Tonight I upgraded the drive in my MacBook Pro from the Fujitsu 160GB that came with it to a new 320GB 7200 RPM Hitachi. I was in desperate need of space (thanks to VMware Fusion and my need for 3-4 virtual machines) and felt with the new 7200 RPM drives now available that it was time to pull the trigger.
The install went smooth and quick, thanks to the guides at iFixit (and others). I used SuperDuper to clone the internal drive to the new drive installed in an external USB enclosure. The process went quickly (maybe 3 hours to copy over 120GB of actual data) and soon after I had the upgrade complete.
Here at the details of the upgrade:
Hitachi HTS723232L9A360: Capacity: 298.09 GB Model: Hitachi HTS723232L9A360 Revision: FC4OC30F Serial Number: xxxxxxx 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: Verified Volumes: Macintosh HD: Capacity: 297.77 GB Available: 186.59 GB Writable: Yes File System: Journaled HFS+ BSD Name: disk0s2 Mount Point: /
Hopefully that means all is well (I really have no clue). Everything seems to work so far as it did before so I’m a happy camper!
August 6th, 2008 at 11:00 am
where did you buy that 7k320? i want to get one for my macbook pro as well but haven’t been able to find one.
August 9th, 2008 at 6:47 pm
MacSales I think (OWC). Was only $199 w/$30 rebate.
August 10th, 2008 at 1:43 pm
I bought mine at TigerDirect.com for $190 before shipping. Instead of cloning (I recommend Carbon Copy Cloner by Mike Bombich, by the way http://www.bombich.com - please pay the shareware fee) I did the following:
1.) Clean install of Mac OS X 10.5.1 (the install disk I had)
2.) Create temporary account with administrative privileges.
3.) Update to latest Mac OS X (in my case 10.5.4).
4.) Defragment. (In my case with TechTool Pro 4.6.2)
5.) Using the Migration Assistant of Mac OS X, I imported my accounts, settings & applications from the old drive.
6.) Defragment a second time.
7.) Repair permissions. (No corrections made in my case.)
Defragmenting twice takes a very long time. (Overnight in the case of the second defragmentation.) The payoff is a small improvement of performance, specifically, fewer spinning colored balls. Unlike the Norton Speed Disk defragmentator that disappeared with Mac OS X 10.3, TechTool Pro’s defragmentor does not appear to optimize, or at least, not as well. By ‘optimize’ I mean that often loaded, but infrequently updated files, like the Mac OS X kernel and core services, are moved to the early sectors of the drive, wheras user files are moved toward the end of the filled sectors. By loading Mac OS X, updating it, and then doing the first defragmentation, these files are closer to sector 0 and “already defragmented” when I do the second defragmentation after my files, applications and settings are brought in later with the migration assistant.
Naturally, after the next Mac OS X update (10.5.5 in my case, expected “soon”) the scheme is ruined. Usually I do not bother except for major OS updates (e.g. Tiger to Leopard) or new hard drives. The improvement is noticeable but not huge.
August 28th, 2008 at 7:55 am
I am thinking of getting a 7k320 for my MacBook Pro as well. Do you experience a notable improvement in speed? I’ve heard that there is a heat issue with the 7200rpm drive, do you find it hotter than the old drive? Thanks.
August 28th, 2008 at 10:49 am
It might be slightly warmer, but nothing that makes the fans kick on sitting flat on a desk. I don’t really notice it that much.
It does have a small amount of additional vibration over the 5400 RPM drive.
The speed is significantly faster than the original drive. Restoring a VM happens much faster (1.3GB) and simple things that used to take a while are much quicker.
October 12th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Bought one of these for my MacBook 1.8GHz. It’s not the MacBook Pro. Dang thing was almost as easy to change out as a Flash card. As Chris says above, the MacBook is faster with this drive than the 80GB that came with it (and suddenly crapped out.)
Get’em at Other World Computing, too. They’re $139 with a $20 rebate as of this writing 10/12/08.