Ableton Forum

So the time has come to upgrade the 160Gb drive in my MBP to 320Gb.

5400rpm has done me fine so far, anything to suggest NOT getting a 7200rpm drive?

Specifically, wondering if anyone has any experiences of their MBP running hotter with a 7200?
In a sweaty gig situation I don't want to bring any extra heat into the equation, and would happily stay with 5400 if that was the case. I don't want to push the MBP any harder mechanically than I have to.

Also, is a 7200 drive noticeably noisier in the quiet of the studio? I'd hate to upgrade and find I had an annoying new background noise-pollution.


(I did search the forum and found some good info, but your first-hand experiences would be very welcome gents)

Do it. Hard drives are dirt cheap these days.

When I switched out the original drive to a newer Hitachi in my Macbook, I noticed it ran quieter and faster. The new drive I switched out did fail a few months after purchase, but I RMAed it and had a new one in a week.

Are you upgrading the internal hard drive on your MBP? Is that even possible?

Sorry for the n00b question, just want to be sure I understand correctly, as I have a MBP myself, and didn't know you could change anything but the ram...

I installed a 7200/320 myself, it gets hot like usual but it doesn't seem to run any hotter... or any faster with Live.... I am an avid photographer and run Aperture pretty hard, runs noticeably faster with that program... step by step instructions can be found at ifixit.com, judge for yourself if you have the capability to do it yourself.

i just got a 7200 western digital black for my notebook.

i must say that the performance gain from the 5400 is noticeable, but also heat when stressed enough.. i'd say it's around 6-7 celsius hotter after a defrag or some serious disk operation, but i i must say it's not noticeably hotter than the 5400 during everyday use, so this really depends on your liveset's data stream, if you have lots of disk I/O or not.

ps: i'm talking about a random notebook, so maybe the mbp scenario will be different, depending on the disk location and the dissipating material around.

boska wrote:Are you upgrading the internal hard drive on your MBP? Is that even possible?

Sorry for the n00b question, just want to be sure I understand correctly, as I have a MBP myself, and didn't know you could change anything but the ram...

The newer MBP made the hard drive super accessible for easy changing (oddly the RAM is a little more difficult). The older model MBPs you can change but it's quite the process, involving something like 36 screws and is a bit like that game Operation. It also voids the warranty unless you have an authorized dealer do it.

Paddy - why not put in a 500 gig drive? 320s are so 8 months ago.

it's kind of an odd situation - I just got a new notebook recently, which has a 320 gb 5400 rpm drive, but that is actually faster than the 7200 rpm drive in my older laptop.

I stream audio from an external HDD anyway, this helps a lot in the studio, have a seperate drive for audio and the operating system/DAW program that makes more of a difference.

7200 will give you a small performance gain, but if you are streaming from a second HDD then it is negligible.

I just put in a Hitachi 320gb 7200rpm drive. It's quiet and does the job. Honestly, for audio, I wouldn't go with anything slower.