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tears2040 · Jul 18, 2009, 11:47 PM

I have a mid 2007 model 2.2 Ghz Intel Core Duo that came with a 5400 rpm Hard drive. I want to go bigger and faster and have narrowed it down to a couple of hard drives.

The WD Scorpio Black 320gb 7200 rpm & the Seagate 500gb 7200 rpm, any feedback regarding those two would be greatly appreciated.

Second where can I find step by step instruction on how to do this? From removing the old one, to cloning the drive, etc.

thanks

Simon · Jul 19, 2009, 03:22 AM

The former is cheaper, the latter is better. There's an entire thread on the Seagate Momentus 7200.4 here.

Instructions are here.

tears2040 · Jul 19, 2009, 05:22 AM

Ok so looking at the time of my original post and current one, I spent about 5 hours looking and reading all over the net.

That Seagate Drive is the first 7200 rpm 500gb, now many people have been having problems with clicking and popping noise which supposedly has been fixed with a recent firmware update. This drive is selling for $119.99 on New Egg.

The WD Scorpio Black is the best rated and very popular drive, it is selling for $79.99 on New Egg
The 500 Gb version of this drive is supposed to come out later this year, but who knows.

Now the choice I went with was the Fujitsu MHZ2320BJ-G2, reason being price & performance. This drive is currently selling for $69.99 for the 320gb 7200 rpm. My 2007 MBP has this same name brand drive and never gave me any problems. So I'm upgrading to the same name brand but faster and larger.

I wanted to keep it under $100 and I achieved this, also I had to buy an enclosure that cost me $25, the main reason was it had to have firewire.....

At the end of the day I know I will have more space and a faster drive for less than a $100 dollars

In the future I could always upgrade again, as about a year ago the biggest HD they had was 250gb, thumbs up for technology moving forward

peace

Golden Halo · Jul 19, 2009, 11:53 AM

I am looking to upgrade this exact same macbook pro. How did it go with your upgrade. I was looking to get the WD scorpio for 76.98 including shipping from circuit city. Any thoughts? Thanks!

tears2040 · Jul 19, 2009, 02:38 PM

Originally Posted by Golden Halo

I am looking to upgrade this exact same macbook pro. How did it go with your upgrade. I was looking to get the WD scorpio for 76.98 including shipping from circuit city. Any thoughts? Thanks!

Well I just ordered last night so I have not done the upgrade yet, but that WD Scorpio drive is one of the best selling + rated so you should be more than good.

I will update this thread when I get my hard drive this week

thanks

Golden Halo · Jul 19, 2009, 03:01 PM

Okay. Thanks!

PartialPants · Jul 19, 2009, 11:25 PM

I used the ifixit instructions when I upgraded my MacBook Pro and my Wife's MacBook as well. They are really good. I used 7200 drives on both upgrades from stock 5400 drives. The MacBook Pro was more difficult to change out, and the MacBook was much easier. The speed increase of the 7200 drives were really nice and worth every penny. The big honkin' drive space upgrade was very nice too.

tears2040 · Jul 29, 2009, 06:07 AM

Upgraded my HD and after the 2nd or 3rd attempt I got everything working.

Make sure that when you use " Super Duper" you boot off of the drive where you transfered all of your information to see it if is working before putting it into the MBP. I messed something up & had to redo everything again.

A lot of screws and time that this process takes.......

Don't know if I would do again, but for now I'm happy

peace

Simon · Jul 29, 2009, 03:32 PM

Originally Posted by tears2040

Make sure that when you use " Super Duper" you boot off of the drive where you transfered all of your information to see it if is working before putting it into the MBP. I messed something up & had to redo everything again.

Make sure you don't use Super Duper.

To clone a disk, why rely on a commercial third-party app that has caused others trouble in the past? Instead I suggest you use OS X's built-in cloning tool. It's rock solid, it's very fast and it's of course free. You'll find it on every OS X installer DVD and on every OS X installation.

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility > Restore.

Select erase destination to get a bootable clone in block-copy mode (fast!).

tears2040 · Jul 29, 2009, 08:09 PM

Originally Posted by Simon

Make sure you don't use Super Duper.

To clone a disk, why rely on a commercial third-party app that has caused others trouble in the past? Instead I suggest you use OS X's built-in cloning tool. It's rock solid, it's very fast and it's of course free. You'll find it on every OS X installer DVD and on every OS X installation.

/Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility > Restore.

Select erase destination to get a bootable clone in block-copy mode (fast!).

This has NOTHING to do with my post. Also I know that this can be done on a Mac, but your idea of fast and mine are very different. I initially was using Macs own software to clone but after two hours it was not even 50% done. With Super Duper it took exactly 2 hours and 15 mins to clone and boot a 120 gb hard drive.

So I can't say which is better, but as far as speed in my real world test "Super Duper" is the clear cut winner.

peace

Simon · Jul 30, 2009, 03:09 AM

Then you didn't do a block copy. If you do a block copy clone in Disk Utility, it's going to be faster than any file copy with any app.

SSharon · Jul 31, 2009, 01:24 AM

Originally Posted by Simon

Then you didn't do a block copy. If you do a block copy clone in Disk Utility, it's going to be faster than any file copy with any app.

Would it matter how full the drive is? Would a file transfer system only transfer the files on the drive while the block transfer system copies every block regardless of its content?

Simon · Jul 31, 2009, 02:48 AM

That's the case. The block copy simply maps the source partition to the destination partition block by block regardless of the file structure on top of that.