7200 rpm HD Upgrade - a good idea?

I'm thinking of replacing the hard drive on my Mac Mini (1.66 GHz Intel Core Duo) with a 7200 rpm drive. I know many people have been successful with this upgrade, but I'm concerned about heat & noise issues - has anyone had any bad experiences with a 7200 rpm HD in a Mac Mini? Are there drives that anyone can recommend (or avoid?)
This is the HD I'm considering (suitable or not?) :
Seagate Momentus 7200.4 SATA 3Gb/s 320-GB Hard Drive
http://www.microanvika.com/product.asp?PNO=SEA53295A&PNAME=Momentus-HD-320GB-720 0rpm-SATA-2.5
Many thanks.

I described my experience doing a similar upgrade in this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2218493&tstart=0
I would agree with Ian that many people will find this upgrade difficult or tricky to do, while others will not.
I don't think that heat is an issue, however. Nor was noise an issue with the drive I used.
The larger, faster drive with plenty of free space on it definitely speeds up this Mini, as long as you also have max'ed the RAM to 2 Gig, which can be fairly easily done when you have disassembled the Mini to upgrade the hard drive.
If you don't want to perform surgery on the Mini, using a full-size firewire external drive as your startup drive can also provide substantial speed benefits. You can clone your internal to the external using the free feature of SuperDuper! .
If your Mini has only 512 Meg of RAM, you will be speed-limited by that, regardless of what you do with your hard drives. Even a 1-Gig Mini will gain some speed by being max'ed to 2 Gig of RAM.

Similar Messages

Can I replace the 5400 RPM drive with a seagate 7200 RPM drive in a Lenovo B570

Hi there,
I have a Lenovo B570-1068AFU system that comes with a 5400 RPM HDD. Does this system suppor 7200 RPM HDD upgrades? I would like to replace the current 5400 RPM with a segate 7200 RPM. Possible?
Thank you for all your replies.
Solved!
Go to Solution.

To add a little to what Tanuj said, you may have a (fixable) issue when moving to the new drive.
Depending on when your laptop was built it may have a legacy (512-byte sector) or Advanced Format (4k-byte sector) hard drive. Many/most larger drives on the market are AF. If you migrate from legacy to AF, you may notice that Windows Update has stopped working. Windows 7 is supposed to handle AF drives correctly, but there are many cases where it doesn't until updated, or an additional driver is installed. The situation is worse with XP, but also fixable.
You may well not have any problems with this, but if you do I have some notes and links to fixes over here:
Windows Update Broken After Cloning Hard drive
Z.
The large print: please read the Community Participation Rules before posting. Include as much information as possible: model, machine type, operating system, and a descriptive subject line. Do not include personal information: serial number, telephone number, email address, etc. The fine print: I do not work for, nor do I speak for Lenovo. Unsolicited private messages will be ignored. ... GeezBlog
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7200 rpm vs. 5400 rpm for the new MacBook Pro?

Hi there,
I'm ready to buy one of the new MacBook Pros. I was going to go for the 15" 2.0 GH. There's one thing that's difficult to decide. Should I go for the 7200 rpm HD upgrade?
In principle it would seem that the default 5400 rpm HD would act as a bottleneck for the new and powerful CPUs. I heard some people say, though, that the 5400 rpm HDs are fast enough and that I would not notice any difference. Therefore, spending the extra money on a faster HD would be a waste.
There is also the concern about battery life. Would a 7200 rpm HD reduce the battery time considerably vs. a 5400 HD?
Since this would be my work computer, I would not want to sacrifice performance. So, if there is no significant difference in battery life and a considerable gain in performance, I would definitely go for the 7200 rpm option.
What is your experience and/or opinion? I'm anxiously waiting for your response so that I can go ahead and enjoy the new Mac Book Pro.
JM

Thanks for your prompt response japamac. Interesting results. I wonder whether the results for performance, battery usage and temperature for the 7200 rpm that comes as an option in the Apple store would be similar to the ones you got for the 7200 rpm HD you used in your test.
One question, since the difference is quite remarkable in the synthetic tests for "Media Center", I'm curious to know what real life applications would that relate to.
Thanks again for your help.
JM

The hard drive on my 2009 midyear 13" MBP died. I found this on Amazon and want to know if it is a good replacement choice: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive

