3A1AS-RK I know RK means retail kit, but I just wanted to make sure it is the same drive before I go and buy it.
Is the Seagate (with built-in drop protection) the only option for a 500 Gb, 7200 rpm drive? I bought a 15" MBP a few weeks ago and opted for the 5400 rpm drive since I heard there were lots of problems with the 7200 rpm drive. I see Apple released a patch recently for the 7200 rpm drive, but it sounds as if it's not a 100% solution (Apple says it "reduces" the problem). Are there any 500 Gb, 7200 rpm drives that are recommended (and don't have redundant built-in drop protection)? I can tell my drive is a bottleneck.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI'm looking to buy a 7200 RPM drive but it has to be very quiet...as close to 5400RPM drives as possible. I bought a WD Scorpio Black but it sounded like a jet engine prepping for engines for takeoff and vibrated my whole unibody case which as you might imagine became jarring after a while
I'd get an SSD drive but the drive i see as a suitable replacement (256GB) costs �515 ($838) which is....just not gonna happen
Is a 7200 rpm HD in the macbook pro so much faster than the 5400 rpm?
And is it a lot nosier and more consuming? And what about the heating? Runs hotter or stays the same?
Wife needs a new computer and have decided to go MBP. I was set to order a 17 inch I7 with 7200 rpm hd but found out the local store has them in stock with the 5400 rpm HD.
View 7 Replies View RelatedI ordered one of these early last week from Tiger Direct, and since the whole world has ordered one as well, it's severely back ordered.But I have been getting concerned with all these reviews I am seeing, that it vibrates enough to be a sex toy. the 13" MBP apparently is nuts.. but maybe that was just his drive? I used a friends 13" Sony Vaio last night, and it felt like a jack hammer, and i was like "Please please please don't be like this"my MBP is 15" (see sig), the momentus is juts 7200 RPM right? not any more than another drive? what are your guys experience with 7200 RPM in MBP's (make sure you state your size)
View 15 Replies View RelatedI'm considering upgrading the stock 5400 RPM Hitachi drive in my macbook pro to the Seagate momentus XT (7200 RPM) hybrid drive. I'm curious about the experiences of those who may have done a similar upgrade:
1. Is there a noticeable difference in performance? I seem to do a lot of waiting for the HDD in my day to day usage and I suspect the increased spindle speed will be helpful.
2. Any noticeable tradeoff on battery life (>~10% or so)?
3. Should I expect an increase in heat or vibration?
Finally, for those using the momentus XT I've been reading about issues with the dreaded beachball waiting for the drive to spin up. This lag would obviously defeat the purpose of upgrading and I'd like to hear about any personal experiences in this regard with the drive.
i'm thinking of getting a macbook pro 15" 2.66ghz for use with logic pro mainly.
my question is really about heat.
if a 7200 rpm drive is going to heat up so much (especially when using intensive programs like logic) that it is bad for the disk would a 5400 be better all round?
obviously it would be slower but would it also last longer/ be more reliable?
...or would the difference in heat be negligible compared to the improved speed?
I'm thinking about upgrading my 5400 rpm hard drive. Is there a big difference in performance/battery life between 5400 and 7200 rpm?
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