Hard drive upgrade MBP

steveo · 26 Sep 2010 at 11:40

when i got my 13inch MBP back in 2009 i thought that the 250gb HD would be enough for a laptop but it would seem i was wrong my aperture library alone is getting a bit porky, i need to upgrade the hard to the biggest it can take, i believe am restricted by the height of the drive, so which ones will fit the bigger the better please

MacRS4 · 26 Sep 2010 at 12:21

13s only take 9mm drives - you can't fit the 1Tb 12.5mm units you see flying about.

I had a 640Gb unit - Western Digital Scorpio Blue - in my 15" and it was great. Now I've swapped in a 1Tb unit.

The 640 will work just fine IMO.

steveo · 26 Sep 2010 at 12:34

ahh new it was a height restriction just couldnt remember what the number was so i should be ok with the 750gb scorpio blue as well as the 640gb then as both are 9.5mm in height correct ??? would i see much speed difference if i went for a 7200rpm wonder how much my battery would drop

OzyOly · 26 Sep 2010 at 12:51

From what I've heard the scorpio blue 5400rpm HDs give the 7200rmps a run for their money in terms of speed.

MacRS4 · 26 Sep 2010 at 13:07

Just published something about this here: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2010/9/26_Apple_Macbook_Pro_&_Hard_Disk_Space.html

9mm units will fit the 13s. As for 7200rpm - I haven't seen a 640Gb or 750Gb 7200RPM unit around? Not saying there aren't any of course.

In terms of power difference - I didn't notice any difference when I had 7200s in place. I did however notice marginal performance increases.

In fact, you can see the examples in my earlier articles here: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/6/13_Macbook_Pro_Hard_Disk_Upgrade.html#

That has videos comparing 5400 to 7200.

Rich · 26 Sep 2010 at 13:20

I was looking at the Hybrid Seagate for this very task. The one with 4Gb of NAND on board. Just need to double check the dimensions of it.

AbsenceJam · 26 Sep 2010 at 18:28

There's some misinformation here, 12.5mm drives will fit the 13" unibody MB/MBP. None of the 12.5mm drives are really performers though.
If you want performance the Momentus XT with the hybrid SSD is best. Of the normal 7200rpm drives there are the Hitachi 7K500 (which I can advocate myself) and WD have a 500GB Scorpio Black out now. Seagate have recently released the Momentus 7200.5 series but no tests about yet.