User-Installed Hard Drive Upgrade--->Worse Performance?

milimetersquaredmilimetersquared
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
i'm going to be buying a macbook soon, and so i've been doing some research on getting the most bang for my buck. i found this 250gb western digital hard drive which fits (physically) into the macbook, and figured that by upping my internal hard drive through this user-installed upgrade, at about the same $-per-gb compared to this external lacie 160gb hard drive which i was looking at before, would be better for me overall. however, when i asked my mac fanatic friends about this, one of them said that:

"Changing out the [factory-installed] hard drive can lead to a decrease in performance and battery life"



my question is: how true is this? i would be switching out the factory-installed 80gb hdd, with the same rpm (5400) for the new one. it would seem to me that this would drain the battery at an equal rate. further, i don't really understand how my performance/speed would be hurt by this. i thought all hard drives were third-party, and thus changing from the factory brand wouldn't greatly change speed.



any help with this problem would be greatly appreciated. thanks.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 4
    sandausandau Posts: 1,230member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by milimetersquared View Post


    i'm going to be buying a macbook soon, and so i've been doing some research on getting the most bang for my buck. i found this 250gb western digital hard drive which fits (physically) into the macbook, and figured that by upping my internal hard drive through this user-installed upgrade, at about the same $-per-gb compared to this external lacie 160gb hard drive which i was looking at before, would be better for me overall. however, when i asked my mac fanatic friends about this, one of them said that:

    "Changing out the [factory-installed] hard drive can lead to a decrease in performance and battery life"



    my question is: how true is this? i would be switching out the factory-installed 80gb hdd, with the same rpm (5400) for the new one. it would seem to me that this would drain the battery at an equal rate. further, i don't really understand how my performance/speed would be hurt by this. i thought all hard drives were third-party, and thus changing from the factory brand wouldn't greatly change speed.



    any help with this problem would be greatly appreciated. thanks.



    you'll be fine with that, no issues, no performance or battery life issues. In my case, I put a 7200 rpm drive into my macbook (upgraded from a 5400 rpm) and it actually had better battery life (less seek time? dunno) and (because of the speed) better performance.
  • Reply 2 of 4
    outsideroutsider Posts: 6,008member
    Yeah, unless your are downgrading your platter revolutions (like going from a 5400 to a 4200 rpm drive) you won't see a decrease in speed at all. You may see a decrease in battery performance though, especially when going from a 4200 to a 7200 rpm. Specifically, they generate more heat and thus, need more cooling so the fans run more often. But it should be negligible.
  • Reply 3 of 4
    milimetersquaredmilimetersquared Posts: 62member
    so, as long as it in the same rpm family, there will be negligable losses in performance and speed?
  • Reply 4 of 4
    spindriftspindrift Posts: 674member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by milimetersquared View Post


    so, as long as it in the same rpm family, there will be negligable losses in performance and speed?



    Correct. In fact there is no reason you experience any loss in speed and if there is any battery life loss, it would be negligible.
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