Can i upgrade to a 7200 rpm drive?

I have a mid 2009 mbp with 5400 sata drive. Can I replace the drive with a 7200 rpm? Any problems that may arise? Possible faster battery drain? Any help is appreciated, thanks

Certainly in theory the faster drive should consume more power than a slower one but there is the offset that It should retrieve data faster thus work for a shorter period of time.  If that balances out, I can't say with authority.  I have a 7200 RPM drive in my MBP and have noticed no change in battery life.  There may very well be, but it certainly is not dramatic.  shldr2thewheel's guess may very well be correct.
Regarding performance, Allen Eckert is correct, there has not been a dramatic change that I have noticed.  If you want noticeable speed increase, SSD is the answer.  It will not only increase performance but also decrease your bank account.
I'm a third vote that no harm will be done and you may get some benefits.
Ciao.

Similar Messages

  • Which 200 gb 7200 rpm drive is in your new MacBook Pro?

    I'm planning on getting the new MacBook Pro 2.4 ghz model. I will upgrade to a 7200 rpm drive. I'm trying to find out which brand of hard drive will be installed, because Apple is unable to tell me which brand they will install. Although it's only about $92 to upgrade the drive, however, I would prefer to know if they are installing a 200 gb Hitachi Travelstar (my preference), Seagate, or other brand. If you got a 7200 drive, which one do you have?

    Well, my issue has been resolved. It turns out that the Logitech keyboard (I am using the mouse) that I gave to my son (he had the same set I do but his keyboard died) to use is picking up the signal from the little receiver up here next to my laptop! I called Apple 3 times about this issue and when I finally figured out that what my son typed and did on his Dell running Linux downstairs, was coming through to my computer! Wow! How weird is that? It was my old keyboard and it was still communicating with the receiver up here. So it was nothing to do with anything major. No hard drive issues. I am a happy girl again! Judy

  • You can't upgrade to a 7200rpm hard drive in the Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro. It is not supported. Period.

    I tried unsuccesfully to upgrade the hard drive in my Early 2011 13" MacBook Pro to a 750GB 7200RPM hard drive. After several attempts with different hard drives I realized that the kernel panic that showed up was due to the lack of compatibility with the drives to the MacBook Pro. I had a Mid 2009 13" MacBook Pro that I did not have any issues with whatsoever. I sold that MacBook Pro and was able to upgrade to the brand new base model without any out of pocket cost. Upon purchase of the new 13" MBP I maxed out the RAM to the full 8GB. After 2 months of freezing, lockups, spinning rainbow wheels and having to force shutdown I tried one last ditch effort to see if a faster drive would help. After speaking with the Apple telephone reps and the Apple Store Genius Bar we discovered that Apple doesn't even offer the option of a 7200RPM drive on their website - a fact that I found quite disturbing. The concensus is that it is a power management issue that causes the incompatibility and the reason the drives are not offered on the 13" models. The problems I had were the end of the line for me. I just switched out that train wreck for the Early 2011 15" MacBook Pro base model. I got home and immediately installed the 750 GB 7200RPM Western Digital Scorpio Black hard drive and it was recognized within seconds. I'm back in business with gleeful abandon.

    Sadly... they don't have all the answers. As someone who use to serve in the capacity (Mac Genius) it can definitely be a challenging position. You're "the voice" of Apple's service policy & procedures. Sounds like the person you spoke with got it wrong this time. It's definitely worth a follow up, because like I said, I've got a machine in my household that's living proof of compatibility between a 7200 RPM drive and 13" MBP (Early 2011).
    Apple is very good about support documentation when there's incompatibility or unsupported configurations, the fact that there isn't one for 7200 RPM drives would tell me that the people/person you spoke with was misinformed.
    I know I always appreciated when a customer made it known to me that I was wrong on something and supplied the right answer. I sure as heck don't have all the answers and if I can lead from my mistakes, well, I won't make them anymore.

  • How much do 7200 rpm drives impact battery life?

