Hard Drive Question

I have a 17" end of life aluminum macbook pro that i bought about a month before the first unibodies came out. I was thinking about upgrading the hard drive in it to a 300GB 10,000 rpm sata 2 drive. Can the aluminum macbook pros support sata 2?

It will if you can find a 2.5" drive.

As far as I am aware, all the 10,000 rpm SATA drives are 3.5" and all the 2.5" 10,000rpm drives are SAS instead of SATA.

This is the hard drive that I'm referring to. Amazon says it's a 2.5" SATA ll drive, but it looks more like a desktop drive:

Amazon.com: Western Digital VelociRaptor 300 GB 2.5-Inch, 16 MB Cache, 10,000 RPM SATA II Bulk/OEM Hard Drive WD3000BLFS: Electronica Direct

The answer is - it wont work in a laptop for two reasons

1. it's thicker than a normal 2.5" drive - it's 12mm instead of 9.5 and
2. it runs on 12V not the 5V that is found in you laptop/mac

hope that helps

That's just flat out a 3.5" drive - Here's the WD spec sheet for the model number they're listing. Either the description or the model number is wrong. But as I said, not aware of any 10,000 rpm 2.5" drives on the market.

The 2.5" is designed as a drive for servers, or can be enclosed in a 3.5" case for desktop units. As noted previously it won't work for laptops for a number of reasons.

@ Chud you are correct ....

@ bobtomay this drive IS available as a 2.5" form factor, but as I noted above it requires 12V and the not 5V laptops deliver .... http://www.wdc.com/wdproducts/library/SpecSheet/ENG/2879-701282.pdf