The hard drive on my 2009 midyear 13" MBP died. I found this on Amazon and want to know if it is a good replacement choice: Western Digital WD Scorpio Black 750 GB SATA 3 GB/s 7200 RPM 16 MB Cache Internal Bulk/OEM 2.5-Inch Mobile Hard Drive

If you are going to upgrade your harddisk, why not upgrade to SSD harddisk. You macbook pro supports SATA II SSD drives acccording to these Specs. SATA III is backward compatible with SATA II, so you can buy SATA III drive if you can't find SATA II drives.
Upgrading to SATA II SSD drive you give you super fast performence.
These are a few Segate SSD drives from amazon, that are not that expensive, I guess.
As for Western Digital vs Segate comparison, I second clintonfrombirmingham's suggestion. Western Digital never works for me.
*** After the harddisk upgrade
Install latest OS if possible
Update your EFI firmware
and clean NVRAM http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1379

Hard Drive Upgrade from 5400 to 7200 RPM

Well my logic board died and i have gotten that replaced and now i need to upgrade my hard drive from 5400 to 7200 rpm. I just dont know how to replace it. I have the memory upgraded so im good there just need help upgrading the drive
So how would i replace it?
Please help
thanks
and if there are any websites that could help me upgrade my HD

It is easy....
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook-Core-2-Duo-Hard-Drive-Replacement/514/1

I have a mac and am thinking about upgrading from snowlepard to lion , is it a good idea and hard to adapt to

i have a mac and am thinking about upgrading from snowlepard to lion , is it a good idea and hard to adapt to

This is my "About This Mac" ... it shows I have Intel i7 CPU. If you are running SL, you at least have Intel, but would need at least Core2Duo an 2 GB (most people suggest 4 GB) RAM.
If you want to run Lion, remember that the discussions in this forum from last summer when Lion first came out (and since) were highly charged at times. Certain features that vanished or were added caused great heartache for some. Others love Lion, though. And some live with the changes waiting for any fixes they would desire.
Any PPC (PowerPC) applications you depend upon will not work under Lion. Use this page to see what applications will not run: http://roaringapps.com/apps:table
AND
Recall that you can clone your SL to an external disk to keep it safe. Then you can "experiment with" the new OSX (Lion or ML) until you know it works for you while still having your old SL safe in case you need it.
Good luck.

Upgrading the 5400 RPM Harddrive to 7200 RPM.

Hey guys. I just bought the new 17" MBP yesterday at the Apple store. The only drawback is that I was wanted to get the 7200 RPM harddrive rather than the 5400, but the store only got in 5400's since the 7200 is a BTO option. So today I ordered a compatible (Hitachi Harddrive -- bought off of macsales.com) that is a 7200 RPM (100 GB). My question is: Do I need to have anything else besides my screwdriver kit, new harddrive, and macbook pro service manual? Does this void the warranty if I perform this upgrade myself? I read the "one-year" warranty and you could interpret it both ways according to what I read. Also, are the power requirements the same between the two drives? It looks like it, but I just wanted to run this accross the pros incase I need to be made aware of something. Thanks and I will look forward to giving out the points. Take care.

William, I'm not too sure about that interpretation.
Apple lists lots of user-serviceable parts on my PowerMac, both in the user guide and on the Support site. I've got a clear go-ahead to replace or add a hard drive, for example and instructions on how to do that. So doing that (assuming I don't damage anything) doesn't void my warranty.
The only explicitly listed user serviceable (add/replace) parts for the MacBook Pro, however are RAM and the battery. Given the language of Apple's Warranty provisions, it's not a given that changing anything inside the MBP case (or even opening the case) wouldn't void the warranty.
Another example might be the "Rev. C" iMac. Previously, there were lots of user-serviceable parts. When Rev. C (iSight iMac G5) came out, that was reduced to RAM only. Anything else inside the case was supposed to be taken to an authorized Apple repair center to do the work.
Apple's Support site has DIY (do it yourself) links for lots of models, but not for the MacBook Pro. But from Apple's description of DIY activities, it's pretty clear that opening the case of the MBP wouldn't qualify.
Given the potentially high cost of repairs on a notebook computer, I would be cautious about voiding my warranty or AppleCare. I would encourage someone to get an official response in writing from Apple about what users can and cannot do without risking warranty/AppleCare coverage. (But I'll bet the lawyers would hedge the language, so that MPB owners would never get clear, express permission to pop the case and install a different hard drive.)

