Best Hard drive to upgrade too?

Hi everyone i currently own a macbook pro with the following spec

Bought Jan 09 (uk)
15" Macbook Pro
2.53GHz intel core 2
4GB 1067 MHz DDR3 Ram
250GB HDD

I was just woundering what the best hard drive is to upgrade to, i have almost filled up the current one and was looking at getting a 500GB one from pc world, they currently have a WD or a Hitachi one which i believe mac use already.

I was just wondering if there are any makes i should avoid as i have not done this before and dont want to screw it up to be honest, any help would be much appreciated.

I just bought myself a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200RPM for £48 from Overclockers UK. Great service - I bought the same spec but in a Hitachi brand a few years ago for a similar price.

You'll also need a T6 Torx screwdriver to take out the special screws holding the HDD in.

I use a Seagate Momentus and it has been great.
Many people use the Seagate Momentus XT (4gb of flash memory) but report lots of problems.

WD is a great brand, and you can't go wrong with them.

Another popular brand is the Samsung Spinpoint hard drives.

Just get a nice 7200 rpm drive from any trusted manufacturer. Fit it to your budget, and you're good to go.

2 thumbs up from me on the seagate momentus XT. I liked the first one so much that I bought a second one since newegg had them for only 100 bucks shipped. It's a great drive!

The WD scorpio are good drives.

If you are looking for maximum battery life out of a 500 gb drive, look for a 5400rpm drive. If you want average results, look at the 7200rpm drives. If you want the fastest, get the Momentus XT with 4gb of solid state memory built in.

The Samsung spinpoints rank amongst the top of almost all reviews in both 2.5" and 3.5" formats, for quietness, and almost no vibration, but don't always give you the best performance.

Then there the real upgrade! Get a regular scorpio 7200rpm(in my case, the XT), along with a 30-40gb solid state drive(preferably from OWC, but I have an OCZ) installed in the optical bay. Trust me, you will want to wear a seat belt while using your macbook

All leading brands are pretty much of a muchness - Seagate, WD, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung but be aware any of them can and do fail, sometimes right out of the box when brand new so the better the warranty the more confident you should be.

harryb2448 said:

All leading brands are pretty much of a muchness - Seagate, WD, Fujitsu, Hitachi, Samsung but be aware any of them can and do fail, sometimes right out of the box when brand new so the better the warranty the more confident you should be.

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Agreed. I would say just pick one up with > 1 yr warranty and you should be set.

pinchy said:

Agreed. I would say just pick one up with > 1 yr warranty and you should be set.

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That's just a cheap gimmick. Don't go blindly getting one just because the warranty is longer than a year. Seagate offers 3 and 5 year warranties, my XT has a 5 year warranty, but I'm willing to bet a lot of money that whatever problem I might have with it, they wont cover. HD warranties are very picky over what is considered a problem.

If reliability is your main concern, I wouldn't hesitate with a WD. They've proven themselves reliable without needing a ridiculously long warranty. Especially since HD's are not known to be associated with reliability.

And, as Harry mentioned, you can buy an HD that has the best reviews out of all, and still get one that is DOA. Nothing is guaranteed to be perfect...especially with delicate things such as hard drives.

I bought a 256GB SSD & love it!