replacing harddrive - unibody macbook : Motion sensors?

[minds_eye]

Having just purchased a 2.4 Ghz Unibody Macbook I'm looking to replace the hdd.

Having answered a question on SATA I was searching for a suitable hard drive and found the Seagate momentus 7200.4 500gb drive.

Reading through the reviews on newegg I spotted someone talking about issues with the unibody macbook's motion sensor here (about three down)

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Having read that I searched a few forums and found a couple of threads that have me concerned.

This one for instance mentions that whilst the drive works well it no longer parks under sudden movement.

Likewise this thread saying sales have been suspended, possibly due to the above issue.

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With those things in mind I was wondering if anyone could clarify which hard drives are compatible in this way with the macbook?

Since reading this info I've been looking at the
- WD Scorpio Black 320GB
- Seagate Momentus 7200.3 320gb


I don't strictly speaking need 500Gb of space so I'd rather give the problems a miss, unless I can guarantee I'm getting a drive that'll do the job and won't sacrifice stability.

With that in mind, reading what people have said on here I'm tempted to go for the WD Scorpio. However I notice that this drive is offered with and without the "free-fall sensor".

I guess my question is which model would suit the macbook and ideally will still park the heads if the MB moves suddenly.

More importantly does anyone have one of the Scorpio drives installed in a unibody macbook and can they please confirm that the heads still park?

Lastly - when replacing the HDD in your macbook, do you simply pop out the old one, slip in the new on and reinstall leopard? or do you have to prep the drive with an installation prior to this?

 

[recon731]

On a Western Digital, you do not want the free-sensor.
HD Motion sensors (the ones present inside a hdd) conflict with the Macbooks Sudden Motion Sensor, therefore causing problems.

You can turn off the Macs SMS and just use the hdd motion sensor, however my opinion, and quite a few other members opinions have been to get a hdd without a motion sensor, and use the Macs.

For the WD 320GB 7200, you want the WD3200BEKT product number, it comes without the free-fall sensor.

As far as installing, you will need a Torx #6 screwdriver, so make sure you pick one up at Home Depot or Lowes if you don't have one. You can clone over your existing drive before or after installation. Before is usually easier, though both processes are very similar. Cloning after installation, requires you to boot from your old hd via USB.

Many people recommend SuperDuper and other hd cloning programs, however I just use DiskUtility and click on the restore tab, drag your Macintosh HD to the source box, and your new HD to the Destination box, check erase destination and then click restore.

 

[minds_eye]

Thanks kindly.

Is it necessary to clone the drive or can I just effectively do a clean install?

I'm intending on running bootcamp with XP after the install to, will this affect it?

Cheers

 

[recon731]

You can totally do a clean install, some people usually have a lot of apps and files that they would rather just clone. I usually do a clean install, because then I know that it is starting fresh.

 

[minds_eye]

That's great. Many thanks for your help.