HuntsMan75

Q: Hard Drive

I have a 2007 MacBook Pro. I never had prooblems with it until recently. While running i'd get delays and Spinning beach balls. Never having had to deal with this or for that matter Apple support, I just took it in to Apple. For a price they diagnosed it as a bad drive.

 

Repairing it through them will cost almost as much as some of these units are selling for used. I want to do this myself. I'd also like to be able to test this thing in the future myself so I don't get stuck with this problem.

 

I'm looking for advice on a) drives for this system, b)repair instructions or online guides, c) test/evaluation software.

 

Thanks.

Posted on Oct 5, 2013 12:16 PM

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Q: Hard Drive

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  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas Dec 1, 2013 11:03 PM in response to San Lewy
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    Dec 1, 2013 11:03 PM in response to San Lewy

    You are aware that Hitachi (known as Hitachi Global Storage Technologies and HGST Inc) is a wholly-owned subsidiary of Western Digital Company?

     

    Yes and no, mostly yes in whole, in specific, NO

     

    WD owns them, but Hitachi is still doing "its thing" quality wise and research etc. including the recently released helium filled HD ,  they were forced to sell of their 3.5" division to Toshiba

     

    So, Hitachi 3.5" made drives, marked Toshiba, but owned by WD thru Hitachi.  

     

    So if you get a 3.5" Toshiba drive, youre getting one that is "owned and marked by Toshiba, made by Hitachi (equip and design) which is owned by WD"

     

    So, there are still Hitachi HD, though it is owned by WD.   Full assimilation of Hitachi into WD will take many many years.

     

    So you can get Hitachi design, quality etc etc, and it still be a "Hitachi HD", ....though still owned by WD

     

    So, though owned by WD, it is quasi autonomous to "do what it does best"   

     

    That A owns B, doesnt mean that B is "the same as A", rather financially connected, rather than quality and design.   That may come in a few years however.

     

     

    boring detailed specfics are here:

    http://www.storagereview.com/

     

     

    screenshot_538.jpg

  • by MrJavaDeveloper,

    MrJavaDeveloper MrJavaDeveloper Dec 5, 2013 10:30 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas
    Level 1 (64 points)
    Dec 5, 2013 10:30 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas

    You can say that a hard drive is a hard drive, but WD is putting some of their units in boxes that are semi functional UNLESS their drive software is installed. Example: Pushing the power button will not turn on or off the unit unless the WD drive manager is installed. Also, as an FYI the "Green" drives that apparently like to lock up for 30 seconds also have an unspecified spindle speed because it's "Green" and to save energy I guess they like to slow it down to a crawl or put it to sleep...hence no spindle speed specification.

  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas Dec 5, 2013 10:36 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    Dec 5, 2013 10:36 AM in response to MrJavaDeveloper

     

    MrJavaDeveloper wrote:

     

    You can say that a hard drive is a hard drive, but WD is putting some of their units in boxes that are semi functional UNLESS their drive software is installed.

     

    Correct, and this is why you should not purchase such things.  

  • by R.K.Orion,

    R.K.Orion R.K.Orion Dec 7, 2013 12:04 PM in response to PlotinusVeritas
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Dec 7, 2013 12:04 PM in response to PlotinusVeritas

    If anyone followed my other thread I had to prep a bunch of older units for re-sale, which we ended up selling to people in our own company. Anyway, when I was doing all the Mac laptops, it now occurs to me that all the drives were either Fujitsu, Hitachi, or Toshiba. That's from memory. I definitely remember Fujitsu and Hitachin and I think Toshiba as well. On some of the really, really old units found IBM.

     

    I don't think I remember seeing any WDs or anything shown in the "Seagate" family above.

  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas Dec 7, 2013 12:18 PM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    Dec 7, 2013 12:18 PM in response to R.K.Orion

    Seagate owns LaCie, and Seagate can be found in Porche drives and Buffalo (and others).

     

     

    Most people dont know these myriad external drives out there are just plastic boxes with one of 4 HD in them

     

    WD, seagate, hitachi, or Toshiba.

     

     

    Fundamentally any SINGLE HD is 100% worthless regardless of mfg. due to the necessity of data redundancy.

     

     

    All hard drives are one of two types, the failed ones and those poised to fail.

     

    There are no exceptions to this rule.

     

     

  • by MrJavaDeveloper,

    MrJavaDeveloper MrJavaDeveloper Dec 10, 2013 9:51 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas
    Level 1 (64 points)
    Dec 10, 2013 9:51 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas

    Fundamentally any SINGLE HD is 100% worthless regardless of mfg. due to the necessity of data redundancy.

     

     

    All hard drives are one of two types, the failed ones and those poised to fail.

     

    There are no exceptions to this rule.