Can you upgrade a MacBookPro hard drive from a "750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm" to a Solid State Drive easily? The info seems to say that it's as easy as plugging the new drive into a drive slot?

I am about to buy a new MacBook Pro, but want to try out the Serial Drive 7200rpm before taking the plunge to use the SSD....Can you upgrade a MacBookPro hard drive from a "750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm" to a Solid State Drive easily? The info seems to say that it's as easy as plugging the new drive into a drive slot?

shldr2thewheel wrote:
Fmaharg wrote:
I am about to buy a new MacBook Pro, but want to try out the Serial Drive 7200rpm before taking the plunge to use the SSD....Can you upgrade a MacBookPro hard drive from a "750GB Serial ATA Drive @ 7200 rpm" to a Solid State Drive easily?
Yes
Fmaharg wrote:
The info seems to say that it's as easy as plugging the new drive into a drive slot?
It's easy, but not that easy. You need to copy all the info from the drive currently in the mac to the new one before you install the new SSD. You can do this by downloading cloning software (I use CarbonCopyCloner because it's free)
Not to be picky but CCC is donationware, if you use it because of its quality you should send a little bit of money in appreciation, and as a bonus you get to turn the banner off.

Upgrading hard drive to 7200 rpm?

I've got a MacBook Pro (Model identifier: MacBookPro1,2).
Will this model support installation of a 7200 RPM harddrive? The one that's in there now is 5400 rpm.
Would there be any benefit in this (e.g., is the SATA fast enough)?
Thanks
Eric

Hi Eric,
It sounds like you may be asking if the SATA I bus on your MBP will be a bottleneck. Each HD has different access times, seek times, and transfer rates even though they have the same spindle speed. The last time I looked into it, none of the 7200RPM or slower HDs could saturate the 1.5Mbps SATA I bus, so it would not be a bottleneck. What tasks you're doing will impact how much you notice the speed difference between your current 5400RPM HD and a new 7200, but you should indeed notice things speeding up. Note that you may also notice more vibration, more heat, and less battery time (all other things being equal, that's physics ). Overall, I suspect you'll be happy with a faster, higher capacity HD. Good luck.

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.

What SSD do I need to upgrade my 2011 i5 2.3 is it a good idea to change both will that make it faster then just changing 1 of them and what model or kind of SSD do I need to buy I want to change it myself

I have a 2011 Mac mini I. Want to up the grade the SSD is it a good idea to change one or both of them would it make it faster if I changed both also what model or kind of SSD should I buy what is a good make and model

Here is a good place. I order one last week and it should arrive this Thursday.
Try:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/
Two is not any facter than one.
If you have one SSD and one rotating drive you can set them up as an integraded Fusion drive
AnandTech | Understanding Apple's Fusion Drive

Upgrading from 5400 rpm to 7200 rpm HD

I have a dv7-4270us, am I able to change to a higher speed hd without causing heat issues? I know the battery will be used more quickly, but it is rarely used unplugged.
Will the recovery dvd work with another drive of the same size or am I 'SOL' on this?
Thanks!

You should have no problems. 7200 rpm drives really only put out a very tiny extra bit of heat and vibration and use only a tiny bit more juice. The recovery media will work fine on a larger, faster drive.

7200 rpm vs 5400

hello,
after 5 years of good work, my 100/7200 rpm HD went dead and the store has a 160/5400 HD to offer, while the 100/7200 has to be ordered to apple (1 more day). i do not exactly realize the performance difference between the 2s. i mostly use word processor, while sometime i use iphoto and aperture for my digital pictures and other time i run an audio editor software.
any advice and/or personal experience would be very welcome!

No one has manufactured 7200RPM ATA/IDE drives that will work in Powerbooks for at least two or three years now. New ones are almost impossible to find. I would be very surprised if you could obtain one from Apple, so I suggest that you ask whoever is offering to order it for ironclad confirmation that they really can get one. Otherwise you may end up waiting a long time, only to be told that it's not available after all.
Of the uses you mention, only the audio work might benefit significantly from a 7200RPM drive. If I were you, I'd install a large (up to 320GB) 5400RPM drive.

