What's the Best, Reliable Hard Drive for a Macbook

mini066 · Jul 5, 2008

Hello,

Recently, my Macbook's internal hard drive suddenly gave out. According to the Apple Genius, there was no user-error, the HD just...failed. He offered to replace the hard drive for free, but I'd have to give my existing one to Apple for recycling. There was a lot of data on there I wanted to keep, so I declined, and decided to try and have the data recovered.

But now, I need a new HD. What's the best, reliable, high quality brand to buy? Something that has a great record for making top-of-the-notch HDs that rarely ever fails...for no reason? I'm not really concerned with the amount of hard drive space, just....quality. I just don't trust the Apple HD anymore. I'm still numb in shock that, despite all my care, despite the Macbook looking nearly brand new a year later, the Macbook just...went out. :'(

Thanks

mrplow · Jul 6, 2008

There are no absolutes when it comes to mechanical reliability. Obviously some are better than others but even the best mechanical manufacturers see failures in their products.

In the case of HDD all you can do is make an informed choice and keep some redundancy in the form of a data backup. That way failure becomes an inconvenience not a disaster of lost data.

For my money the most reliable 2.5" sata HDDs are made by Western Digital. It's the brand I've used for several laptop and my macbook upgrade. Never had a single problem.

However, you'll no doubt get differing opinions from mine that'll be no better or worse. But it's WD for me.

I have had issues with Samsung and IBM Hitachi drives in the past but no current knowledge of their 2.5" range.

Hopefully you'll get a few more posts to give you a balanced view.

mrplow

wytwolf · Jul 6, 2008

mrplow said:
There are no absolutes when it comes to mechanical reliability. Obviously some are better than others but even the best mechanical manufacturers see failures in their products.

In the case of HDD all you can do is make an informed choice and keep some redundancy in the form of a data backup. That way failure becomes an inconvenience not a disaster of lost data.

For my money the most reliable 2.5" sata HDDs are made by Western Digital. It's the brand I've used for several laptop and my macbook upgrade. Never had a single problem.

However, you'll no doubt get differing opinions from mine that'll be no better or worse. But it's WD for me.

I have had issues with Samsung and IBM Hitachi drives in the past but no current knowledge of their 2.5" range.

Hopefully you'll get a few more posts to give you a balanced view.

mrplow

Same here. I've never had a WD drive fall on me. I've had one maxtor die, but that was it. Right now I have a Western Digital 320GB passport drive in my macbook. It was the same price as a 250 internal laptop drive, so i bought the 320 took it out of the enclosure. Then it's just a simple swap.

mini066 · Jul 9, 2008

Thanks for the input, Western Digital seems to be known for its quality. I'm probably going to pick up this one from newegg:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136278

7200 RPM should increase the processing speed a bit. What do you think?

Dysfunction · Jul 9, 2008

I believe that you'll find MTBF rates of consumer drives to be similar. Basically, once you're into a reputable manufacturer (Hitachi, Seagate, Western Digital, etc) they have about the same probability of failure.

Anecdotaly I can state that I've seen drives from every manufacturer fail.

bryphotoguy · Jul 9, 2008

Apple doesn't make HD's btw. The HD was made by any one of the big companies. I like Western Digital because I've never had a problem but Seagate makes faster drives so I might switch to them. No one manufacturer makes more reliable drives than another.

INTELligent · Jul 9, 2008

I've used Western Digital, Seagate and Maxtor... Maxtor being by far the worst... I've had three fail

WD seems to be louder than a Seagate drive... Since you're going for a notebook drive, I would suggest a Seagate.

djmuggs · Jul 11, 2008

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/WD1600BEVS/

goood site to buy from

cwa107 · Jul 11, 2008

The way I see it, most hard drives these days are very similar in terms of performance. A notebook is a harsh environment for a hard drive, so you may as well go with the one with the longest warranty. That's why I'm hooked on Seagate drives - they have the longest warranty at 5 years. Chances are you'll be done with your computer before the warranty is out.

macwannabe · Jul 11, 2008

everyone has there own opinions