Filed under: Hardware, Macbook Pro, MacBook
A 200GB hard drive upgrade for your MacBook or MacBook Pro
Got $500 bucks? Need a larger single drive in your shiny new MacBook or MacBook Pro? Care more about battery life than RPMs? Then head over to MacService and they'll hook you up with a large, 4200RPM drive upgrade for a cool $445 (installation and Ground shipping included) or $494 (includes installation and overnight shipping). The shipping costs are there because you have to send your precious portable to them in Santa Clara, CA to have the upgrade done. Or you could just order a new MacBook/MacBook Pro from Apple and get the 200GB drive option for only $200 more, which is surprisingly inexpensive for an Apple BTO option.
Or you could buy a 200GB 2.5-inch SATA drive yourself and use one of those handy iFixIt guides to do your own installation. But I can't find the drives for sale anywhere. If I had to guess, I'd say they'll street-price for about $300.
Which drive are you getting with these upgrades? Well there are only two manufacturers rolling out 200GB notebook drives that I know of. There's the Toshiba MK2035GSS and the Fujitsu MHV2200BT, so it's one of those. Both utilize perpendicular magnetic recording technology, which is fancy talk for cramming a whole lot of data onto 2 tiny platters. There may be other 200GB that I am just not aware of. It's been known to happen.
Worth it? For some, no doubt. And although I kid about 4200RPM drives being slow, there are several folks who know far more about this kind of thing than I do that swear the technology used on these drives makes them almost as fast, if not faster, than the "standard" 5400RPM notebook drives when it comes down to real world use. 7200RPM may be better, of course, but only the serious pros probably need that for audio and video and such.
How many of you are actually considering or have already ordered a 200GB drive for your MacBook or MacBook Pro? Did/will you BTO from Apple, DIY or ship it off to a service provider?
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Reader Comments (Page 1 of 2)
Stefan K said 8:26AM on 11-01-2006
Considereing a 200GB BTO from Apple. that way I get the Mac with the drive and software pre-installed, rather than having to either send it off, take it to a repair center or crack it open myself. And for that price you can't argue. Now if only their RAM gets cheaper as well!
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william jackson said 9:31AM on 11-01-2006
Ordered 200G BTO from apple
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Baz said 8:37AM on 11-01-2006
Or save yourself considerable bucks and just get an external drive - I picked up a 250GB USB drive for $90.
Get a large HDD in your MacBook and, if you are a wise computer user, you'll still need a place to store those large files, rarely used programs and, of course, backups.
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Dan said 8:43AM on 11-01-2006
I'll change my HD when the prizes are a little more friendly. As it is now, I have 80 GB in my Macbook and for backup a Maxtor OneTouch 250 GB. However, I've got too much music to have it all on my MB, why I'd like a bigger HD.
I have no idea though, as to how I replace the discs, transferring all of my user data, apps, etc. to my new drive in the easiest way when that time comes.
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Alex Hutton said 8:48AM on 11-01-2006
Yeah, you'll want to be careful with that -
I bought a WD 120gb and now every time the motion sensor goes off I get a kernel panic. Accelerate your Mac website has a compatibility list.
However, kudos to Apple for making the swap so durn easy!
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Michael Rogers said 8:44AM on 11-01-2006
I recently took out my 100 GB drive in my MacBook Pro and installed a 120 GB Seagate drive myself. They are coming out with a 160 GB 7200 RPM drive soon, so I might be upgrading again. Installation is pretty easy.
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Stefan K said 5:32PM on 11-01-2006
Dan - the easiet way that I found when I had to replace the drive of my current Powerbook 12", was to use superduper to clone my HD to an external, and then clone it back onto the newly installed larger HD.
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Peter Payne said 8:54AM on 11-01-2006
I threw a 16 gb Hitachi in my MBP 2.16 bought in May (a dinosaur now, haha). Although opening the book was hard, it was not nearly as bad as, say, a 12 inch Powerbook or any iBook (awk, remembering that makes me break out into a sweat). Sad to say, my drive worked great then croaked on me a week ago, nearly losing me some very important files. Bottom line, since you can put a ton of stuff on a small drive like that, be ultra anal about backing up, or you'll lose all your pretty, pretty data. Remember how easy it is to steal any laptop, or break them, etc.