SMART status failing on a WD Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM

I just recently purchased a Western Digital Scorpio Black WD3200BEKT 320GB 7200 RPM drive to put in my 1st Gen MacBook Pro. Ever since installing the drive, I've had random beach balls happen usually when there is a fair amount of disk I/O.
Thinking the drive was bad, I sent it back and got another one. I am still seeing the same frequent beach balls requiring a hard restart to get the system to be responsive again.
Checking the System Profiler, I see that the drive is failing SMART status. I also checked the kernel logs and am getting I/O errors on the drive at the point when the system beach balls.
I am pretty certain it isn't the drive. I'm at a loss for what to try next. Is this drive not compatible with my SATA interface. Any suggestions or comments?
Below are some of my pertinent machine information from System Profiler:
Model Name: MacBook Pro 15"
Model Identifier: MacBookPro1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 1.83 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MBP11.0055.B08
SMC Version (system): 1.2f10
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled
Below is the Serial-ATA information from the System Profiler:
Intel ICH7-M AHCI:
Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported
WDC WD3200BEKT-60F3T1:
Capacity: 298.09 GB
Model: WDC WD3200BEKT-60F3T1
Revision: 12.01A12
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Failing
Volumes:
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 297.77 GB
Available: 153.19 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /
I also ran this to check the current speed of the SATA interface since the drive is a SATA II drive with a 3.0gb/s burst.
$ sudo ioreg -l | grep 'Interconnect"="SATA"'
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal/External"}
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","AHCI Port Number"=0,"Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal","Port Speed"="1.5 Gigabit$
| | | | "Protocol Characteristics" = {"Physical Interconnect"="SATA","Physical Interconnect Location"="Internal"}
The above shows that the interface is running at 1.5gb/s SATA I which is what I excepted on this system.
Thanks!
Dustin

Sounds like you have things well sorted out.
Despite that fact that you have had two consecutive HDDs with defects does not, necessarily, mean that all of those drive are defective. However, you are fortunate that you were able to get you money back. Seagate makes good drives, as does WD, and hopefully you have paid your dues and you will have no more incidents.
Do post back should you run into stuff and need to bounce ideas off someone else.
Good luck.
cornelius
I will certainly report back on my luck with Seagate.
You are correct that the failure of two consecutive drives does not mean the whole line is faulty. The drive I was replacing in the MacBook Pro was actually a Western Digital Scopio as well (just not a Blue or Black) and it has performed flawlessly. It's the drive I have reinstalled twice now while I waited for the replacement drive to be shipped.
Another interesting anecdote is that I searched the NewEgg customer comments for reports of SMART errors on the Western Digital Scorpio Black drive I had ordered and sure enough, there were quite a few postings where people had tried multiple times to get a good drive.
It's just one of those things that you start to question, especially with older hardware like I am using (1st Gen MacBook Pro) that maybe backwards compatible quirks between SATA 1 and SATA 2 are the real problem not the drive itself. I'm still not 100% convinced that the drives were the true culprit. Hard to say for sure.
Not to mention all the troubles I've been reading about with 3rd party drives and the recent 1.7 EFI update which has caused similar errors as to what I was seeing with these drives. The first drive I had didn't throw any SMART errors, or at least I didn't notice them.
I'm gonna order the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9320423AS 320GB 7200 RPM 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s and see what happens. I'll report back my findings in another thread so that people who search for the Seagate drive will have a more related thread to read.
Dustin

Lacie 2TB Big Disk Extreme Firewire 800 firewire 400 hi-speed usb2 7200 rpm sku 301201u knocked

