Hard drive advice for both MBPI & Time Machine

I've been reading some threads on here about what some good hdd's out there, but most of it is already outdated. I want to replace my macbook pro's hdd, which is 250gb right now. My mbp is model MBP5.1. I know that the more cache is better, but I know there was a problem with the mbp not responding well to some cache sizes. I want at least 500gb for the mbp with 7200rpm, and the time machine has to be at least 1tb. Do you have any recommendations as to what a good combination would be?

All the available options at newegg is a bit overwhelming...

Browse around the OWC site. They have a great selection of HDDs for your MBP and also large storage drives for TM. If you're in the market for a SSD, they also have those. Take a look at their "Mercury on the go" Pro series of drives for external storage. MacWorld rates them with 5 stars.

For an internal right now, I'd probably stick with another WD Black and would consider the Hitachi Travelstar (some folks that have had issues with the WD related to excess vibration have liked the Hitachi).

In a 2.5" external, I'd def look at the one chscag linked to above.

If 3.5", I'm still recommending the quad interface Mercury Elite-AL Pro with their drive or just the enclosure and get your own drive.

Not interested in the quad interface and a USB only drive is good enough, I'd probably forgo all the research and just pick up one of the Seagate or WD externals in the size drive I needed - newegg link (you'll probably be able to find them at OWC also) - think you'll find the 1.5TB drives about the same money today as the 1TB.

Any thoughts on this hybrid drive? Same thing here but with a cheaper price

EDIT:
I just pulled the trigger on the seagate hybrid off of newegg. Read a bunch of reviews and setup info with mac owners, and they pretty much convinced me. Now I gotta play the waiting game I have decided to not upgrade my current external hd yet, and will wait for the ssd drives to drop in price so I can swap the new hybrid out, but I REALLY like the Mercury Elite-AL Pro that you posted bob! .

I just put the same hybrid in my MBP and love it. Boots in about 21 seconds and loads apps in a flash. Great over all drive.

- Mike

MikesMacs said:

I just put the same hybrid in my MBP and love it. Boots in about 21 seconds and loads apps in a flash. Great over all drive.

- Mike

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That's what I've been reading...and that's what I like to hear How loud is your, and does it vibrate much compared to the stock hd?

I dont notice any more noise out of it or vibration. So far no complaints at all!

If you don't mind me asking, how much did you pick yours up for?

- Mike

I got it for $109 plus 2.99 expidited processesing off of newegg. What did you pay?

I got it for $120 at Frys.. I just hate waiting for shipping haha

- Mike

Let us know how ya'll like it. Am considering upgrading my MBP again.

bobtomay said:

Let us know how ya'll like it. Am considering upgading my MBP again.

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No doubt I will let you.

So, my hybrid drive got here. I'm pretty much forcing myself to learn how to do this without reading any how-to guides. Going pretty good so far, got it formatted, and is installing a fresh copy of SL. I have a full backup on TM, but I thought I would start with a fresh OS just for the heck of it.

I'll be keeping an eye out for all the problems I've been reading online and report more info later.
Iggi out!

This drive is FAST! Everything went as smooth as it could have gone. Boot's up super fast, loading files for the first time is slightly faster, but it's the other times that really surprises you! Gimp opens in NO time at all...it used to take at least a minute before! Technically speaking, it is a tiny bit louder, but it's pretty much deadly silent. No vibrations either. No complaints yet. If this drive is this good, I can't imagine how good a real SSD is! That's for my next upgrade!

Here is a good way to gauge the sound difference. If you have a macbook pro with dual fans, set the fan's rpm to 2600rpm. That's the sound difference between the regular drive that was in, and the seagate momentus XT hybrid. I think it's perfectly acceptable.

Well, I got the 500Gb Seagate Hybrid SSD and put it in the machine today.

So far, I haven't heard a peep out of it. I have been sitting in the same room as the TV though. We'll see in the am tomorrow.

Vibration - it's a slightly noticeable - didn't notice my WD 320GB at all unless I just absolutely paid attention to it.

Did a restore from my SD! backup. Was pretty disappointed to start with. It was taking 52-56 seconds to boot and a couple of apps were taking a little longer to open. My WD was still booting in 28 seconds.

