I bought a 500Gb 2.5 inch Western Digital Scorpio Blue with the intent on sticking it in my MacBook Pro. To give it a a bit of a test run first I put it into a “G2 Mini Combo – USB 2.0/FireWire 400/800” external case from Zytech.
Formatted it with lots of Zeroes, copied the MBP’s contents onto it. And noticed that by this stage it was literally too hot to touch.
Checking out the data sheets shows that it’s maximum operating temperature is 60 degrees C. It requires 2.5W for read/write, 0.85W at idle, 0.25W at Standby and 0.1W in sleep. I’m guessing that the drive currently inside the MBP is a Fujitsu MHY2200bh drive with 1.9W read/write, 0.6W at idle, and 0.13W in Standby and Sleep. Maximum temperature is 55 degrees C.
Unfortunately the SMART utilities like smartmontools don’t seem to let me grab drive temperature information when it’s in an external FireWire case. So I’d have to install it in order to find out more about it…
So the question is, will installing the drive inside the MBP fry the machine or the drive? Will the fan run continuously? Will the machine be way too hot to put on your lap? Or will I be forced to use the drive externally? (I know of one person who’s had the same drive installed in their MBP, but haven’t had any adverse affects)
I note that the largest BTO drive Apple offers in MacBooks is 320Gb. Is that because they’re the only drive to run cool enough?