I have a Lacie 2TB Big Disk Extreme + Firewire 800 firewire 400 hi-speed usb2 7200 rpm sku 301201u , which I have been using with an emac ( 1ghz power pc 4 , macos 10.5.8 ) for past few years.
A couple of days ago The drive was hit rather hard on side while on and up , the computer hung as the computer was up on a mac os 10.5.8 partition on this drive . Computer was rebooted and comes up on internal drive, lacie drive just made beep and click sounds ( i am actually deaf and this was what I was told ) every couple of seconds. Attempt was made to boot on CD to use latest available disk utility ( Macos 10.5). Lacie still does not show up. 15-20 minutes into this, I powered lacie down. This is when I started noticing a burned circuitry smell.I powered lacie down and disconnected it at this point.
Most Folks just suggest data recovery which can cost as much as $3000 or more which I really don't have .
I figured I open and examine the internalsof drive . I did so. The circuitry smells
like burned near the point where power comes in and the death diode is located, otherwise circuitry looks fine. One of the two drives , when taken out did not have a burnt smell and the other had a burnt smell towards the center but it dissipated in about an hour after it was taken out. There also was one loose screw inside drives chasing which ended up being one of the 4 screws that holds the disk drive's circuitry. I dont know but I don't think this could have shorted anything out but even though slim it is possible that such happened.
While I have Three DC voltmeters, I could not find the one that would accurately measure the voltage on the external power suppy to see if the output voltage on the 4 pins is accurate . I am still looking for the one meter that can do this.
I figured if I can find the exact drive in like new condition and swap the disks, if the disks are not damaged and if the culprit is actually burnt circuitry, then the drives should come up as they were as though nothing had happened.
I talked to a friend that suggested getting other cases and swapping disks but I guess that is not possible because the two disks are raided? ( raid 0 ) . I am also not even sure if the drives are raided the way they were put into use ( only through firewire 400) as the documentation suggests that only firewire 800 denotes use of built in raid0 but I am not sure. So again assumption is made that the drives are raided .
I contacted dealership of the drive which again suggest that Unfortunately it is not possible to obtain another drive like this one because it has been obsolete and out of manufacture for a long time. It is also a risky idea because if the problem is not with the drive enclosure hardware, there is a genuine risk of making the recovery process more difficult, or impossible.
This though does not follow logically. I have been able to see the exact drive with the same sku number offered as new or excellent condition more than 1/2 dozen times in the past few weeks so I guess drive can be acquired and tested before any such swap. If drives are not the culprit , I figure after a swap with a new enclosure and everything other than drives, the thing should not even be noticed and all should work as they did before the accident. If the drives are the cause , then the thing has been on 1/2 hour after the accident so the swap should not do any more damage or cause future recovery attempts any more issues than already might be there.
Any sound advice is greatly appreciated.

I tried the two good disks in the main chasis with new cables and power supply , and I could not get them to come on or show.
I put the good disks back in the second chasis with new cable and power suppy and it again shows ( prompts telling you that it sees a readable MAc OS disk and asks if you want to Initialize it ).
I put the first set together again with new cable and power supply and the light does not come on anymore . being hearing impaired , i put my head on the drive and hear this clicking sound every one or two seconds. The fan operates . The drive does not show when rebooting and it does not show on the disk utility. The drive does not smoke but smell of burned mica ( circuitry ) is still in my throat after a couple of hours.
From what I have learned the possibility exists that each drive is calibrated and the calibration is added to the control board , So like chances are that even if the two original drives are good and connected properly and everything else is good, they might and probably just wont work with a control board of another even exact drive. There are three tables / charts marked on each drive and specific locations marked on each chart which differ between drives . These I think are from calibrating the drives.
So I guess its data recovery...
Lacie Data Recovery wants $600 ( $300 x 2 drives ) if they recover data without need for a clean room , $3000 ( $1500 x 2 drives ) if there is need for clean room. If they don't recover , you dont pay , if they recover and you do not want to pay, then they just send you the damaged disk ( or perhaps keep it , or smash it then return it to you) .
There are many other data recovery services so I guess a few days to sift through them but I guess the maker reference should be the best way ( I think its actually a sub-company that lacie forwards data recovery to.
Too many factors are involved. One that will such be a secure thing to do or 6 months later you find out that someone opened 10 accounts under your name , or emptied your bank account ( thats actually not a problem because there is almost never any money in my bank account) . So security is a concern. I have encountered individuals that make it their business stealing peoples stuff from their disks. Once I even had one Tech guy which was refered to solve a problem I had , copying disks contents right in front of me for absolutely no reason. So I ask him what are you doing, and he says , I am copying everything just to make sure they are safe ( : ) )
Then there is the dalai lama , everything happens for a reason scenario. In which case I guess I have to consider the whole thing as Good Omen. and just forget about it and go on with my life ( maybe I go work in Mc Donalds : ) )
The bottom line is I can't believe that I am such an idiot not to have a proper backup system in place .
Thank you for the links, I will check them out.

7200 rpm HD Upgrade - a good idea?

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