    I see that Apple offers a 7200 rpm drive on the new 15- and 17-inch PowerBooks. I assume that these fast-spinning drives perform well at the expense of higher power consumption.
    Does anyone know how much, if any, I can expect a PowerBook's battery life to suffer if I go with a 7200 rpm drive compared to a slower 5400 rpm drive?

    check out this web site.
    http://www.barefeats.com/pb167.html
    here is a portion of what he says:
    "DON'T BE AFRAID. UPGRADE TO A 7200RPM DRIVE
    Apple doesn't currently offer a 7200rpm internal drive option. I'm not sure why because, based on my recent findings, both the Seagate and Hitachi 7200rpm 100GB drives use less power than the Toshiba 80GB 5400rpm drive that shipped with my 15" G4/1.5 PowerBook! That means they generate less heat, too."
    This was posted on Oct 7th, which was before the latest upgrades.
    There is more there to read so check it out.
    By the way, this is a great site for info.
    I too am interested in the new PB. Nice that they finally offer a 7200 rpm HD. I've wanted that for a long time.

  • 7200 RPM drive versus 5400 RPM drives

    I'm about to invest in my next laptop and have the following impressions:
    7200 is generally faster for sustained reads/writes and seeks.
    7200 uses marginally more power (0.5 watts) - but is not going to be noticable in terms of heat or battery life (spin down, CPU, lighting are the big draws I presume there)
    What I haven't seen is any comment on noise levels. Has anyone experience or data from the OEM to compare noise levels/frequencies for whatever drives Apple seems to ship these days?
    Thanks!

    Hi, don't know if this will really answer your question but my new MBP just arrived Monday with a 100GB, 7200 RPM drive. I definitely notice the improvement in access time. Noise? I cannot tell the difference, its as quiet as a mouse. Drawing a bit more power but it is negligble. If you can swing it, I would recommend the 7200...Too bad you can't order it in a larger drive size though. 120 would have been nice
    dave

  • Question for folks using 7200 rpm drives

    Hi, for anyone here using a 7200 RPM drive in their macbook, can you post your experience regarding vibration felt on the palmrest and also what brand drive you have.
    I just installed a WD Scorpio Black (320GB 7200) and it produces enough vibration on the palmrest to be annoying. The stock Fujitsu produces absolutely none. I am going to return the WD and either get a different brand, or get a 5400 RPM.
    Thanks for any feedback.

    Hitachi Travelstar 7K200 200GB. I've had it since last January. Never a noticeable vibration, although the sound of the bearings/platters spinning seems to have increased recently. I don't find that unusual since that's typical for any hard drive.
    The hard drives don't typically produce noticeable vibration unless they're loose. Have you checked to see that it's secure in the drive bay? I've heard that sometimes the little shock-absorbing "bumpers rails" in there can get dislodged in the installation process.

  • Will a 7200 RPM drive boost speed for Beige G3?

    I currently have an old 8 GB IDE hard drive in mmy G3 AIO, but am thinking of a bigger (doesn't need to be really big) drive, 7200 RPM, 8 MB buffer. Without buying an ATA 133 card, will this drive significantly improve hard drive read/ write speed over the old ATA drive that's in there now (probably 5400 RPM) when connecting it to the system IDE bus?

    The 7200 RPM drive's faster rotational speed does seem to make a noticeable difference, in spite of the slow IDE bus speed and the 66 MHz system bus speed. In addition to the larger cache, newer drives run more quietly and cooler than the older, slower models. When it's ON, my (convection-cooled) iMac 400 is practically silent, with its new 80 GB/7200 RPM drive. I started upgrading my beige G3s with larger capacity (7200 RPM) drives, when "larger" meant 10, 15, and 30 GBs. After upgrading my desktop and mini-tower models, the only audible noise was from the power supplies' cooling fans, which had previously gone unnoticed, because the main source of noise was from the original hard drives. If you check your local electronics, computer, and office supply stores' sales this week, you should be able to find a 120-160 GB drive for less than 50¢/GB. This week, Best Buy has the Seagate 160 GB (PATA or SATA) drive on sale for $69.99 (no rebate required). Although your AIO won't recognize the full capacity a 160 GB drive, it may cost less than what you'd pay for a 120 GB drive. At the retail level, I doubt you'd find anything smaller than 80 GBs now.

