MBP - HDD upgrade

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grayskull

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#23060 16-Jun-2008 17:41

Am looking to upgrade my 160 GB HDD as its just no big enough to handle my needs, esp to put a Win XP partition on for bootcamp.

Any suggestions on drives 250 GB +, and where to get them from?
Have done a wee bit of a search but nothing fruitful so far.

cheers.

computeruser

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#138495 16-Jun-2008 18:27

Have a look at pricespy.co.nz in "hard drives".

grayskull

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#138529 16-Jun-2008 19:37

cool, cheers for that.

anyone any preference for one of the following?

Seagate Momentus 5400.5 notebook 320GB SATA $167 + GST
http://shop.digitalcity.co.nz/product_info.php?products_id=471

WESTERN DIGITAL SCORPIO 2.5 INCH 320GB 5400RPM 8MB CACHE SATA $170 + GST
http://pcpacific.net/product_info.php?products_id=4632

Samsung Notebook 320GB 2.5" SATA $208 incl GST
http://www.einfo.co.nz/shop/product_info.php?pName=samsung-notebook-320gb-25-sata-hard-drive

thanks

DonkeyKong

115 posts

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#138545 16-Jun-2008 20:28

Toshbuy.com have some good prices from what I have seen

mailmarshall

349 posts

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#138800 17-Jun-2008 19:19

Ummm might pay to check if the MBP HD is properiatory i.e not just any 2.5 drive will work.

I am sure this is the case but may have chnaged now..

gehenna

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#138803 17-Jun-2008 19:36

MacBook and MacBook Pro take a standard 2.5" SATA hard drive. Better to go for 5400RPM over 4200RPM though otherwise you're placing a bottleneck on your very fast laptop. 7200RPM would be the best option but the price is a premium.

From what I can tell, 7200RPM drives only go up to 200GB at the moment, but I didn't do a big search. I like Samsung Spinpoint drives because of the noise reduction they use. Ascent has some good deals on them at the moment.

grayskull

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#138838 17-Jun-2008 21:40

gehenna:
MacBook and MacBook Pro take a standard 2.5" SATA hard drive. Better to go for 5400RPM over 4200RPM though otherwise you're placing a bottleneck on your very fast laptop. 7200RPM would be the best option but the price is a premium.

From what I can tell, 7200RPM drives only go up to 200GB at the moment, but I didn't do a big search. I like Samsung Spinpoint drives because of the noise reduction they use. Ascent has some good deals on them at the moment.

cool, checked out Ascent, found this Samsung

http://www.ascent.co.nz/productspecification.aspx?ItemID=364544
Samsung Spinpoint M5 HM320JI Hard Disk Drive, 320GB, 5400rpm, 8192KB Cache, SATA-1 - $231 incl GST
but it says;
Max. 160GB formatted capacity per disk
can anyone clarify this for me? on face value it seems to me that you have to partition into 2 seperate of 160 GB each, but surely that cant be right?

jmcollis

36 posts

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#139093 18-Jun-2008 23:57

Have a WD WD3200BEVT i.e. 320GB 5400rpm in a MBP. Runs fine. I see that recently WD released a 7200 model. Haven't seen anyone selling it though.

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Trade NZ and US shares and funds with Sharesies (affiliate link).

Mark

1653 posts

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#139130 19-Jun-2008 10:10

Hiya,

Just some things to be aware of if you decide to upgrade your Macbook.

1) It doesn;t look fun getting at the hard disk, so be careful :-)

2) Get a 7200rpm disk if you can .. heat increases a little bit and battery life probably goes down, but you get significant performance increases .. my Mac Mini got a big boost when I replaced the 5400rpm drive,

You asked a Q about the statement of 160GB per disk ? ... they probably mean the drive has two disk platters inside it each of 160gb giving 320gb in total .. don;t worry you;d just see 320gb when it's plugged into a computer.

Regards

Mark

grayskull

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#139429 20-Jun-2008 17:09

Mark: Hiya,

Just some things to be aware of if you decide to upgrade your Macbook.

1) It doesn;t look fun getting at the hard disk, so be careful :-)

2) Get a 7200rpm disk if you can .. heat increases a little bit and battery life probably goes down, but you get significant performance increases .. my Mac Mini got a big boost when I replaced the 5400rpm drive,

You asked a Q about the statement of 160GB per disk ? ... they probably mean the drive has two disk platters inside it each of 160gb giving 320gb in total .. don;t worry you;d just see 320gb when it's plugged into a computer.

Regards

Mark

thanks for the info.

1) my brother upgraded my HDD in my last MBP, but he's still over in the UK so going to have to tackle it entirely myself, not looking forward to it.

2) yeah 7200 would be nice, will see if i can track one down at a resonable price otherwise will go for one of the suggestions here.

cheers