First Report/Benchmarks of WD 1TB Scorpio HD in Unibody MacBook Pro
Posted: Mar 10, 2010
(Updated Mar. 11 to add drive/mtg photos)
(from a reader mail on Mar 9th)
"Hi Mike, Just got my 1TB WD Scorpio drive installed in my 1st gen (late 2008) 2.8GHz unibody MacBook Pro. It is a 4k (sector) drive, it has the Advanced Format description on the label. I can get a pic tonight if you want one.
(Reader FYI - the Feb 15th news page had a post on WD's new 'Advanced Format' drives (4KB sectors vs 512 byte) that also linked to their Doc about Advanced Format drives and Advanced Format Align Utility which they note as not required for OS X.-Mike)
The drive was easy to put in but it now is flush with the battery due to thickness, the cable was a little tough to put in beside the drive. Had to tuck it in, but it eventually fit.

(As mentioned before, being 12.5mm high it can fit in Unibody MacBook/Pros but for the pre-Unibody MacBook Pros, only the 17in can fit 12.5mm high Hard Drives. And the Mini as far as I know still can't take 12.5mm high HDs.-Mike)
I have heard no clicking noises yet. The drive is audible when spinning and reading, but you really have to get your ear close. I migrated from a 640GB WD, and the Aperture trick worked. (ref: a MBP owner's Aperture User's Speedup Tip) Having the Aperture library as one file, not fragmented has really sped things up plus the swap space is not fragmented. One bounce and it is up.
Here is Xbench from nothing but 10.6.2 installed fresh. (Of course every time you run XB, it comes out different.)
Xbench Version 1.3
System Version 10.6.2 (10C540)
Physical RAM 4096 MB
Model MacBookPro5,1
Drive Type WDC WD10TPVT-00HT5T0
Disk Test 54.63 (overall score)
Sequential 104.58
Uncached Write 134.89 - 82.82 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 125.83 - 71.19 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 60.30 - 17.65 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 158.63 - 79.73 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 36.97
Uncached Write 13.80 - 1.46 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 121.08 - 38.76 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 54.90 - 0.39 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 108.28 - 20.09 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Here are some more tests using Kona (AJA System Test)
Hope this helps someone. Anything else let me know.
Thanks, Rob"
I welcome other WD Scorpio 1TB owner feedback - let me know your experience (performance, noise, any issues seen, etc.) and include your Mac model/series/OS and if you have Drive Sleep enabled or not in Energy Saver. If you've done any benchmarking that's also welcome. Thanks.
[BTW - after all the problem reports since the Mid-2009 MacBook Pros/EFI firmware update 1.7 was released (ref: this long long Apple forum thread on the subject), let me know if your MacBook Pro is that series/using that firmware update. Some posts in that thread mentioned replacing the SATA cable, forcing SATA I mode, etc. but none of those seems to have been a universal fix for everyone affected.]
FYI: There's a previous page here with Feedback/tips, etc. on WD 750GB and 640GB Scorpios in Macbooks/MBP/Minis.
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