change HDD for 7200rpm? or go for 500gb+?

ok so these are my current specs
2010 MBP
2.66 GHz
Memory: 6 GB
I got a Hitachi HTS545032B9SA02 witha 320.07 GB/5400 rpm inside

Im wondering if its foolish to switch to a Western Digital 320gb/7200 rpm
Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

or should i instead upgrade to a 500gb + or more?
Also whats the max amount of gb i can install on my mbp??

You'll likely see you're boot times reduced by 25-40% with the WD black.
Mine 4 yr old MBP went from 48 to 28 seconds with that drive. That won't really matter a whole lot if you never shut down - I don't. You will also see a noticeable improvement in app startup times, but nothing extraordinary. Having said that, a 5400rpm drive will never again serve as a system drive for me.

Personally if you're upgrading, I'd spend the extra $10-$20 for the 500GB instead of the 320GB as long as you're opening it up anyway.

I believe 500GB is the largest 7200.
You can get 640 and 750 GB drives at 5400.
There are also 1TB 2.5" drives, but they are 3mm taller than the factory drives at this time and I do not advise them.

bobtomay said:

You'll likely see you're boot times reduced by 25-40% with the WD black.
Mine 4 yr old MBP went from 48 to 28 seconds with that drive. That won't really matter a whole lot if you never shut down - I don't. You will also see a noticeable improvement in app startup times, but nothing extraordinary. Having said that, a 5400rpm drive will never again serve as a system drive for me.

Personally if you're upgrading, I'd spend the extra $10-$20 for the 500GB instead of the 320GB as long as you're opening it up anyway.

I believe 500GB is the largest 7200.
You can get 640 and 750 GB drives at 5400.
There are also 1TB 2.5" drives, but they are 3mm taller than the factory drives at this time and I do not advise them.

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yea i was looking at the 500gb and its got some pretty great reviews. ima give that one a shot, thanks

I have a new WD Black 500GB sitting here waiting to be put into my MBP.

let me get that lol

bobtomay said:

I have a new WD Black 500GB sitting here waiting to be put into my MBP.

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Hey Bob, its says you got Hybrid HDD, is it the same momentus with 4gb ssd? if yes then let me know you think abt it, i googled a lotand seems there are mostly people says its buggy, hdd freezes etc is it?

thanks

I will just add my $0.02 here as I did a similar upgrade not too long ago. Actually at that time, I was shopping 320GB drives and went with the WD Scorpio 7200 RPM. That drive had a ton of vibration - so much so that I sent it back and got another. Same thing. Buzzy, loud and you could feel it in the palm rest. So, I ended up installing it in an external case and it's still buzzing away, but at least it's only for backups. In its place, I swapped in a 500GB Hitachi 7200rpm drive - huge improvement. Virtually noiseless and vibration free, it served me well - and in fact, I sold my old MacBook Pro with it.

I now have on order a 7200 rpm Hitachi 500GB drive to swap into my current MBP, which shipped from the factory with a lowly 5400rpm Toshiba drive. I don't trust Toshiba drives, so it's more about reliability than performance, but I still wonder if that's normal for the WD 7200rpm drives. I did notice that lots of reviewers on NewEgg have commented on it as well.

As a suggestion go with SSD and not the hybrids. They receive a lot of unfavourable feedback.

I liked the Seagate Hybrid so much that 2 weeks after I bought it, I shelled out the money for the WD Black to replace it. I waited another 2 weeks before I changed it out. My only regret... purchasing the Seagate.

Edit: in response to the vibration, I upgraded from the WD 320 which I had almost from it's release date. It did have some vibration, but I had to sit my hand on the notebook and think about it to notice it on mine. So, definitely some variation there from WD as I've seen too many reports about it.

I have two of the 500GB Seagate Momentus XT's. They are great drives!
Actually, I had an OCZ Agility SSD that failed on me, luckily, OCZ sent me a replacement last week. If I'm buying a hard drive, it will always be the XT!

As the saying goes, "you only hear about complaints." You can find forums with problems to pretty much everything man-made...even spoons!

You may be right there idrinorbarsaku, and you have had good luck with them.
For me, personally, I went with the hitachi 7K500 7200rpm HD as I heard only rave reviews on it, without any horror stories.
Reliable, quiet, fast, cool and looking after my data.
It has been nothing but what I expected it to be.

It is always good to be as well informed as possible, so I think that this is worth a read:
Seagate still looking into Momentus XT drive problems - storage, seagate, Personal Tech - Flash Memory - Storage - Techworld

I will have to second the ssd. get you a 128 gb model or a 256gb if you can afford it. they are wicked fast and highly shock resistant.. also help on battery a bit..

thanks for replies, they made me more doubt regarding HDD's

strange to hear that WD 7200 been loud & vibrant as the manufacture states it is quite and cool... so maybe i will go seagate 500gb 7200rpm 16Mb cache roote then. as i still worrying about the hybrid perfomance, i use my laptop for gigs and i dont want it would freeze while im perfoming

regarding SSD's - 128gb is way to small for me, 256gb could be Ok, but it cost a half of my MBP - absolutely waste of the money at the moment, i bet this summer we can see some price drops for SSD's

mzslave said:

...
strange to hear that WD 7200 been loud & vibrant as the manufacture states it is quite and cool... so maybe i will go seagate 500gb 7200rpm 16Mb cache roote then. as i still worrying about the hybrid perfomance, i use my laptop for gigs and i dont want it would freeze while im perfoming

...

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There have been no reports of the WD being loud. There are some reports of vibration related to the 320 GB version. I did not have that issue with mine and have no issue with the WD 500 GB currently in my MBP and I can recommend it.

However, if you have doubts, I would suggest you go with the Hitachi suggested by cwa107 above rather than a Seagate.

I just installed a WD Black Scorpio 750GB 7200rpm drive in my new 15" MBP yesterday. Things works great. I can hardly take a sip of coffee before my computer's up and running.

Quad core processor; 8GB RAM; 750GB HDD; This thing is a beast. Now comes the fun of getting everything transferred and reinstalled...

Will try to look for Hitachi, heard some really good replies in my area regarding these HDD's.

I need to hurry as WD just bought Hitachi GST (HDD manufacture) for $3,5billions

mzslave said:

Will try to look for Hitachi, heard some really good replies in my area regarding these HDD's.

I need to hurry as WD just bought Hitachi GST (HDD manufacture) for $3,5billions

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Don't sweat it!

Hitachi went from good to bad to good!

Never been happy with internal WD HDs, however, for some reason, all my external WD HDs have been nothing but good.

This could be a perfect marriage