1tb Hard Drive in MBP

I have been searching around and have found mixed reviews on wether or not the new 1tb 12.5mm laptop drives will fit in my MBP. I have the Unibody 15.4" 2.66gHz w/ express card slot and removable battery. I have been hearing that the models with the removable batteries have enough clearance for the thicker drives. I was just trying to find if anyone has had success with this setup.

I have yet to see any end users attempt it and leave that size drive in their Mac notebook. Even the ones I've read that say it will fit, report deciding on removing it and going back to the standard height drive.

I have recently starting editing a lot of HD footage so I really can use the large storage ability. I have also been looking into getting a esata storage setup to edit off of as well, but I travel a lot and need to be able to be editing on the go and lugging a large drive setup around wouldnt be a good thing. Why did the people you read about change their minds on the larger drives? I had heard some rumblings of performance issues, but nothing really convincing.

Because it really does not fit in the space.

If you're looking for max size, at this time I'd have to recommend the WD Blue at 750GB. This one will fit in your notebook.

Sooner or later they'll get 333GB per platter for a 2.5" drive and then we'll see the 1TB drives in the 9.5mm height.

Just 3 years ago we were whooping it up when the new 320GB drives first came out.

xcaliber said:

Why did the people you read about change their minds on the larger drives?

Click to expand...

I will hazard a guess that it would have been excess vibration,heat and noise.
Vibration and noise due to the tight fit against the body, and heat due to no room for airflow to help the heat dissipate with this tight fit!
I like to think that the engineers knew what they were doing when designing slim notebooks and opting for the 9.5mm form factor.

Edit:
I recall hearing of trackpad issues due to pressure against the uppercase.

If you are editing video - especially HD video even the 750 GB won't do. That is a 5400 RPM drive. Check out the hardware requirements of the software you use. This is from Adobe Premiere
7200 RPM hard drive for editing compressed video formats; RAID 0 for uncompressed
system requirements | Adobe Premiere Pro CS5

Consider setting up scratch disks with the space you need. I have an external USB and a Express Card - 32GB SSD I use when editing HD.
Google Advanced Search

would this be my best speed to storage ratio option then?

Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint MP4 HM640JJ 640GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

Or, you could try this one at OWC. LINK Note that although it's a 5400 RPM drive, it's about as fast as the Samsung at NewEgg. You also get an enclosure with it to put your old drive in and use as an external. (and a tool kit)

I have the current gen 17" MBP and have absolutely no issues using a 1TB WD Scorpio Blue 12.5mm HDD in it. I feel no extra vibration or anything.

yea from what i have been researching the 17" mbp has a little more space for the 12.5mm drives than the 15" mbp.

ah i see. well have you considered getting an OptiBay?

That is really cool, but a little out of my price range. I think I have decided that I am going to go with an external 2x2tb mirrored eSata setup and just upgrade my internal drive to the 640gb for now. That way I can have a project or two on my internal drive and still be able to edit other projects directly off the external via the eSata drive when Im not on the road. And the cost of that will probably equal the OptiBay, but with a lot larger over all storage capacity not to mention the peace of mind that it is mirrored on another drive. Plus I will be able to turn my 320gb I currently have into an external portable drive for very little money. I also think once the external starts to fill up I may pick up one of these and just store away projects on one drive and buy a new one as they fill up. The way hard drive prices keep falling I think that maybe the way to go.