Just put a 320 gb HD in my macbook pro. diggin' it.

Winston · Post by **Winston** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:07 am

So I just ordered the Western Digital 320 gb hard drive a few days ago and now I got it up and running. I wasn't sure if I'd use the time machine function in to put everything back on the disk as it was or just do a fresh install, but I ended up going for a fresh install. So I'm sitting here re-installing all my software. Good times!

Man, I don't know if it's the extra hard drive space or the fresh install of Leopard, but things sure do feel much snappier now. The thing loads in seconds and apps open pretty darn quick. I had just installed leopard over top of OSX 10.4 before I got the new drive, but I had heard that a fresh install was the way to go, and I'd have to agree now.

Anyways, if anyone's in the market for a new lappy drive, the WD drive is pretty great so far. Totally silent, not too hot, and friggin' huge. 320gigs! Although I had maxed out my previous 160gb HD, I'm not gonna have to worry about space for a while now I reckon.

Ahhh the freedom....

nepotist · Post by **nepotist** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:09 am

shit...that sounds awesome. how much?

Winston · Post by **Winston** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:16 am

nepotist wrote:shit...that sounds awesome. how much?

Actually, only about 200 dollars. I found it at a canadian place on-line with free shipping, but there's lots of good american ones I've seen too, like newegg.com. Don't know what it would be elsewhere.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:26 am

Yeah, I've been seriously eyeing that myself, I take it you used the ifixit.com site for install info? Pretty easy to do for the most part?

Winston · Post by **Winston** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 5:56 am

Tarekith wrote:Yeah, I've been seriously eyeing that myself, I take it you used the ifixit.com site for install info? Pretty easy to do for the most part?

Actually not quite. I've been crazy busy lately and didn't really want to take the time to figure it out, so I paid a few bucks to a guy at a little local computer shop to put it in.

I didn't really need to see the guts of it anyways. I know its the easy way out but after a week of working until 2 am (I work 9-5!), I was feeling lazy.

I did check a couple sites out of curiosity though, and it's not pretty, but I'm sure it's easy enough for someone that knows computers well enough.

But I definitely suggest the western digital. Good bang for the buck too.

timothyallan · Post by **timothyallan** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 9:28 am

Is it 4200 rpm or 5400?

I dig having the 160gb 7200rpm... but that 320 barrier is mighty appetizing.

Brkhlk · Post by **Brkhlk** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:08 am

can you post the model name or number of the harddrive?

greetz,

breakaholik

Cache · Post by **Cache** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 10:35 am

the thing about large drives that scares me is that if something bad goes wrong with drive, you could be hosed.

eg a 1TB drive sounds great, but if that thing gets corrupt and you have ALL your tracks on it.....thats a lot of data to try recover...

starving student · Post by **starving student** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 11:17 am

question about leopard, i bought it for like a $120 dollars from the apple store and they said that I couldn't do a fresh install that I had to install it over tiger, whats up with that?

jonny72 · Post by **jonny72** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 1:31 pm

Brkhlk wrote:can you post the model name or number of the harddrive?

Its not difficult to find as its the only 320Gb 2.5" drive on the market, just go to your favourite retailer and browse the laptop drives and you should find it ok.

It runs at 5400 though I believe its got some new features to help speed it up.

It costs about £115 in the UK, I'll be getting one soon.

doc holiday · Post by **doc holiday** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:16 pm

Cache wrote:the thing about large drives that scares me is that if something bad goes wrong with drive, you could be hosed.

eg a 1TB drive sounds great, but if that thing gets corrupt and you have ALL your tracks on it.....thats a lot of data to try recover...

if you make proper backups your fine.

Tarekith · Post by **Tarekith** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 2:44 pm

starving student wrote:question about leopard, i bought it for like a $120 dollars from the apple store and they said that I couldn't do a fresh install that I had to install it over tiger, whats up with that?

That's BS, you can do a clean install. You'll lose all your data of course, so make sure everything is backed up first.

Winston · Post by **Winston** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 3:01 pm

Tarekith wrote:
starving student wrote:question about leopard, i bought it for like a $120 dollars from the apple store and they said that I couldn't do a fresh install that I had to install it over tiger, whats up with that?
That's BS, you can do a clean install. You'll lose all your data of course, so make sure everything is backed up first.

Ya, they don't know what the hell they're talking abut. You can install over Tiger, but a clean install is definitely better as I've discovered. Things are much snappier. Little things, like when you click on your trackpad, there's not as much of a pause. Or apps opening, that's faster. Just back everything up.

Cache wrote: the thing about large drives that scares me is that if something bad goes wrong with drive, you could be hosed.

eg a 1TB drive sounds great, but if that thing gets corrupt and you have ALL your tracks on it.....thats a lot of data to try recover...

That's why you always get an another equally sized HD for backups. Time machine makes that pretty easy now. I already had an external 320 gb drive which was under 100 dollars (and its wireless too), so that is now my time machine drive.

jonny72 wrote:Brkhlk wrote:
can you post the model name or number of the harddrive?

Its not difficult to find as its the only 320Gb 2.5" drive on the market, just go to your favourite retailer and browse the laptop drives and you should find it ok.

It runs at 5400 though I believe its got some new features to help speed it up.

It costs about £115 in the UK, I'll be getting one soon.

Yep there's only the one. The WD Scorpio 320 GB SATA Hard Drives ( WD3200BEVT ).

Winston · Post by **Winston** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 3:05 pm

timothyallan wrote:Is it 4200 rpm or 5400?

I dig having the 160gb 7200rpm... but that 320 barrier is mighty appetizing.

5,400. I'd prefer it to 7,200 for the size, as well as probably less heat/power consumption. Benchmarks show that the two aren't too different performance-wise anyways. This one is also 3.0 gb/s instead of the usual 1.5gb/s. And 8mb cache.

wilxon · Post by **wilxon** » Mon Jan 28, 2008 3:06 pm

The model number is WD3200BEVT and has a transfer rate of 3gb/s and a 8MB buffer which makes this one of the best drives available.

I have these drives for sale from UK, but i will post anywhere in EU via paypal payment and anywhere in the world if paid by bank transfer.

Installing into MBP by IFIXIT's guide is spot on, although you need a T5 screwdriver for later MBP versions as they changed the screws.

If anyone is interested check out my ebay ad : WD3200BEVT

If anyone is interested PM me and ill shave a couple of £'s off the price if we can deal outside of ebay.

Wholesale enquiries welcome.