News, info, and opinion by Mac users, for Mac users.

May 4, 2007

hardware

There are drive sizes and then there are drive sizes

Posted May. 4, ’07, 6:32 AM PT by Derik DeLong
Category | Hardware

Fujitsu You can, for the most part, pick essentially any SATA notebook drive when you want to upgrade your MacBook/Pro’s drive. It’s an almost trivial operation for MacBook owners. Recently, Fujistu released some rather large drives for laptops (coming in 200 GB, 250 GB, and 300 GB varieties). Despite a lower RPM rating, these larger drives tend to perform well due to aerial density and pack enough storage size to rival desktop machines.

However, these drives also carry another important stat that any potential buyers need to pay attention to. The size in height is 3mm greater than typical drives of late. That may not matter in some laptops, but it definitely matters in a MacBook. They’re 2mm too big. That’s a real bummer.

So, dear reader, double check this before you decide to do your own upgrade.

[via Xlr8yourmac]


1 Comments

Tom Lee said:

The article provides a valuable warning. Not everyone would have known this in advance. One very minor nit: It's not "aerial density" (aerial refers to, well, air). It's "areal density," as it refers to the number of bits per area. Pronounced the same, spelled differently.

May 4, 2007 10:26 AM

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