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beppo

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 7, 2008
64
0
u.s.a.
will that difference drain the battery? Is the macbook capable of adjusting to the difference?
 

MacDaddy08

macrumors regular
Feb 13, 2008
213
1
That hard drive will work fine. And no, you wont notice any difference in life of your battery. The Macbook can handle it fine. The Hitachi Travelstar 7200 is actually my prefered internal drive. It is fast and not noisy at all. A very good selection in hard drive.
 

Cave Man

macrumors 604
http://www.directron.com/0a50940.html

I found this hard drive and its got a pretty good price for what it is now I'm just wondering if it will work with my macbook(mid 2007 2.0 GHz base model)

Yes, it'll work. But you'd be better off with a 5400 rpm 320 gig ($30 cheaper) or 500 gig ($300 when available) drive. The performance is about the same, but you get 60% or more space.

will that difference drain the battery? Is the macbook capable of adjusting to the difference?

You shouldn't notice any significant differences.
 

jakealdred

macrumors member
Feb 24, 2008
87
0
Manchester england
erm
they only take a 1.8 IM SURE!of it!.
mine only takes a 1.8 and if they suddenly changed tell me!.
and i got the mid 2007 one aswell do not buy it!.
-jake
 

MacDaddy08

macrumors regular
Feb 13, 2008
213
1
Actually, I would not recommend the 320GB 5400 RPM. the 200GB 7200 RPM is much faster. i have installed many 7200 RPM drives on Macbooks and notice an immediate difference in the speed in loading the OS and applications. Everything seems faster. If you need more space, get an external hard drive. I find the performance boost similar to a memory upgrade. You also install programs faster. A program that normally takes me 10 minutes to install with a 5400 RPM only took me 5-6 minutes. You will enjoy it, get the 7200.
 

MacDaddy08

macrumors regular
Feb 13, 2008
213
1
According to MacDaddy08's book of personal experiences, a 7200 RPM hard drive is noticeably faster than a 5400 RPM. I took a 5400 RPM out of a MB and installed a 7200 and noticed an immediate improvement in the amount of time it took to install the OS and load applications. This has happened on more than 1 occasion. I don't have the quantitive data or benchmarks to back it up but thats my personal experience.
 

Cave Man

macrumors 604
According to MacDaddy08's book of personal experiences, a 7200 RPM hard drive is noticeably faster than a 5400 RPM. I don't have the quantitive data or benchmarks to back it up but thats my personal experience.

Oh, I see. What were the capacities and number of platters in the drives? Once you hit about 250 gigs, the data density is such that drive performance improves dramatically.
 

MacDaddy08

macrumors regular
Feb 13, 2008
213
1
I installed a 100GB, 120Gb and a couple 160GB drives. Never went over 160GB with the 7200 RPM drives. The largest drive I have installed was a 250GB western digital 5400 RPM in a MBP C2D but i didn't have anything to compare the performace to. The others were in Macbooks and I experienced the macbook with the normal 80GB 5400 RPM models and then the 7200 RPM and it was a pretty big difference it seemed like. The rate very well could be higher in drives over 250GB, I can't say because I have no experience with those.

As far as the number of platters goes, I can't seem to find that information. I tried looking up the specs by model number of the 160GB models but it says N/A where the number of platters is listed. It is a Seagate Momentus 160GB 7200RPM, model ST9160823AS.
 

Cave Man

macrumors 604
Most notebook drives have two platters. The Samsung and WD 320 gigs have 160 gigs per platter, which is about the maximum density for current technology. Samsung has also begun to ship a 500 gig notebook drive with a bit more than this density using three platters. That drive should be equally fast, but perhaps not since it has 50% more platters. We'll have to await the reviews.
 

krye

macrumors 68000
Aug 21, 2007
1,606
1
USA
I've heard some people complain of a slight vibration on the palm rest after installing a 7200 rpm drive. You might also notice a dip in battery power too.
 
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