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edward said 8:55AM on 11-01-2006
I really want one. but I will wait for certain time. by the way, watch out! don't use western digital HD. it's killer to macbook (pro). I recommend seagate, hitachi, samsung, toshiba, IBM travelmate.
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channer! said 9:28AM on 11-01-2006
I'm really happy with my 7200 RPM 100GB drive...sad to see it is no longer an option on the 15" MBP. Our Final Cut Studio users like the speed too, but not the giant 17" MBP (producers).
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Brandon said 9:18AM on 11-01-2006
I installed a 160GB 5400RPM Hitachi into a black MacBook. Installation is simple and the drive runs fast. I'm looking into larger size hard drives such as the 200GB because the 160GB is getting full. I have external hard drives for my desktop machines, but I use the MacBook when I travel. I like the convience of not having to carry extra weight in my bag. Also I find that it's not too ideal to have iTunes and iPhoto libraries on external drives especially on the go. I rather use the libraries on the internal drives.
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Jerrod H said 9:39AM on 11-01-2006
FYI, it'd be the Toshiba. Apple's using the Toshiba (see XBench results for recent MBP machines), and I'm pretty sure the Fujitsu is universally disqualified --- it's a three-platter 12.5mm drive, whereas Apple uses 9.5mm drives.
Toshiba has the only 9.5mm 200gb drive out on the market right now.
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Ben C said 9:51AM on 11-01-2006
you could get an eSATA expresscard/34 adapter, an eSATA enclosure, and a cheap 250GB 7200RPM drive for ~$200. While it's not as portable, it's cheaper and faster.
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Daniel Choi said 9:59AM on 11-01-2006
For extra spaces, there always are external hard drives.
My choice would be wait for Solid State Drive and carry around external Hard drive.
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rajington said 10:13AM on 11-01-2006
After staring at the screen for about two hours, and researching many sites like:
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Apple/?p=318
and
http://blogs.zdnet.com/Ou/?p=322
I finally agreed on the 200 GB. Are there really any BENCHMARK tests to check this? I mean most of them use "random" read and write, but partitioning can make it so the read/writes to your hard drive are much better than "random". I mean computers are effecient. I'll be more than happy to run any and all benchmarks on it if you guys want. It's stock middle MBP (15", 2.33) + 200GB + Glossy (shouldn't affect benchmarks)
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Gandhi said 10:48AM on 11-01-2006
I am waiting for these babies to be released
http://news.com.com/Hitachi+plans+hybrids,+encryption+for+notebook+drives/2100-1044_3-6131326.html
Man, cant wait for Santa Rosa to be out. THEN I purchase me MBP
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Spencer said 10:50AM on 11-01-2006
#7
The same exact thing happened to me, albeit with a plain vanilla MacBook. Bought a 160gb Hitachi Travelstar, enthusiastically filled it with my life whilst ignoring the pesky warning in my head telling me to back up, and then watched in horror as one morning it committed the electronic equivalent of seppuku.
Not being able to afford data recovery services, I am out about 150gb of my data, at least 40gb of which is irreplaceable. So I would also remind those who choose to go with large hard drives, especially in portables, that backing up your data is paramount. I lost everything I did on my MacBook for three months. It isn't fun. Spare yourself the aggravation.
At least Hitachi was helpful in processing my RMA and I'm now just waiting for my replacement drive. I can guarantee that I'll be backing up regularly this time around.
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ChillyWilly said 11:10AM on 11-01-2006
Upgrading hard drives in Macs... for the longest time, I comteplated doing the upgrade on my Mac mini, but then bought a MBP 15" 2.0Ghz in April. Now my 100gb drive is pretty full and I move stuff off the drive on a constant basis.
But even though some say there is no difference in the seek rates on the 4200rpm drives, I'm going to wait for the 5400rpm 9.5mm 200gb drives to ship. It's not worth it to me to just go to the 160gb level and then have to do it all again 3-4 months later.
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w00t-fu said 11:18AM on 11-01-2006
You can find those drives over at pricewatch
for the Toshiba drive: http://castle.pricewatch.com/s/search.asp?s=Toshiba+MK2035GSS
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WillGonz said 3:58PM on 11-01-2006
I bought my MBP with the 200 gig drive. I went 17 Inch Glossy.
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