Will the WD Scorpio WD3200BEVT work in a MacBook

http://www.colamco.com/store/product/detail.aspx?product=670943&Source=Froogle

This seems like an awesome deal, but I just wanted to confirm that this will fit in the MacBook. Anyone have any first hand experience with it?

I believe the factory HD is a 5400, so I shouldn't notice too much of a performance drop right?

Thanks

 

I have the WD2500BEVS, and that works just fine. I doubt the next one up in the range will be different.
With a bigger HD you will notice a performance boost with your Mac, as seek times will drop as more data will be located on each disk, decreasing the amount of time the HD has to swap disks.

 

well, one thing that might be a problem is that most laptop are designed for sata 150, not sata 300 like the one above. i don't know if that will make a difference.

you certainly will not get a performance drop. i would assume that a 320 gb hd should function around the levels of a 200 gb 7200rpm drive.

 

Not even close.

 

Not even close to what? Some say there is barely any difference between the 200gb 7k200 and the WD 250gb... I'm sure the 320gb will preform even better, cause of the higher density's!

 

are you talkiing about speeds? when i compared the hdtune of the 320 gb samsung to the hitachi 200 gb 7200rpm, i get the following:

samsung 320gb 5400rpm:
min/max/average transfer rate = 33/60.2/52.3 mb/s
access time = 18.0 ms
burst rate = 62.0 mb/s

hitachi 200gb 7200rpm:
min/max/average transfer rate = 32.6/66.4/53.4 mb/s
access time = 15.3 ms
burst rate = 47.5 mb/s

all in all most things are very similar except for burst rate.

250 gb 5400 rpm perform similarly to 160gb 7200rpm hds, not 200gb 7200rpm hds. at least according to hdtune.

 

Can someone explain if this will be an issue for me with a MacBook (4 months old)?

Also, if I have an external HD, can I make an image of my MacBook HD and then just move it over to the new one? Is this easily done?

Thanks again.

 

i was thinking the easyest way is use time machine and than recover it on the new hd

 

i want to say that it shouldn't pose a problem, considering not many notebooks would be able to support sata 300, so i doubt they would make a notebook hd that would exclude almost all currently made notebooks. there are others who have the samsung 320gb, but i don't know if those have sata 300 or if they are sata 150.

unfortunately, i only know how to upgrade hds for pcs, not macs.

 

SATA 300 is backwards compatible with SATA 150 right? Unless things have changed since I last checked.

 

that's what i thought, but wasn't 100% sure.

 

Is anyone positive on this?

 

I am positive that SATA300 is backwards compatible with SATA150.

 

I just found the following review on http://applejac.typepad.com/ not quite half way down the page.

 

i've had good luck with Super Duper

 

The 300 will work.
You can do the image with either Super Duper, or Time Machine if you have Leopard.

 

sata 300 drives ARE ALL backwards compatible, so no, no issues. They will just run @ 150. a side note, if they run @ sata300, they use more power.

 

I have the WD3200BEVT currently running in my 2.2GHz Merom/SR MBP which technically supports SATA/150 interface with AHCI 1.1 features (from SATA/300) such as NCQ, etc. etc.

Works fine and just a bit nippier compared to the stock 120GB Fujitsu 5400rpm drive that I had.

And it's a bit warmer: ~40-42 deg. C
and just a bit noisier (spindle whirring noise) than my previous Fujitsu HD.

 

I've had this exact disk in my Macbook (august 2007) for about 5 weeks now and its been brilliant! Speed wise it fits somewhere between a 160gb 7200 and a 200gb 7200. Unlike the the above poster, I've had no noticably increase in noise.

I'd say - go for it! You'll love it