Decided to have a look at it with iDefrag. First thing I noticed was all the apps had been placed at the end of all the data. That looked strange to me, so decided to go ahead and do a defrag on this new drive. Now, I'm impressed with iDefrag.

Afterwards, boot time is now down to 21-23 seconds. Computer in general seems to be at least as quick as the WD if not a touch quicker, but at this point, not really anything more than I would expect from a 500GB vs a 320GB drive with a higher areal density.

We'll have to see how it does when it figures out how I use it and fills up the 4GB of SSD storage.

Haha...thanks for notifying me of this post. I actually manage to get around 29 seconds of boot time with all the start-up apps fully loaded. I haven't tried the iDefrag, but now I feel like trying it out. I also did a fresh clean of the OSX10.6 and updated to 10.6.5 before loading any of my programs/data, manually on it.

I always thought that OSX ran defragmenting in the background by itself, as long as you had the drive partitioned to "journaled." So, I think it might have something to do with that "learning curve" online reviews seem to be stating about this drive and OSX.

If you don't mind, can you show a screen capture of Idefrag running, showing your harddrive and "Files" tab on the lower part of the screen index? Apparently, mine is showing a lot of fragments.

To do a full defrag it reboots your machine into the iDefrag app - so no screen shot of it running.

Here is a snap after iDefrag on the Seagate hybrid.




Here is a snap of my SD! backup, which btw, is connected via FW800 and boots in 35 seconds.



That partition is sitting under 30% free space. Booting at 35 seconds is quick enough for me for an external drive. Some of the apps are slow to launch, but I don't really use it to run OS X, only as backup, so I have not defragged it.

This was the first time I've had an issue with a SD! restore (out of maybe a half dozen times) causing an issue with the boot time of the internal drive.

What I'm seeing when I begin noticing my machine slow down, looks similar to this 2nd snapshot. A bunch of stuff stored at the end of the partition, the free space spread out all over creation and the red areas spread a little more liberally throughout the drive than what you see there.

I have not gotten into a habit of running iDefrag like I did/do on my Win machines. So far, I've really only experienced slow downs when I start getting close to that 30-35% free space margin in combination with a whole bunch of stuff that's written to the tail end of the partition.





I'd say, if you're getting 29 second boot time with auto login and launching a couple of apps, doubtful you would see any immediate benefit from a defrag. My boot times are to the log in window.

Will tell you, if you decide to purchase iDefrag and do a full defrag, you don't want to do it until you're ready to go to bed for the night. That defrag above - had to move around 160GB+ took over 4 hours to complete. And it will at times look as if it's sitting there doing nothing. It can definitely be frustrating to watch if you were expecting to use your machine any time soon.

I was thinking of this screen, before you actually initialize the defrag...

Regardless, I'm going to do a defrag just for fun to see what the difference is...as well as get everything ready for my ssd that will be replacing the optical drive

PS: your post is sticky worthy!


I came across this website since I'm thinking of possibly trying a raid on my mbp with it. It has some very nice stats.
http://www.overclockersclub.com/reviews/seagate_momentus_xt_500gb/4.htm

To be honest, that particular screen never looks too bad. OS X really does do a good job related to file fragmentation and I have no complaints there. Here is a shot of my SD! drive.



My issue with it is no defragging of the entire drive, allowing the free space to be so spread out. This is only a problem I think for those of us that move a lot of data on and off the drive.

Example: My TM backup with 160GB of data on my machine was sitting just over 600GB for the last 12 months when I deleted it and started over last weekend. My wife's drive on the other hand - an 80GB drive with over 60% free space - her TM backup that now covers a 24 month span is only 48GB. And my downloads folder is excluded from that backup while hers is included.

Her machine has not had a clean install since brought home and has gone through upgrade installs to both 10.5 & 10.6.

A couple of shots of hers - it's taking 60-62 seconds to boot to her desktop with no apps running at startup.



And the files section:



Those top 5 items in hers are all cache and history files. So, still not too bad. I wouldn't be able to cope with her machine on a full time basis, but she doesn't expect any better and has no issue with it. Between the CPU and the 5400rpm drive she has, probably best boot time you could get out it would be 40-45 seconds. And she, like me, never turns it off except as required anyway. (It would be nice if my batteries lasted like hers has.)