     

     

     

    Technically, that's true of anything given enough time.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Dec 21, 2013 11:50 AM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Dec 21, 2013 11:50 AM in response to R.K.Orion

    R.K.Orion wrote:

     

    If anyone followed my other thread I had to prep a bunch of older units for re-sale, which we ended up selling to people in our own company. Anyway, when I was doing all the Mac laptops, it now occurs to me that all the drives were either Fujitsu, Hitachi, or Toshiba. That's from memory. I definitely remember Fujitsu and Hitachin and I think Toshiba as well. On some of the really, really old units found IBM.

     

    I don't think I remember seeing any WDs or anything shown in the "Seagate" family above.

     

    That's because Apple like every other PC/Computer manufacturer is a systems integrator and they sign contracts with providers to supply parts.  Whether that says anything about quality or not, who can tell. You can't judge quality by price. I can go to a local computer store and see WDs, Hitachi's, and Seagates all in various prices of basically the same range per GB. This kind of implies to me that price has nothing to do with Apple's parts choice.

  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas Dec 21, 2013 11:56 AM in response to ZV137
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    Dec 21, 2013 11:56 AM in response to ZV137

     

    ZV137 wrote:

     

    Whether that says anything about quality or not, who can tell.

     

    I can go to a local computer store and see WDs, Hitachi's, and Seagates all in various prices of basically the same range per GB. This kind of implies to me that price has nothing to do with Apple's parts choice.

     

     

    Apple uses HITACHI in Time Capsule and current non-retina macbook Pro, and Mac Mini   (some Toshiba)

     

    One of the few things the HD gurus will agree on in general are that 2.5" class Hitachi are the BEST, period.

     

    Most prosumer users here on the board will warn people to AVOID western digital consumer drives...and theyre right.

     

    WD black grade server drives are extremely good,....their consumer drives, no.

     

     

    Hitachi is the winner in hard drive reliability survey:

    Hitachi manufacturers the safest and most reliable hard drives, according to the Storelab study. Of the hundreds of Hitachi hard drives received, not a single one had failed due to manufacturing or design errors. Adding the highest average lifespans and the best relationship between failures and market share, Hitachi can be regarded as the winner.

     

     

     

     

    Technically, that's true of anything given enough time.

     

    Yes and no, but its extremely true of hard drives.

     


    Given the second law of thermodynamics, any and all current mfg. HD will, under perfect storage conditions tend themselves to depolarization and a point will be reached, even if the HD mechanism is perfect, that the ferromagnetic read/write surface of the platter inside the HD will entropy to the point of no viable return for data extraction. HD life varies, but barring mechanical failure, 3-8 years typically.

     

    General hard drive failure

    screenshot_565.jpg

    screenshot_566.jpg

  • by HuntsMan75,

    HuntsMan75 HuntsMan75 Feb 13, 2014 11:02 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Feb 13, 2014 11:02 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas

    Hi ther PlotinusVeritas:

     

    In the comment above you wrorte

    Hitachi is the winner in hard drive reliability survey:

    Hitachi manufacturers the safest and most reliable hard drives, according to the Storelab study. Of the hundreds of Hitachi hard drives received, not a single one had failed due to manufacturing or design errors. Adding the highest average lifespans and the best relationship between failures and market share, Hitachi can be regarded as the winner.

     

     

    Do you have a link to the article you got that from or maybe even some other studies or reports comparing brands and/or models?

     

    Thanks.

  • by R.K.Orion,

    R.K.Orion R.K.Orion Feb 14, 2014 11:30 AM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Feb 14, 2014 11:30 AM in response to HuntsMan75

    That piqued my curiosity too. I did a google for "Hitachi is the winner in hard drive reliability survey" and found no direct links. In fact, most are right back to this web site. I then took the words "Storelab" and "Hitachi" out of the opening sentences and got this links:

     

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability-storelab,2681-2.html

     

    The original Storelab article is in Russian (Storelab is Russian) which may explain why Googling for stuff in English yields no resutls. Tom's Hardware does a review of their report.

     

    You might be able to find an actual link or translation out there somewhere.

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 Mar 3, 2014 11:42 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Mar 3, 2014 11:42 AM in response to PlotinusVeritas

    Basically we now have 3 drive manufacturers left: Seagate, Western Digital, and Toshiba.

     

    Do any of these guys focus on SSDs? I think Seagate had a hybrid SSD/HD but I haven't seen such a thing from the other two.

     

    Even though SSD prices have dropped, for anyone needing large amounts of storage, an SSD won't cut. I also know some people who have had SSDs just wipe themselves out, almost like they reset all the flash memory chips to nulls, which makes me think you'ld have to be crazy to have an SSD without an HD backup. Of course some will argue you'ld have to be crazy to not have a backup, period, but face the facts, some people don't do it.

     

    I'd personally like to see desigers come up with more hybrids that can combine big storage with SSD speeds. Now that would be something.

