Macbook Pro (mid2009) upgraded to 500gb 7200RPM

This was a "no brainer"! Got this Hitachi hard drive at Fry's for $63.99 yesterday. Turns out that this HDD is the same brand and line as my stock 250gb, 5400RPM HDD in my Macbook Pro (mid2009) Unibody 15" 2.53, 4gb RAM.

Took out the 250, put in the 500, pressed power button, inserted OSX Snow Leopard disk while pressing 'C' at start up to boot from DVD, installed OSX, backed up from Time Machine and one hour later it was complete!

This was so easy its stupid!

I cannot feel or hear ANY difference from my stock HDD with this new 7200RPM hard drive and the computer is much snappier and starts up way faster. Seems to run about 10-15 degrees cooler on average as well.

I also cannot see much of a change in battery drain, although I have not rigorously tested that. Played with it last night and battery life was showing 5 hours or so.

PS: Some reviews claim that this is a 5400RPM drive in a 7200RPM box. I confirmed before purchase as listed 7200RPM on the hard drive itself and then double checked once installed; sure enough, this is a 7200RPM drive.

Here are the specs:

Model
Brand HITACHI
Series Travelstar 7K500
Model HD20500 IDK/7K
Packaging Retail
Performance
Interface SATA 3.0Gb/s
Capacity 500GB
Cache 16MB
Average Seek Time 12ms
Average Latency 4.2ms
RPM 7200 RPM
Physical Spec
Form Factor 2.5"
Manufacturer Warranty
Parts 3 years limited
Labor 3 years limited

I also did this upgrade this weekend. that plus 8gb ram makes my 15.4 pretty snappy as well =)

smithk2719 said:

I also did this upgrade this weekend. that plus 8gb ram makes my 15.4 pretty snappy as well =)

Click to expand...

That is my next upgrade (8gb RAM). Where did you get and is it really worth it in your opinion based on your increased performance?

Did you get the same Hitachi as I did? if so, do you see it the same way as me? Thanks

Thanks for the post roadracer... This is yet another good review on the Hitachi travelstar 7K500.
Cheers

RoadRacer,
I do ALOT of graphic design stuff, and I noticed one heck of a difference with it loading the processes and running photo filters, etc. I got it from OWC, they have really good customer service thanks to recommendations from the folks on here.

As far as the HD, yes, I've noticed a MUCH better performance difference. I.E. programs load even FASTER than they did with the 5400, although I'm sure a SSD would be even faster, this is the best I could come up with =)