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

I always start from scratch with new drives and still have the issue so they are wrong as far as this particular issue is concerned

Can anybody confirm whether the same problem occurs if you run Windows via Bootcamp?

The 500gb Hitachi drive works like a charm. No problems experienced at all. I'm done with wd.... that's my solution.

In that case, I am going to order an Hitachi drive today. I have wasted too much time on this already.

casho can you report back too if you do the same?

Brian, you can confirm that this issue exists for you on a MBP 4,1 (Early 2008) with the Samsung Spinpoint M7E 640GB?

Sorry, I have a 5,4 mid 2009 series. However I believe I had the same problem with the samsung. Plus it drew alot of power

I should have been more specific. Which of the issues that have been discussed on this thread did you have with the Samsung?

I'm not having the excessive parking issue to the point where I can detect a lag. OTOH, the load cycle is climbing at anywhere between 150-250 per hour.

The old Hitachi the MBP came with (Apple logo/firmware, obviously) had over a million load cycles with hourlies that run out to about 100 cycles an hour, so I'm inclined to just let this go.

I have not noticed an excessive power draw with the Samsung. I intend to monitor this over the next few days/weeks.

I have a Hitachi 500GB sitting in an unopened box and I might try that out over the weekend but I'm starting to believe from Googling that excessive load cycles on all HDDs are just something Mac users have to live with. You know how it goes with Apple - user-facing issues, they deal with quickly. Stuff like this that only geeks care about and the average user won't understand, they're slow on the draw about for no other reason that DO care aren't the type to swap this set of issues for another ( nix/Win).

Okay, as stated in the previous post, earlier last night and today, had the 640GB Samsung Spinpoint M7E HM641JI in my early 2008 MBP (4,1). Tried various "fixes" with to avail with Load Cycles averaging about 150 per hour.

Pulled the Samsung, installed a 500GB Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B HTS545050B9A300 earlier today. 56 Load Cycles and holding for the last hour.

Considered the Seagate Momentus but from Googling, turns out it has the same issue of excessive load cycling.

Kind of a shame because the extra 140GB would have come in handy.

To put a little perspective on this, the original Apple cert drive I replaced is a Hitachi 5K250 HTS542525K9SA00 that had over 1.2 million load cycles at about 12,000 hours, averaging just about 100 per hour over two years.

So from what I gather from testing and everyone's reporting for 500GB+ drives, WD, Samsung, Seagate are potentially early drive deaths waiting to happen. Hitachis, so far, are the only ones that don't have this potential issue.

Anyone try the WD 500GB/640GB with Advanced Format Technology yet? Considered this, but I need to run XP natively for certain applications so this was a no go for me.

Hi,

I have removed my WD 640gb drive after trying all the fixes recommended on this forum, such as

- Snow Leopard Cache Cleaner ((SLCC) - this worked to a degree)
- HPADM (stopped the disk slow downs and the excessive cycle count)
- rebuilt my system from scratch (thanks Carbon Copy Cloner)

plus I am sure a few others I cant remember.

So I trimmed by disk consumption by 100gb and bought a Hitachi 500gb 7200rpm drive (HTS725050A9A364), as recommended by a few contributors.

The machine is now performing like it used to with near instantaneous response times and no slow downs.

I think the SLCC software is worth getting to keep the system in tune, although I am sure there are a few alternatives out there.

I have noticed a drop in battery life by about 30% but I was aware this would happen going for the faster 7200rpm model. However I mainly leave this machine plugged into my 24" display on power.

Now the big question is do I try to flog the WD 640gb drive on eBay or keep it in the hope that Apple sort the issues.

Anyone interested in buying it, or have suggestions on what to do with it?

Thanks for all the posts everyone as I was thinking I need to stump up for an i5 MBP. Its good to get feedback from everyone trying to sort similar issues.

Cheers
Eric

have suggestions on what to do with it?

$15 USB external enclosure for another backup or more storage.

Hi guys, have been following this thread for what seems like forever, have late 2008 unibody Macbook and have already tried the WD 500Gb drive with same awful results as other here. Ready to have another go now so you guys who have found nirvana with the Hitachi 500Gb I would be very grateful for an update... did you go 5400 or 7200? Are the load cycles ok? Quiet? Not too much vibration? I love the little 150Gb drive in my Macbook as you can't hear it or feel it and it just works, no spinning beach balls - but it's nearly full! Don't want to mess up the Mac experience for extra space though 🙂

Hi,

I bought the 7200 version of the 500gb Hitachi Travelstar.

I am very happy with the performance of the drive. I dont get the spinning beachball anymore, except where I am loading the system (eg. opening 3 photoshop docs simultaneously, or using a virtual machine).

No halts when scrolling through Safari pages etc.

The 7200 certainly draws more power than any previous disk I have had installed but I knew this would be the case. I think the 5400 would be a bette option this this worries you.

The total runtime for the disk is 113 hours and the load cycle count is 22. I am not sure how good this is, but the WD 640 had 52,201 in 381 hours.

So a good bet at this stage.

Cheers
Eric

The

I put the 5200 rpm in mine (identical macbook to yours) and it has been working beautifully. Quiet, reasonably fast (like the original drive was). I grabbed mine for under $100 at best buy for what it's worth.

Sorry, 5400rpm....battery life is pretty much the same as with the stock drive (similar power consumption).