MBP - no 7200rpm drive?

dubcat · 15 Sep 2009 at 13:12

Hi -

I am going to buy an MBP. I really want the 13" form factor since I will be lugging it about every day to customer meetings etc. However, I also want the fastest machine I can get as I will be plugging it in to a 24" widescreen monitor at home and hope to use the laptop for Adobe Premiere elements and Lightroom at home.

I was disappointed to see that I can not spec a 500gb 7200rpm hd like i can with the 15" model. Anyone know why?

Cheers,
Dub.

Adrianr · 15 Sep 2009 at 13:23

I know it's not a reason they don't offer the drive, but if you are after the fastest machine you can get have you considered an SSD? It's the first thing i'l be shoehorning into mine.

pingwing · 15 Sep 2009 at 13:39

I think the hard drive is a user serviceable part, so you could get away with upgrading it your self....

Adrianr · 15 Sep 2009 at 13:45

It is. You don't void your warranty installing your own hardrive or Ram. They provide instructions how to do it in the manual.

dubcat · 15 Sep 2009 at 14:34

Ahh ok - thanks for that.

Re. SSD. I thought about it - but i'd just rather have copious amounts of space instead and would like the fastest drive possible with that in mind.

I guess the thing to do is to buy the smallest disc option and then swap for a drive of my choice then. Thanks for that.

Caged · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:12

I just put a WD Scorpio Black in my base-spec 13" MBP (within an hour of getting it :eek:

). Thing flies now

dubcat · 15 Sep 2009 at 15:22

I was thinking of the Seagate Momentus 500GB... I think from reading various posts that this is what is used in the 15" 7200rpm upgrade version. However, I then also read that there had been some issues from people who bought the 7200rpm drives from apple - something to do with clicking noises and drives spinning up and down or something? Apparently it is something to do with an incompatibility with the g-shock system that is in those drives...

KrooKedUK · 15 Sep 2009 at 16:03

Caged said:
I just put a WD Scorpio Black in my base-spec 13" MBP (within an hour of getting it ). Thing flies now

I did the same to mine this morning and added more ram. Nice speed increase as you say

Adrianr · 15 Sep 2009 at 16:28

Caged said:
I just put a WD Scorpio Black in my base-spec 13" MBP (within an hour of getting it ). Thing flies now

Sorry to be a pedant but could you properly evaluate the speed within an hour? I can't say fresh out of the box my MBP felt slow at all, and with experience of numerous desktop hardrives all with incrementally better looking specifications than the last, I've never seen a massive difference unless using a Raptor or SSD. Do these Scorpio blacks have notably superior seek times?

Caged · 15 Sep 2009 at 20:19

It's not just seek times, large file shifting etc is greatly improved (so Time Machine backups/restores etc). The hard drive is still the biggest bottleneck in all but the slowest systems, so it makes sense to attack that first. The Scorpio Blacks are incredibly good drives.

Cybertronic · 15 Sep 2009 at 21:36

dubcat said:
I was thinking of the Seagate Momentus 500GB... I think from reading various posts that this is what is used in the 15" 7200rpm upgrade version. However, I then also read that there had been some issues from people who bought the 7200rpm drives from apple - something to do with clicking noises and drives spinning up and down or something? Apparently it is something to do with an incompatibility with the g-shock system that is in those drives...

This problem has been fixed in a recent firmware update which can be found in 'Software Update' if your Mac is eligible for the update.

dubcat · 15 Sep 2009 at 21:54

Cybertronic said:
This problem has been fixed in a recent firmware update which can be found in 'Software Update' if your Mac is eligible for the update.

Thats really good to know. Thanks very much.

dubcat · 16 Sep 2009 at 00:37

Seems several people have gone for the WD Scorpio Black. Can I ask why you went for this rather than the Seagate Momentus which is what Apple themselves use for a 7200rpm drive?

Caged · 16 Sep 2009 at 00:48

Because I found it cheap and I've always been fond of WD drives.

Cybertronic · 16 Sep 2009 at 02:47

At the time I was looking for a 320GB 7200RPM hard drive, the WD Scorpio Black mostly produced the best benchmark scores which also included the Seagate Momentus.

MacRS4 · 16 Sep 2009 at 10:06

The 7200RPM drives are faster, but not massively so. The difference between the 7200 and a decent SSD are night and day:

As to needing copious amounts of storage, I've gone for a bit of a hybrid. I have a 128Gb SSD for boot, apps and stuff I want performance on, and then a second 500Gb Seagate Momentus installed in where the DVD drive is:

http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/9/1_Second_Hard_Disk_into_a_Macbook_Pro_Unibody.html