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Recommended drives for MacBook Pro
(or MacBook)
This page covers recommended hard drives for the MacBook Pro or MacBook. The same drives are also recommended for the MacMini.
Consider a solid state drive instead of a hard drive for any reliability or performance scenario.
MacBook Pro, MacBook, iMac, MacMini etc users are often saddled with a slow internal hard drive.
Because everything uses the internal drive, system performance is tied to the speed of that single drive. Choosing a fast internal drive is one of the most cost-effective ways to improve the performance of such machines (Mac Pro users have many more options).
See Why you need more space than you need: for highest performance, get double the storage you plan on using (unless it’s a SSD drive).
Recommended internal hard drives PERMALINK
Hard drives 320GB and smaller are not recommended for performance reasons.
The hard drives below are recommended for use as internal drives in a laptop or iMac or MacMini . Hard drives evolve rapidly, so use these recommendations as guidelines.
At the same capacity, always choose 7200 rpm over 5400 rpm for performance reasons.
In spite of rpm, a 500GB 5400 rpm drive can be as fast or faster than a 320GB hard drive over the first 320GB. See also how these drives performed in comparison to the Intel X25-M solid state drive.
- 500GB Seagate Momentus 7200.4 View price
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This 7200rpm drive offers 500GB at 7200 rpm, the fastest laptop hard drive available as of May 2009. See the review.
- 500GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K500 .B View price
- While this drive is only a 5400 rpm drive, its high data density means it is still a strong performer, as fast or faster than the 320GB 7200 rpm drives for sustained transfer speed over the first 320GB! And it’s even faster than the Western Digital Scorpio Blue, below. See the review.
- 500GB Western Digital Scorpio Blue View price
- While this drive is only a 5400 rpm drive, its high data density means it is still a strong performer, even faster than smaller 7200 rpm drives for sustained transfer speed. See the review.
- 320GB Hitachi Travelstar 7K320 View price
- An excellent performer as an internal drive, but in 2009 emerging 500GB drives are a better choice, especially 7200 rpm models. See the review.
External storage for MacBook Pro users PERMALINK
Users of the MacBook Pro and other models can also use external storage. See Recommended Hard Drives for choices for high performance external 3.5" hard-drive storage.
MacBook Pro users have an ExpressCard slot which allows a high performance eSATA solution for external storage. MacBooks and iMacs lack this feature.
Sonnet Tempo SATA Pro ExpressCard (MacBook Pro) PERMALINK
For MacBook Pro users, the just released (Dec 2008) Sonnet Temp Pro ExpressCard/34 offers the highest performance yet seen for eSATA on the MacBook Pro Review. Testing shows speeds up to 200MB/sec on reads versus 140MB/sec with the FirmTek SeriTek offering. Real-world results with Photoshop show significant speed gains with a dual-drive eSATA setup.
Be sure to get the “Pro” version; it uses a new chipset that allows the faster speeds. No matter what though, don’t expect a MacBook Pro with eSATA to perform at the same peak speeds as a Mac Pro; it’s just an inherent limitation of the ExpressCard slot. Still, it’s much faster than using Firewire 800. See the Photoshop test results.
Recommended vendor Other World Computing
Read why you should choose OWC.
MAC PRO Performance MacBook Pro Performance