  • FireWire / MacBook Pro / External 7200 rpm Drive / External Power Supply / Daisychaining

    I would like to use FireWire from my MacBook Pro to an external 7200 rpm drive (Fantom GreenDrive Quad with FireWire capability) that uses an external power supply.  Are there any issues with using the external power supply?  I read in an archived Mac forum regarding Thunderbolt that there might be (for Thunderbolt, which I'm not using).  The archived info wasn't entirely clear to me as to whether it meant not to power up (turn on or plug in) an external power supply for a daisychained device while the MacBook was on or the daisychain had devices in use, say, or whether it meant don't use (daisychain) any devices that use external power supplies.
    Once that question is resolved (about FireWire relative to the external power supply for the external hard drive), my next question is, Can I safely daisychain also? If so, what protocol would I use for that, relative to the power supply for each daisychained hard drive?

    I have had no issues using daisychained FireWire 800 external drives with leaving the drives turned on, power supplies on, and restarting my MBP.  The MBP starts up and sees the drives and runs fine.

  • 7200 rpm drives?

    I noticed that you can no longer custom configure a MBP with a 7200 rpm drive? Did Apple drop this drive? Also is the performance significantly better than the 120 gig 5400rpm drive that comes standard now?
    Thanks,
    Jason

    Hi Cheers,
    The 120GB is a lateral data drive, and the 160GB and the 200GBs are perpendicular drives. The 120 runs at 5400rpm as does the 160, but the 200 is at 4200. Some say that because of the way data is read and written to these new perpendicular drives they're actually faster, or at least equal to the faster spinning drives that use "older" technology.
    Here is a blogger comment......
    There has been a bit of criticism of Apple's failure to provide a 7200rpm option in the new model. But I had guessed that the 160GB option at 5400rpm would use perpendicular technology. By closer packing of the bits, this actually means the 25% slower rotation is essentially negated by the being able to read more bits. While I don't have the data to prove it, I would imagine a 5400rpm 160GB drive would perform not far off a 100GB 7200rpm drive for most situations.
    Well, I'm pleased to report that the drive in this model is a Hitachi perpendicular device, and it's XBench disk scores were considerably better than my 1 year old Seagate 120GB 5400 rpm disk (which itself was well-reviewed). While some of the difference is undoubtedly down to my disk being much fuller than the MBP, I'm sure the Hitachi performs admirably indeed. Sure, if someone made a 7200rpm 160GB disk, that would be great. But right now, I don't think they do. So, with the 160GB I think most people will be happy, and it would make sense for Apple not to offer a lower capacity 7200rpm drive. (Not sure about the 200GB 4200rpm drive though.

  • No 7200 RPM Drives on 15" MBP?

    I was disappointed to see no 7200 RPM drives are offered on the new 15" MBP. I was poised to order a MBP with 7200 rpm drive when the new Core 2 MBP was announced. The 7200s are available on the 17" MBP. Is there a shortage of 7200 RPM drives?
    20" iMac   Mac OS X (10.4.8)  

    That's their choice, you can always buy a 7200 RPM drive if you want to and put it in yourself, though if you make a mess, don't expect Apple to fix it! Some authorized service centers may do the installation for you. As has been noted on other threads, the 5400 RPM drives have narrower tracks which means they are almost equivalent in speed to 7200 RPM drives that exist. The speed of the drive is not only based on RPM, but actual ability to access data.

  • 7200 RPM drive no longer an option on 15' MBP

    I just noticed that you can no longer order a 15' MacBook Pro with a 7200 RPM drive. Did anyone read anything about this recently as to why Apple did this?

