New Laptop HDD

[SidewinderINC]

The HDD in my macbook is starting to make grinding noises when the laptop is sitting on the table - when held at an angle it seems to stop which is making me think that it's on the way out.

I'm going to buy a new one tonight, and think I know the one I'm after.

The WD Scorpio Black 320GB at £65

Not many places seem to stock it anymore, Scan don't have any, OcUK don't have any, Novatech are on "order on purchase", dabs don't have any.

Play.com have some, but I'm now wary as to why nobody else seems to have stock - are they being phased out?

I can get the Scorpio Blue 500GB for £5 cheaper, but not sure how much faster 7200rpm is in read/write than 5400rpm and whether it's worth the extra for the speed.

Any ideas?

[Jingo]

If 7200rpm is available at reasonable extra cost, I'd certainly recommend it. I found the difference to be staggering!

My laptop HDD is IDE and made the doughnut mistake of ordering SATA2 and wondered why the ports didn't 'look right' after opening! :p

Prices sound reasonable to me :)

[SidewinderINC]

hahaha, too late Jingo :p

Got a reply on OcUK saying that the 7200 drives aren't that much faster than the 5400 and if you can get stupid amounts more space for cheaper then it's worth it.

[Mark]

It used to be the case (I'm talking about a year ago) that 7200 laptop drives were very noticeably faster - though to be fair very few people hammer drives like I do. Comes with the job. WD rather closed the gap with their Green drives though so it's probably less of an issue than it was. It's also fair to say that 7200 drives generate more heat, which might be an issue if your laptop wasn't designed for them.

[Chuckles]

I'd say that 7200 are a fair bit quicker.

I had the stock 160GB 5400 RPM drive for my macbook and swapped it for a 320GB 7200 RPM one and definitely noticed a speed increase in the boot and loading some apps.

I have a feeling you are still on Tiger, but on Leopard/SL, Time Machine is awesome for this. You just switch the hard drives, boot from the CD (but not install) and select restore from Time Machine backup.

I think I got my 320GB from Dabs if that helps. It was about 6 months ago and I don't think it was over £70.

Edit : As you said Dabs were out of stock in your first post, I'm guessing it doesn't help :p

[Chuckles]

If you can stretch a bit, Scan have a 500GB 7200 one in stock for £83

http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/500-GB-Seagate-ST9500420AS-Momentus-72004-25-SATA-3Gb-s-7200rpm-16MB-Cache-11-ms-NCQ

[SidewinderINC]

Read my first line to Jingo ;)

I've already bought the 500gb WD green.

[Chuckles]

Screw it all and buy some new shiny shiny MBP :p

[SidewinderINC]

Screw it all and buy some new shiny shiny MBP :p

This one is plenty fast most of the time, think it just needs a reformat and a working hard drive :p

It's got another year/gen in it yet, then it'll get "dropped" down the stairs.

[Jingo]

BD > OCUK :p

hahaha = glad you're sorted and happy :)

[SidewinderINC]

Also when I'm done with this drive it'll be used as an archive, which 320gb wouldn't have been big enough for.

Stupid amounts of porn data that I've got kept.

[SidewinderINC]

Really thinking I should have gotten some kind of USB caddy for my other drive now, as I have no real way of getting all of the data onto the new drive. Hmmm. Gay.