Hard Drive Upgrade

Hello, I am thinking of upgrading the HDD on MacBook Pro 13".

Current Specs are:

Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02:
Capacity: 250.06 GB (250,059,350,016 bytes)
Model: Hitachi HTS545025B9SA02
Rotational Rate: 5400

I looking for 500 Gb HDD. Would the following from Newegg be ok:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...E&N=2010150380 50001984 1309740009&name=500GB

Can I choose the one with RPM 7200? Thanks for your help.

rgs, EmmaK

 

Yes. That one should work.

 

You can choose either 5400 or 7200, depending on your personal preference.

 

will the 7200 significantly drain the battery power? how much will be the performance gain with 7200 compared to 5400/

thanks - Emma

 

Not much, the performance level between the drives at those capacities (500GB+) are pretty close. I do recommend the 640GB WD, it's currently the fastest drive at the moment. Going 7200RPM usually increases temperatures and noise, so I would go 5400RPM since the MBPs are relatively quiet machines and you'll definitely notice the added noise with a 7200RPM drive compared to the older Hitachi. If you're you are going for 500GB capacity, then the Hitacti 5K500 would be an excellent choice; with power, speed and performance.

As for battery, 7200s do consume more energy, but that depends on the brand/manufactuer and model of the drive. But quite honestly the differences are quite small(your talking at about 0.2v-0.5v difference in draw power at most) so I don't think you would notice anything significant.

 

D3X .. thanks for your informative response. Is there any 640Gig operating @ 5400 that you can recommend ?

Do you still live in Toronto ... I lived there for about 12 yrs @ U of T. Still visit about 2x/year.

rgds, EmmaK

 

No prob EmmaK, there's really only 2 available 640GB drives at this present moment and only come in 5400RPM. Hitachi has yet to release there answer with a 640GB drive, given their track record, Hitachi's come out later but usually ontop.

Anyway, there is the Seagate Momentus 640GB ST9640322AS, which was the first 640GB Notebook drive, and then there is the Western Digital 640GB Scorpio Blue. There has been a number of benchmarks on this forum.

Although these are from the PC, the performance should translate directly to OS X. BTW, Take these benches as a grain of salt, as these are both not on the same computer and could be other factors like operating system, processor speed, and task usage.




As you can see the performance between them is almost the same, WD has lower CPU usage(but this could be that the user with the Seagate has some tasks open), Higher Burst rate and a lower Access Time. The momentus has an overall better transfer rate. But the benches vary from computer to computer slightly....

Personally I've had more WD drives over Seagate thoughout my computing experience. Seagate hasn't been too good to me with higher failure rate, so in this case I would likely go WD, but if I had a choice, I would go Hitachi over both of these any day.

Yep, work and live in Toronto. Grew up here so it's basically my home...