Western Digital Scorpio Blue 640 Drive draws too much power in a MacBookPro

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The RPM of the drive has nothing to do with its power requirements. The power requirements come from the power manager of the hard drive case in question. 7200 RPM hard drives can exist comfortably in a bus powered hard drive, so the real problem here is whether or not the hard drive case in question has a notebook port's power requirements or not.

I'll amend this, currently no notebook hard drive exceeds 500 GB. Rereading your post, I realized this is probably why your problem exists. Thus your 640 MB logically is not a notebook hard drive, and thus logically can't run on a notebook's power.

Hi Brody - what makes you think the 640Gb isn't a 'notebook' drive? I've a 640Gb one that's been in my Macbook Pro, although now it's in my Samsung Netbook.

The unit worked perfectly fine in my late 2008 unit? It's a 9.5mm unit that as far as I know adheres to the 2.5" SATA specifications? Like I say, worked fine in mine.

This is the unit in question: http://www.overclockers.co.uk/showproduct.php?prodid=HD-322-WD&groupid=701&catid =14&subcat=896

...or full specifications here: http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=683

Even WD's spec says 'Big Capacity for Mobile Computing'.

Personally I doubt whether this issue is with power - it's probably more to do with the random pausing that some machines experience with certain drives. I had it before I upgraded to an SSD back when I had a 500Gb 5400RPM Seagate Momentus for example - you can read about my experiences with there here: http://www.markc.me.uk/MarkC/Blog/Entries/2009/6/13Macbook_Pro_Hard_DiskUpgrade.html

I know that doesn't help the original poster that much unfortunately, but I don't think it's an issue with the drive being inherently incompatible with the Macbooks/Laptops as such. Saying that, the OP has a 2.33Ghz MBP and I don't think the pausing issues apply that far back, well not in the same manner anyways.

I must have missed their release. Still wish the 750 GB and 1 TB were 9.5 mm.

Oh well. Thank you for the update.

Aye, I hear you there! I'm constantly running out of room. I've a 128Gb SSD for performance, the 500Gb (previously the 640 before I shifted it) and a 500Gb external Firewire portable - and I still struggle for space.

Astonishing really.

With regards to the original poster's issue - I'd suggest popping it in an external USB cage if you need the storage as it's obviously not working properly internally for you. Unfortunate I know.

I assume the MBP is fully up to date for EFI/OS patches etc?

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It seems surprising to me that WD would say something like this about a drive that seems to be designed to be used in a portable computer such as a MBP. I hope that someone will be able to post a solution for you, as there wouldn't be much point in developing a 640 GB notebook drive if it couldn't be used in most notebook computers.

It may be worth checking it out with this utility, just to rule out any physical problem with the drive itself:

http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/32454

You can download the demo and run it several times for free.

I don't know if a 5400 RPM drive would seem slower than a 7200 RPM drive, but you should not be getting slow typing and a beach ball. My drive is a 4200 RPM and I never get anything like that.

Very likely not too many people have installed this drive, so it may be a while finding answers. It would be interesting to hear if Apple would say that your MBP "cannot manage the capacity and energy demand".

Mac RS4 seems to have used this drive successfully in both a MBP and a netbook. It makes me wonder why it is not working properly in your MBP. I hope you can find a solution here.

Good luck!

This news is quite dis-hearting because I'm currently in the process of cloning (using SD) to this very drive. I have 282GB to clone via USB and it's been 5 hours and 22 minutes and it's copied 253.3GB in that time. So once I put it in my MBP I'll be able to give some feedback.

I cloned a 500Gb unit to it overnight - following that it was fine. Like I say, it's now in my Netbook but it worked fine in my late 2008 MBP.

To respond to the 5400 vs 7200: On paper and in disk tests, the 5400 RPM WD is faster than the 7200 RPM Hitachi it's replacing.

The performance of a drive is only partly a function of rotational speed. Just as important is the areal density which determines how much data the drive is able to access on each rotation. Areal density is the product of track density, which is a measure of how tightly the concentric tracks on the disk are packed along an inch of the radius of the platter, and linear density which is a measure of how tightly the bits are packed within a length of track. With this in mind a 5400 rpm 500 GB HDD will likely be faster than a 320 GB 7200 rpm HDD.

Incidentally, I think asking for a replacement is your best option.

😉 cornelius

D/FW wrote:
This news is quite dis-hearting because I'm currently in the process of cloning (using SD) to this very drive. I have 282GB to clone via USB and it's been 5 hours and 22 minutes and it's copied 253.3GB in that time. So once I put it in my MBP I'll be able to give some feedback.

Well it's installed and really haven't seen the problems as you described (spinning beachball/slugish). However at times the drive does seem to slow down and speed up, but doesn't affect performance. The way I traced the speed variance was using AJA System Test ( http://www.aja.com/products/software/)

WD Blue 640GB in 15.4" MBP

69 write/70 read
74 write/ 75 read
65 write/68 read

The WD Blue 500GB HD in the same 15.4" MBP:

68 write/70 read
65 write/68 read
71 write/ 74 read

In my 13.3" MBP I also have a WD Blue 500GB HD and it's pretty consistent:

72 write/81 read
71 write/80 read
72 write/80 read

Im not sure about the numbers, maybe someone smarter than me can interpret it. But for now everything seems fine.

I haven't tested to see if battery life is affected......yet.

jdcineaste wrote:
Hi D/FW, thanks for your input. As far as AJA speed tests go, things are fine and the drive performs well/normally on my MBP. In everyday use (word processing, web surfing, etc) I'll notice a "lag" that wasn't there before, when I click on links, enter text (most noticeable), etc. And the the drive is clearly "throttling", i can hear it accelerate and decelerate.... the previous Hitachi drive i couldn't even hear!!!

Gotcha,

Here's what I did after cloning and installing the new drive.

1. Reset SMC
2. Reset PRAM
3. Repaired Permissions
4. Made sure the new drive is the startup disk. Go to "System Preferences" and select "Startup Disk" highlight the new drive and restart the computer.
5. Ran Disk Warrior to make repairs....had several to make by the way.
6. Ran "Disk Utility" "First Aid" and repaired the disk using the install DVD. Note: do NOT repair permissions using your install DVD.
7. Repeat #4 if needed.

If you do these thing you'll be happy and your computer will be happier.

I see the page that you linked to with the specs states:

+*Reliable and rugged - WD's ShockGuard technology protects the drive mechanics and platter surfaces from shocks. WD's SecurePark™ parks the recording heads off the disk surface during spin up, spin down, and when the drive is off. This ensures the recording head never touches the disk surface resulting in improved long term reliability due to less head wear, and improved non-operational shock tolerance.*+

Using drives with a built in equivalent of the MacBooks Sudden Motion Sensor can cause problems. You may want to try to disable the Sudden Motion Sensor in your MacBook and see if that helps:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1934

Hey,

I just want to add that I received my WD 640GB 2.5" HDD yesterday, installed Snow Leopard on it and I've noticed the same problems as described by the original poster. My Macbook is extremely sluggish and countless spinning wheels of death. I'll try to disable that "hard drive parking" and see where this leads to. I'll keep you posted. By the way, I ran Xbench with the WD 640GB HDD vs. my "old" 320 GB Seagate 7200.3 and it appears that the WD drive is about 20% faster in terms of reading and writing. So I guess there seems to be a driver issue which slows it down during everyday tasks... 😟