  • by R.K.Orion,

    R.K.Orion R.K.Orion Mar 5, 2014 11:52 AM in response to ThomasB2010
    Level 1 (14 points)
    Mar 5, 2014 11:52 AM in response to ThomasB2010

    For hard drives to disappear you would need to see the price of SSDs drop to at least to twice what a regular HD would cost. You can find places selling 1TB Hitachi's for an estimated $55-$65, and OWC's lowest priced SSDs are costing $350 - $435 for 480MB.  If you scale that to a 1TB (1000/480)  price that gives equivalent prices of $729 and $906 respectively. Comparing my estimated price for the Hitachi, which may very well be TOO HIGH, not too low, the the costs of SSDs  using my price ranges are:

     

    729/55, or a factor of 13.25

    906/65, or a factor of 13.94

     

    In other words, you pay almost 13 to 14 times as much for an SSD.

     

    ....and right now, people think SSDs are cheap! A general rule of thumb here might be when the cost of the storage approaches or exceeds the cost of the computer itself, it's probably too pricey. The vast majority of people using computers are using Windows, and you can get one of them for a few hundred bucks.

  • by ZV137,

    ZV137 ZV137 Mar 6, 2014 11:36 AM in response to R.K.Orion
    Level 1 (54 points)
    Mar 6, 2014 11:36 AM in response to R.K.Orion

    IMHO purchasing an SSD at their current prices is unwarraneted. Unless your constantly running applications that read and write, literally non-stop, tons and tons of data between the drive and system, operationally the performce gains aren't there.

     

    First, most applications are semi-cached once loaded and executing them even with an old HD is fast. Second, with Mavericks you even have  compression which reduces swapping by retaining more in memory because even real memory is faster than an SSD.  Third, even though the HD is mechanical, generally they are quite reliable. Fourth, SSDs are a new and changing technology, as in  maybe not quite ready for prime time, IMHO. If you visit other sites like this you see tons of people having tons problems with SSDs.

     

    Problems with SSDs? Surely you jest?? No, surely I don't. Here are some of the things I've read about:

     

    • SSDs complelely wiping all their memory for no apparent reason.
    • Incorrectible bad blocks (OOOPS!!! Thought that wasn't supposed to happen)
    • SSDs slowing down incredibly even with TRIM and GC enabled
    • SSDs losing blocks prematurely
    • SSDs not cleaning up their bad blocks like they're supposed to.

     

    The only thing that impressesses me about an SSD is the speed at which it can load the OS. This is the favorite topic of virtually every SSD sales pitch video out there. Why don't they show, for example, Safari loading under an HD and under an SSD? Why? I'll tell you why. It's because the difference isn't that much. It probably wouldn't even be enough to tell in a video. In real operation, you rarely know the difference.

     

    Sorry guys, I'll stick with HDs. I go get coffee in the morning when I turn on my system so the razzle-dazzle of a fast load is something I'd never notice. I remember the "good 'ol days" when drive space was limited and I had to constantly be removing, cleaning up, and compressing stuff just to make sure I had enough free disk space. Now that's time consuming, and a lot slower than the speed benefits of an SSD.

     

    When SSDs get to the point where their reliabilty is proven beyond bounds, and I can get a 320GB one for say $75, get back to me. That would be worth looking into. Until then I'll let someone else be the Guinea pig.

  • by ThomasB2010,

    ThomasB2010 ThomasB2010 Mar 8, 2014 12:22 PM in response to ZV137
    Level 1 (13 points)
    Mar 8, 2014 12:22 PM in response to ZV137

    I don't understand the logic of drive manufacturers. On my home system I can load up Mavericks, Safari, and Mail, and the system is using about 2.3GB of RAM. That's for everything. There's no indication of swapping. Why don't manufacturers just store all the info used to load this stuff into on the HD controller (or better yet, SSD type stuff) by expanding the buffer to gigabytes instead of megabytes. If they could think up some type of GigaBuffer it could yield speeds exceeding SSDs and yet still allow terrabtye sizes. The write speeds on SSDs are slow compared to RAM, and they could put in routines to actually take stuff out of the GigaBuffer and put it onto the HD in the background.  In most cases this would outperform an SSD.

     

    I know some guys with SSDs that get heavy use and the controllers are having trouble  recognizing bad or marginal blocks and remapping them. Maybe these things are at end of life, I don't know, but it doesn't sound like the magical, problem free world so many people think they are entering.

  • by PlotinusVeritas,

    PlotinusVeritas PlotinusVeritas Mar 8, 2014 12:35 PM in response to HuntsMan75
    Level 6 (14,806 points)
    Mar 8, 2014 12:35 PM in response to HuntsMan75

    screenshot_838.jpg

    screenshot_836.jpg

     

     

     

     

    http://www.tomshardware.com/reviews/hdd-reliability-storelab,2681-4.html

     

     

     

     

    The original Storelab article is in Russian (Storelab is Russian)

     

     

    Yes, Im a Russian translator.

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