320GB 2.5" Hitachi Travelstar 5K320 5400RPM SATA Notebook Drive with 8MB Cache for MacBook?

[space-time]

did anyone install one of these in a MacBook (white, late 2007 model) and how does it perform?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A56417/

Thanks

[Black Landlord]

I have one of these in my macbook, and I -love- it, even though I've always had a negative impression of WD drives in the past.
http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Sc...B0011U65F2

My macbook is black though, so this may not apply to your white one :-)

[space-time]

the price is about the same, but the Hitachi has a mail-in-rebate of $20 which I could use toward a good external case...

on the other hand, amazon ships free...

[blusubaru]

I have the Seagate Momentus of similar specs. ST9320320AS. 2.1ghz (newer version, 2007?) 4GB ram. Works great.

[Black Landlord]

space-time wrote:
the price is about the same, but the Hitachi has a mail-in-rebate of $20 which I could use toward a good external case...

on the other hand, amazon ships free...

I know some here rave about Hitachi (sorry OWC Larry) but I won't touch them since the stock deathstar in my MDD failed after only 2 years of regular use.

[kahuna1342]

I have this exact drive in my MacBook Pro 2.0 core duo and it works great. Love having a ton of storage on my portable.

[MacArtist]

space-time wrote:
did anyone install one of these in a MacBook (white, late 2007 model) and how does it perform?

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Hitachi/0A56417/

Thanks

I have this very drive in my Santa Rosa 2.0 GHz MacBook. The drive works great. At the time I bought this hard drive, the 7200 rpm drives where still kind of spendy.

Not sure how much RAM you have in your MacBook but if it were my $; I would make sure I had at least 4 GB installed.

[space-time]

4 GB already

[OWC Larry]

Every drive maker has had their bad run. WD bit big time a couple years ago - I think they are excellent today. Seagate had nick names a decade ago.. and actually had a major problem just a a year or so ago with 60GB and 80GB notebook drives that were in a lot of Apple systems as well as PCs where the heads would effectively self destruct resulting in total failure and low data recovery prospect due to the damage the head failure damage caused. And yes - Hitachi (actually, then IBM's HD division) had the 'deathstars' 75GXP 3.5" drives about 6 years ago.. the ones produced in one particular plant were the ones with issue...

Hard drives from every maker do fail. Fortunately, very very rarely these days as quality control is good. I am happy to say though - while the percentage of failure across the board for all we see is less than 1% within 12 months - I can honestly say that we see the best reliability from Hitachi. It's a small difference when talking less than 10 per thousand to begin with.... but in that number, significant difference comparatively. Part of that, IMHO, comes from Hitachi being a little slower sometimes putting out new product lines. And that can be a good thing - WD has a more active release schedule than Hitachi - but Seagate takes the cake.... And when was the last time heard of firmware issues with a Hitachi or WD HD?

You go with what works - but what things are always changing with technology and in the industry in general. And when it comes to hard drives - nothing else matters when you've got the lemon that fails. Physical failures are, again, very rare - but other things can go wrong leading to data loss too - and no matter what, always have a good backup.

Black Landlord wrote:
[quote=space-time]
the price is about the same, but the Hitachi has a mail-in-rebate of $20 which I could use toward a good external case...

on the other hand, amazon ships free...

I know some here rave about Hitachi (sorry OWC Larry) but I won't touch them since the stock deathstar in my MDD failed after only 2 years of regular use.

[space-time]

Thanks Larry, I just placed an order.