MBP 13" HDD upgrade options?

[Seydurin]

I have a MBP 13" with a 250gb hdd, and I have been contemplating an hdd upgrade for a while now, mainly just to have more space for stuff. But I also would like the hard drive to be energy efficient - definitely not be worse than the stock trive, but maybe improve battery life a little. And if I can have my cake and eat it too, I would like a slight speed boost also (definitely not the opposite).


I don't know how the stock drives fare against the newer ones on the market, but to sum it up I would like a drive that:

Is at least (around) twice as big
Is at least as energy efficient, preferably better
Is a little faster

I've been trying to research it on my own, but I just ended up feeling like there was such a cacophony of drives out there, and I couldn't always find all the information I wanted, so does anyone know what drive I'm looking for? (BTW a 500+gb SSD is definitely out of my pricerange lol)

 

[CrimsonRequiem]

Where have you been doing your research on HDDs? I like tom's hardware myself. The site pretty much has benchmarks for pretty much anything you can think of.

 

[Seydurin]

Yeah Tom's hardware is one of the sites I've been browsing. but to be honest I wasn't really able to decipher all the data from the benchmarks and stuff too well. I mean, there's maybe like 50 drives and 50 tests that I don't fully understand. I felt overwhelmed by it all, which is why I came here hoping someone had been in my position or just could help me

 

[6string]

Faster means more energy and less battery life. This is just the way it is.... so, as far as a really good, fast, quiet, and energy efficient drive that's twice the size of yours, for a really good price, this is a really good choice.
Newegg.com - HITACHI Travelstar 7K500 HD20500 IDK/7K 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive

 

[Seydurin]

thanks man! Yeah that one actually looks great. BTW is it true that macbooks cant use western digital drives because of some issue with the freefall sensor? Like this one Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD5000BEKT 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive for example?

 

[6string]

These Macs have their own sudden motion sensors, and not in all cases, but for some people, there has been conflict with certain WD HDs with built in motion sensors, but not in all cases.
You can disable Apple's sudden motion sensor... see Apple Portables: Advanced tips for Sudden Motion Sensor but I recommend against this.
The drive I suggested you won't have to worry about this anyway

 

[Seydurin]

alright, thanks for helping me out man!