New Hard Drive is Slow

[tbgiles]

I just replaced my stock 80gb in my macbook with a 160gb. The hard drive specs are essentially identical except for the extra space. The new 160 gb hd is extremely slow. Everytime I try to do something, I seem to get the spinning beach ball. I am not doing anything differently or running any different apps. I also don't notice any extra noise from the new hard drive. I was under the impression that having more free space on the hard drive will slightly improve the performance. Thanks for the help! I am fairly new to the mac family.
(just replaced our home computer with a 20" imac and lovin' it)

 

[CanadaRAM]

Boot from the OSX DVD and do a Disk Utility Repair Disk.
What did it report? The new drive may be defective.
Also open the machine back up and make sure all the connections are well seated.

Having more free space won't help performance unless you were literally out of space on the 80. The higher areal density of the 160 might help performance a bit. BUT, that is not your problem.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM.com