Laptop HD upgrades

So i'm planning on upgrading my Macbook Pro's (core duo) HD to something larger. Now i'm wondering if there are any restrictions as to what i can put inside here.

The current drive is this >> Seagate Momentus 5400.2 SATA 1.5Gb/s 100-GB Hard Drive

I'm unsure what things i need to keep an eye out for, mates have recommended Seagate and Western Digital drives so was looking at them. Obviously they need to be the laptop 2.5" size. Do they need to be 5400rpm and 1.5gb/s SATA or can it be faster? Can i go as large (capacity wise) as my budget can let me, providing i have the right other specs?



and also on a lightly dif topic, i have been looking on ebay at drives and enclosures cos i wanna put my old HD in an enclosure, does anyone have any info on enclosures and how easy they are to pull apart. i just wanna chuck the old HD into the enclosure and use that as a backup portable drive that will rarely get used as i already have a better lacie external drive.


cheers

Ive just upgraded mine to a 200GB 2.5" Seagate Momentus 7200.2 7200RPM 16MB cache SATA  HD with G-Force Protection and Anti-Shock.

Delivered for just under $160.

Thats the largest 7200 rpm drive I could find out there for notebooks. Leopard and other apps especialy Logic loads and runs so much faster than the stock 5400 drive.

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/SEAGATE%20OWC/ST9200420ASG/

hard drives are just a fad, punchcards or stfu



 

hmm, so should i look at getting a larger hard drive for my laptop rather than an external hard drive?

is there really that much difference between the 7200 and the 5400 speed ones, cos at that price ill go for a 320 gig one soon.
the 120 that came with it just seems to be running out of space far too often

i do recommend getting an external drive as well tho, just to keep the real important things safe from theft/damage etc

For me I found a big difference. Seek times are much faster. Logic especialy, loading plugins ect is quicker. Generaly a 20-25% performance increase. The quicker your HDD is the faster stuff gets loaded into memory and if you have heaps of memory then the whole systems performance is better. The main system bottle neck is your HDD. Disk I/O and seek time bottle necks no matter how fast your CPU is or how much ram you have.

i like the size tho, more the merrier. and i haven't had any problems in logic with lag etc yet.. its fukn fantastic!
not like the old days

Slight price difference: $113 for a new notebook drive vs $102 for a new external (250Gig).

But then I assume you can get an external hard drive enclosure and use your old one in there (not sure how much they cost).

Also u'll need to get someone to copy windows and all your crap to the new hard drive, unless you want to start fresh and then transfer everything to the new internal hard drive.

It's probably not a bad idea.

sounds all a bit confusing to me.  think i might just stick to getting an external one! 

Any laptop SATA drive should be fine. Note that if you put a 7200rpm drive in there it will run hotter as well as faster...

If you are getting an enclosure try an get one with an Oxford chipset, and I'd get a firewire one as well if possible. USB puts way too much load on the CPU while doing heavy transfers.

Buymac have a good selection of enclosures which are the ones recommended for use with Apple systems.

http://www.buymac.com.au/store/computer-addons/drives-and-storage/external-hard-drives/hard-drive-enclosures

You should get into the habit of backing up your stuff so perhaps an external drive is the go (plus your lappy is still relatively new so id assume its SATA, probably worth checking).  Then in a year or two think about upgrading your hard drive plus some extra ram as well.  

yeah enclosures are wayyyy easy to put together, even i can do one! usb is the suck tho, i am going to upgrade to firewire on all my external hdd and for any comps i will buy, also!

7200rpm or STFU

So much quicker!

Speaking of Firewire->SATA enclosures, I'm still yet to find a decent unit at a decent price.

You get what you pay for with enclosures, like with anything else... Buying cheap enclosures is like buying cheap RAID controllers. Bad idea!

7200rpm is definitely a good idea if its the system drive or an external one you use for video or audio work, but if it's just for backups or something where speed isn't the most important thing it's not that big a deal IMO.

I bought an Icecube Pleiades Super S-Combo enclosure last year and stuck a 400gb Samsung SATAII drive in as a backup for my PC. It's passively cooled and gets a little hot to the touch but that's the idea of the design of the metal case I believe. The enclosure was pretty pricey but it handles any connection you can throw at it from USB1/2 to Firewire 400/800 and eSata, I wanted choice so I paid for the best model. eSata is the bomb, my desktop back home supports it but unfortunately I'm stuck with USB2 on my laptop here, still it's quick enough for watching movies and playing music off...the transfer time just sucks after being used to eSata!

There's cheaper models too supporting less connections, it looks good and it's a damn robust case that's for sure!

Check the range here: http://www.macpower.com.tw/products/hdd3/pleiades/

If you're keen I recommend searching www.staticice.com.au for the cheapest online seller...

Yeah I've got an IceCube one as well but for PATA drives (but also with Fw400/800/USB2 connections). Highly recommended - costs a bit more but it has the recommended Oxford chipsets for use with Macs and the Firewire performance is as good as it gets.

Indeed

wheres qzyphus when ya need him?

slowness in the blowness

7200 is teh shit.  i'm still too pov to put one in mine.  if you've got a pro you either want an apple tech to do it so they can fuck it up and not wear it or be fairly game.  i've cracked someones screen changing their hdd in an ibook before as a favour (oh joy that was) and i've had a fair bit of experience doing that kind of thing (although i'm sur ei'll still be accuse of just being a retard)  i'd probably risk fucking my own up but i'm not doing it for anyone else

macbooks on the other hand are all but too easy to remove... i'll be replacing mine iwth a 7200 and chucking hte one that it came with in a case... usually my advice to anyone considering ordering a drive upgrade from apple!

actually, it seems the latest pro's aren't so bad, and you can get away with not much butchery at all to get the drive out

http://anandtech.com/memory/showdoc.aspx?i=3287&p=3

don't think this is true for your model timmy but could be wrong