Good Hard-drive?

Is this a good hard drive? Click.

It works with my white MB, right? Since it's 2.5" ATA?

Also, is the 7200 worth it? Is the performance worth the slight decrease of battery life and possible heat and noise?

Thanks in advance.

Looks like a great deal! 7200 RPM will give you a performance increase and no, it won't make it significantly hotter or worse battery life. Most of the power used by a hard drive is expended just to spin it up and spin it down.

I think you have the right idea to upgrade your drive. However, having worked in this industry(HDD) for the last 12 years, I would go for a Seagate drive of some sort. Comparable cost but far more reliable. One note on battery usage, when the drive spins up is when you will have the most current. You'll hear the heads come off the ramp and perform a seek. Powering down uses no power whatsoever. The system is using the residual force of the drive spinning down to park the heads and also for braking.

HTH,
RGS

Yes, a 7200 rpm drive is worth it. My boot time was decreased by 1/2 from the factory drive. Noticeable improvement in app launch speeds also.

I would also suggest a Seagate as first choice and WD 2nd. Got a WD myself when the 320's first came out as the Seagate's were just not available at the time. Seagate has a 5 yr warranty and some WD's are also. Can tell you, this WD is virtually silent. It's much quieter than the original drive.

I'm surprised. I always heard that Seagates had a lot of firmware problems; and just problems in themselves. The warranty's nice though, I'll admit.

I recently saw a review of fast notebook hard drives. Check it out:

Seagate Momentus 7200.4 vs other notebook drives

Looks like the one you picked is the second fastest. By far the fastest, though, is that new Seagate Momentus 7200.4 500GB. However, it probably costs a lot more. I'm seeing prices around $130 and up for it.

Personally, I've got nothing against Hitachi. If you buy from them, Western Digital, Seagate, or Samsung, you're probably fine. Given how cheap that Hitachi is (and how fast it is), I think it has to be the best deal out there.

Regarding Seagate and firmware problems, that was just one model of drive, the 7200.11 3.5" desktop hard drive. And I think it was only the 1 TB version. Either way, they certainly haven't "always" had firmware problems, it's just a recent thing. I don't think it ought to ruin their reputation as a drive maker any more than Hitachi's Deskstar 75GXP fiasco. Just avoid the bad models and you'll be fine.

revel said:

I'm surprised. I always heard that Seagates had a lot of firmware problems; and just problems in themselves. The warranty's nice though, I'll admit.

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I administer a network of over a thousand computers, approximately 20% of them are notebooks. Of all the hard drives that I see fail, Seagates tend to be the least common. More common are Toshiba, Hitachi and Fujitsu (in that order). Although we don't have any Samsung drives in our Dells at work, I do see a very high failure rate on Samsungs in my side-jobs.

I have yet to see a Western Digital drive ever fail in a notebook. I have seen one or two Seagates, but they're usually very good about replacing them under warranty.

I have a Seagate ST9320421ASG in my MacBook Pro, which replaced a Fujitsu 200GB unit that shipped with it from the factory. I just didn't feel comfortable storing my data on it. So far, the Seagate has been flawless and is very fast and quiet. I would recommend that unit to anyone.

I've heard very little good about Fujitsu laptop drives. I remember getting one as an upgrade for an old PowerBook G3 I once owned. Loud as heck, slow as THAT PLACE YOU GO WHEN YOU DON'T BELIEVE IN GOSH, and eventually it started clicking and died.

Also, not to contradict you or anything, but I think it's possible the reason you haven't seen any dead Western Digitals is because they didn't really start making notebook drives until recently (or at least their notebook drives didn't become popular until recently). What sticks out to me in your observations are that Toshiba, Hitachi, and Fujitsu were the three major laptop hard drive manufacturers several years ago, before Toshiba and Fujitsu started to fade and the desktop hard drive makers (Seagate and WD) took over. So it's always possible that it seems higher just because of sampling.

EDIT: Apparently, H-E-double hockey sticks is wordfiltered! Replaced with more appropriate terms

I agree that my experience is anecdotal, but its the only gauge I have when forming opinions about products - and I'm sure you'll agree that I have a significant sampling of machines compared to the average enthusiast to form that opinion.

I have personally never seen a Samsung, Toshiba or Fujitsu drive that didn't fail within 3 years in either my professional or personal experience.

cwa107 said:

I agree that my experience is anecdotal, but its the only gauge I have when forming opinions about products - and I'm sure you'll agree that I have a significant sampling of machines compared to the average enthusiast to form that opinion.

I have personally never seen a Samsung, Toshiba or Fujitsu drive that didn't fail within 3 years in either my professional or personal experience.

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Oh, absolutely. With hard drives especially, it's practically impossible to get cold, hard evidence of something. But you can still analyze trends if you've had lots of exposure like you have.

That last statistic you cite is especially troubling - it's one thing to see a few more drives of one brand fail than another, but when they NEVER last more than three years (not ONE???), that's cause for MAJOR concern. I tend to stick to the Big Three myself: Seagate, WD, Hitachi.

It seems like there are a few differing opinions.

Is there any brand to avoid? I have held off purchasing so far, because the original drive mentioned was either written off as poor, or hailed as good. Should I search for a different drive in a different brand, such as Seagate?

revel said:

It seems like there are a few differing opinions.

Is there any brand to avoid? I have held off purchasing so far, because the original drive mentioned was either written off as poor, or hailed as good. Should I search for a different drive in a different brand, such as Seagate?

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As I said above, I would avoid Toshiba, Samsung and Fujitsu. Seagate and Western Digital are the best drives out there at the moment, in my opinion.

cwa107 said:

As I said above, I would avoid Toshiba, Samsung and Fujitsu. Seagate and Western Digital are the best drives out there at the moment, in my opinion.

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Thank you.

I hate to sound so needy--but is this one good? Click.

No, that's a 3.5" desktop hard drive. Western Digital's desktop HDs are part of the "Caviar" series, while their laptop drives are of the "Scorpio" series.

If you're browsing NewEgg, you have to select the 2.5" form factor (or just click on "Laptop hard drives" instead of "Internal hard drives").

Here's a good one: Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - Laptop Hard Drives

Ah, there we go! That one looks very nice.

I think I will order that one.

Thank you everyone!

Mama Luigi said:

No, that's a 3.5" desktop hard drive. Western Digital's desktop HDs are part of the "Caviar" series, while their laptop drives are of the "Scorpio" series.

If you're browsing NewEgg, you have to select the 2.5" form factor (or just click on "Laptop hard drives" instead of "Internal hard drives").

Here's a good one: Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache SATA 3.0Gb/s Notebook Hard Drive - Laptop Hard Drives

Click to expand...

I was looking at that one too when I was shopping. I opted for the Seagate of the same spec because the benchmarks were better. Unfortunately, NewEgg doesn't carry the ASG (shock protection) version of that drive, so I ended up paying $91 at mwave.com (and it took FOREVER to ship).

I put that WD drive in my MBP last year. It's a very quiet drive. And I didn't get it for $80 at that time. Shoulda waited.... Not