Hard drive question! Macbook pro/mac pro

Hello! I have currently a macbook pro early 2011 13 "
Love it for what I do. Music production as of recently I have been wanting to upgrade to a mac pro but am trying to be patient and wait for the alleged new mac pro coming soon!
I still have the stock HD Sata 320 G hard drive that comes with the computer. it has begun to fill up quickly I also have a 3 TB external hard drive. Basically my question is that I want to upgrade my hard drive to one of the best right now for my macbook pro that could also be transferred into my Mac pro slot once I upgrade. I am not the greatest technical person when it comes to computer hardware and that kind of technology and would love some feedback! Thank you in advance!

-Evan

I have not used them but there are a number of kits/devices out there to allow mounting smaller notebook drives into the standard 3.5" drive bay. The prices vary but some are not very expensive.

You can buy a 1 TB hard drive for your machine. WD and Hitachi both make the 1 TB drive of the correct dimensions (2.5" x 9.5 mm) for your machine. Both are 5400 RPM, however.

See the instructions to change out the hard drive in your machine at the ifixit web site. It's an easy DIY project.

chscag said:

You can buy a 1 TB hard drive for your machine. WD and Hitachi both make the 1 TB drive of the correct dimensions (2.5" x 9.5 mm) for your machine. Both are 5400 RPM, however.

See the instructions to change out the hard drive in your machine at the ifixit web site. It's an easy DIY project.

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Thank you! what do you mean they are 5400 RPM? Is there a speed issue?

Yes. That refers to how fast the drives spin. Generally the lower the rpm value the slower the drive will be accepting data. It's taking to long to get where it needs to be.

This can be noticed mainly when opening and saving files but can affect any operation where the drive has to look for data. Many desktop drives these days are at least 7200 rpm.

Some people may not notice the speed difference between 5400 rpm and 720. In web surfing the difference will be seen mainly in launching the browser. For things like video capture the slower drives caused me all kinds of problems with audio - video sync.

EvanLopez said:

Thank you! what do you mean they are 5400 RPM? Is there a speed issue?

Click to expand...

No speed issue. Most folks nowadays want a 7200 RPM drive as a replacement because they're somewhat faster than the 5400 RPM models. However, I don't think there are any larger capacity 2.5" x 9.5 mm drives for notebooks that are 7200 RPM. OWC and Amazon both sell a 7200 RPM notebook drive of 750 GB if you're satisfied with that capacity instead of 1 TB.