I just read a pretty good article on Swapping Hard Drives on the 13-Inch MacBook, and it got me thinking again about the decisions I wrestled with when I bought my 17″ Pro.
I’m amazed at how small hard drives are these days for these powerful computers. The stock drives I had to choose from for the 17″ MacBook Pro were only 120 GB (5400 rpm) and 100 GB (7200 rpm) — MacBook owners can get something as small as 60 GBs… ack!. I reluctantly chose the 100 GB because I’m a heavy Aperture user and needed the fast disk speed. But what I really want is a 250 GB internal hard drive that spins at 7200 rpm. Or maybe a bank of 100 GB drives spinning at 7200. I’d be willing to give up the optical drive to make room.
Tempting… very tempting.
Sounds to me as if you're not looking for a notebook HD you can use in the first class cabin, but rather a portable HD to expand your disk space. Why not a small-ish form factor external drive that you can take with you when you travel? The MBP 17" has a Firewire 800 port, so you'd get pretty good performance without having to deal with the consequences ot introducing more heat into the MBP, if you take a portable Firewire 800 disk with you.
External is the way to go for data. Has anyone done any serious measurement on the claim that there is a gain in having two HD anyway (i.e. making sure that the HD used for swap file, etc, isn't the same one you are using to read/write video).
I've been thinking about this a lot lately. I've had a 15" MBP for a few months now and it's such a fine machine that I sold my PowerMac G5 dual this week. What I did have in the dual was about 400gb of storage that I used for video etc. Now I really could use some space for video, Parallels VMs, and the like. Firewire 400 or USB2 is nice, but I've been thinking about the sweet 2-drive swappable SATA enclosure and Exp/34 card from Seritek. It's a bit pricey but . . . I haven't pulled the trigger yet but I am awfully tempted.
Perpendiculer bits are giving us some 160GB laptop drives, 250GB ones at 7200RPM though . . . . I wouldn't hold your breath.
Has anyone tried upgrading to a 7200rpm drive in a MacBook. Were there any problems with excess heat, or extra power drain ?
External drives... yes, I am using them and have been for a while. I have a 80GB LaCie that's small enough to fit in my laptop bag and doesn't require additional power. It's nice and I like it, but I only plug it in when I need it cause it's a hassle working on the couch and having the drive accidently disconnect if I move wrong. I also have larger drives that I offload to weekly. I seem to have drives everywhere, and I understand that comes with the type of work I do. But having more space in the laptop itself would make all of this so much easier :)
BTW: I have the 7200 rpm drive in my MBP 17", and it's great. Haven't really noticed any downsides to it.
7200 RPM 250 GB laptop drives won't be around any time soon. 100 is about as big as they come.
What I'd really like to find is a nice, small external drive that's powered via the MBP's USB or Firewire buss and doesn't need external power. It would be nice if I could find a chassis like this that would take 3.5" drives.
What about picking up a wireless external enclosure? Sure you'll have to plug it into the wall, but then you can leave it there and access it anywhere in your house.