Hitachi HTS721010 A9E630 Travelstar 7 K1000 1000 GB HARDDRIVE 2.5 Serial ATA

1. Choosing a drive:I spent a lot of time looking for a replacement drive for my 'Early 2011' 17" MacBook Pro' as the original 500Gb 7200rpm drive had run out of space.Most of the research I did was spent trying to decide whether to go for an SSD, a hybrid drive or this one as a primary drive (I may add a second drive in the superdrive bay at a later date, but that's a different issue).At the time of purchase, this drive was £65 and an equivalent sized SSD £400. In the end, I was so happy with the speed of my original 7200rpm drive, even when it was full, that I decided the massive difference in price between an SSD and this bargain-priced drive was not justifiable. My decision was finalised when a friend happened to use my Mac and appeared impressed by the speed of a 2 year old machine with a full HDD, questioning the move to SSD. From full shut down, my system is fully functioning in less than 2 minutes and manages all but the most demanding tasks with relative ease. There are some users who move a lot of large files around or spend their time primarily editing video, who may benefit from SSD technology, but for me, an occasional photo editor, internet surfer and document writer etc, this drive is more than adequate. I was also put off by some users who had various difficulties updating the firmware etc. on the Crucial SSD M500 drives before they would work properly in a Mac, which sounded like a lot of hassle and headache.2. The Drive in Use:I have been using the drive for 2 weeks now and am very pleased with the upgrade. It is similar to the speed of my old drive, with possibly slightly faster operation due to the larger 32MB cache and 6Gb/s interface, as opposed to the 16MB cache and 3Gb/s of my older drive. It is only very slightly louder than the stock Mac drive: I never was able to hear my old drive at any time (which actually was disconcerting at times as I find it helpful to know when there is a lot of drive activity in a computer, especially when it seems to be unresponsive), but I do hear the faintest drive noise from this one as it operates. Still very, very quiet though. I haven't noticed any increased heat production or significant reduction in battery life, which were also concerns, (unfounded or not... I haven't tried one), with using a hybrid. I have a lot of faith in these Travelstar drives, as it was the only one of several drives that worked flawlessly in my PS3; I placed one in my PS3 a couple of years ago and it still is going strong. Incidentally, the stock Mac drive also is a HGST, the same brand as this one!3. Moving your system onto the drive:Another aspect of replacing the drive, which consumed many hours, was finding the best way to transfer my system onto the new drive. Most people seem to clone the drive, but I wanted to perform a fresh install of OSX and transfer all my documents and settings following this. I thought I would describe this below as I found it difficult to find this information on the internet.I bought an external USB hard disk caddy, which I am now using to house my old drive and therefore act now as a backup drive.The data transfer process with OSX Mavericks was fairly simple. You just go to Mavericks in the Mac App store and, if you already have that OS installed, you can click 'download' and it will download the Mavericks installer into your app folder. Once this is fully downloaded, you run it and can instruct it to perform a fresh install onto your new disk (formatted to 'Mac OS Extended (journalled)' in disk utility first), connected via USB in its caddy. Once this completes (took a couple of hours to download the installer and approx. 20 minutes to install it on the new drive), your Mac will restart and boot from the new drive. The new drive then acts as a fresh Mac system, while your old drive in your computer lies dormant. I then used 'migration assistant' in utilities to transfer all of my documents and settings onto the new drive. As I transferred around 400Gb, this took around 7 hours.Following this, I had almost a full clone of my existing system, without having to mess around with any cloning software. I also think the fresh install may have increased the speed of my system a little. The only thing I did notice with this method, which may not happen in a full clone, is that some services required me to fill in my login details and password, as if I had never used them before. However, once I did this, all my previous settings and data were present in all the apps. Everything, including Aperture 3 and iTunes, with their relevant libraries, appear to be working flawlessly. Apps are updating normally from the App store and now I would not know that my system is 'fresh' if I did not know a new drive had been installed.After the migration was complete, it was a case of opening my MacBook and swapping the drive from the caddy with the original drive and rebooting. (there are numerous, easy to follow guides on the internet and YouTube about this; note that you will need some small cross-headed screwdrivers to open your casing and a T6 Torx screwdriver to replace the drive). I found this fairly simple and took 5 minutes, with the right tools.Hope this helps to save others time making the decision and installing the drive.I'll post an update in a few months about the drive's performance.UPDATE: December 2015-----------------------------------As well as putting one of these in my MacBook Pro, I also put one into my wife's laptop.After almost exactly 2 years of normal use, hers failed yesterday. Mine is still going, although it has had very light use as, (like I mention above), a few months after I wrote my review I got a deal on a 1TB Samsung EVO SSD for my primary drive and use this drive as a backup now, sitting in the modded Superdrive bay.I'm glad now that I wrote this review as I'll be using it again to install another drive into her laptop. Went for a Seagate Expansion 2TB this time, hopefully it will last longer than 2 years! So disappointed.UPDATE: January 2016--------------------------------Falsely accused! After replacing this drive with another in my wife's laptop, I discovered that the problem was not the drive, but the drive cable, as the new drive also failed to function. Apparently this is a problem known to her 2012 Macbook pro. After replacing the drive cable, her MacBook now works fine. This drive still refused to function, but after a full format, is now working again successfully as a backup drive. When the hard drive cable failed, it must have corrupted the drive.I wouldn't buy this drive now, though, as I've found that buying a drive in a caddy is actually cheaper than buying these standalone drives, even though it's the same drive inside! Just got a Seagate Expansion 2TB for around £60, prised open the caddy with a scalpel and installed it in my laptop. Working like a dream. The equivalent standalone 2TB drive was around £80! Crazy logic.