    This has been a fact since thr release of the C2D MBP. No excuse given.
    The 120GB is a lateral data drive, and the 160GB and the 200GBs are perpendicular drives. The 120 runs at 5400rpm as does the 160, but the 200 is at 4200. Some say that because of the way data is read and written to these new perpendicular drives they're actually faster, or at least equal to the faster spinning drives that use "older" technology.
    Here is a blogger comment......
    There has been a bit of criticism of Apple's failure to provide a 7200rpm option in the new model. But I had guessed that the 160GB option at 5400rpm would use perpendicular technology. By closer packing of the bits, this actually means the 25% slower rotation is essentially negated by the being able to read more bits. While I don't have the data to prove it, I would imagine a 5400rpm 160GB drive would perform not far off a 100GB 7200rpm drive for most situations.
    Well, I'm pleased to report that the drive in this model is a Hitachi perpendicular device, and it's XBench disk scores were considerably better than my 1 year old Seagate 120GB 5400 rpm disk (which itself was well-reviewed). While some of the difference is undoubtedly down to my disk being much fuller than the MBP, I'm sure the Hitachi performs admirably indeed. Sure, if someone made a 7200rpm 160GB disk, that would be great. But right now, I don't think they do. So, with the 160GB I think most people will be happy, and it would make sense for Apple not to offer a lower capacity 7200rpm drive. (Not sure about the 200GB 4200rpm drive though.

  • Why no BTO option for 7200 RPM Drive in 13" MBP???

    There is no BTO option for a 7200 RPM drive in the 13", but there is for the 15" and 17". Does this mean they won't fit/work in the 13", or is Apple just not offering it?
    Thanks..
    Message was edited by: solsun

    It means Apple is not offering it. There are 7200 rpm drives with the proper form factor (9.5 mm height). The heat difference is not significant. As I recall, when the MBP line first came out, 7200 rpm drives were available on the 17" MBPs, but not on the 15" models. You can't get a new 13" MBP with anything faster than a 2.53 GHz CPU, either - it's just a differentiation point. You can get the stock capacity drive on the 13" MBP, and put in a 500 GB 7200 rpm drive yourself.

  • 7200 RPM drives in the Macbook Pro...

    Does the Macbook Pro with a 7200 RPM HD have any physical differences when compared to the 5400 RPM version of the computer? Specifically, I am looking for any differences related to cooling. For example, a different hard drive mount (with heat sinks) or an additional fan etc.
    Thanks!

    No. Externally, they are the same, and no other design features differ. The difference in heat generated by the 7200 rpm vs the 5400 rpm is minor, and well within the cooling capacity of the MBP (if you use something like iStat Pro, you'll be able to see the HDD temp, and note that it's always much cooler than the CPU/GPU chips, even with a 7200 rpm drive, which I have).

  • Is it possible to install a 7200 rpm drive into a Macbook running a 5400?

    Is it possible to install a 7200 rpm drive into a Macbook running a 5400 rpm drive? And if so does anyone know what brand of drive is stock in the Macbook? What is a good brand? Seagate? Hitachi? Western?

    And if so does anyone know what brand of drive is stock in the Macbook?
    The 250GB drive in my new aluminum MacBook was a Fujitsu. I replaced it with a 500GB Samsung since I was more interested in space than speed.
    -Doug

  • Raptor combined wth WD 7200 RPM drives?

    If I bought a Raptor X to use as a dedicated flight sim drive but left OS X and Windows XP Boot camp on their respective 7200 RPM WD drives, is there any relevant gain in speed or do all simply slow to the speed of the slower 7200 RPM drives?
    I have two 320 GD WD drives and two 500 GB WD drives (all 7200 RPM) installed now; one drive with Leopard, one with Tiger and one with XP Boot Camp, one as general storage.
    Sorry if this has already been answered, I searched but didn't see an answer in thr forums..

    I hate to guess - combined as in RAID together?
    Raptors make nice boot drives as is. RAID doesn't generally offer any improvement and it would be foolish to pair into a RAID.
    I use 74GB Raptor for OS X and one for Vista. Also messing around with putting all the temp and the page file on a Raptor in Vista as well.
    You already have all four drive bays "accounted for."
    RAID (and memory) are common topics.

Maybe you are looking for