I have been looking for an upgrade option for the PS4's standard HDD, and this one fits the bill perfectly. Simple to swap the drives over with no issues fitting into the HDD caddy inside the PS4Performance Wise, it is quicker to boot up the system, and game installs seems quicker too. No noticeable noise or additional heat for that matter.Great value upgrade path, and works perfectly.

I replaced my 500GB PS4 HDD with one of these.The HDD I recieved only had around 860GB, but this will vary with most hard drives.Scrolling through menus feels a little snappier thanks to the higher RPM, but I haven't noticed massive improvements in loading times.Considering the price, I would definitely recommend this HDD as a great upgrade for the PS4, but keep in mind that you probably won't get the full 1TB.

Bought this drive to replace the 500GB Hitachi in my 2012 MacBook Pro.This is faster by what appears to be a factor or 2. Probably not so in a proper bench test, but to the casual eye, Excel opens in half the time and some of my bigger spreadsheets open far quicker too.This is a quiet drive when the laptop is on my lap - haven't put my ear next to it but why would I?Can't say I notice any more heat from it either. In my last MBP I bought a 7200rpm drive and that too speeded up my computer, but I did notice the fans being on a lot. Not so with this one.Haven't done a startup test but I'm never around watching it start up anyway.For general day to day use as my main drive, I'm very happy. Was considering the Seagate XT with the SSD combo which is more expensive. Read reviews on that and got conflicting advice. Can't say which is faster, but I CAN say that I don't care if the Seagate is faster because this is as fast as I need.Haven't done any big tests like ripping or converting a movie, but as I wouldn't sit around watching that anyway, I don't really care if this drive can be beaten cos I bet it won't be beaten by much.For general use, this is excellent and well worth the extra few pounds for a faster drive.

Bought this just a week ago to replace my PS4 stock drive and so far so good! Double storage, a nice and at times noticeable boost in read speed and a reasonable price to boot!Easy and fast installation too, literally just a few screws to physically change the drive. Please do follow a guide though when installing a new drive to be 100% safe and to not damage your drive or console!Great product!