The Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 HTS547550A9E384 HDD can add a massive 500GB storage boost to many different types of devices. This 500GB capacity is packed into a slim 2.5-inch form factor. This makes it a great hard disk for laptops and netbooks. Shop for Mac external hard drives at Best Buy. Compare and read customer reviews to purchase the Apple hard drive that fits your needs. Discover the world of SSD Hard Drives for Mac. Compare models and options for the office or home and shop online.

The Mac Pro has a specific hard drive for sale in the Apple Store for $549.00. The drive has the following specs:

• Serial ATA
• 3GB per second
• 7200 RPM

Amazon has a hard drive with the same specs for $169.99.

The only difference I can tell is that the Apple hard drive label says it has 'Apple HDD Firmware'. What exactly is the benefit of this firmware and is there something I am missing that make up for the price difference in these two drives?

Update: My initial comparison between the two drive was unfair. Apparently 2TB drives that are 3 GB/S and 7200 RPM are quiet a bit more than $169.99. Dell has a 2 TB SATA Caviar Black from Western Digital that is $319.99, which is closer to Apple's price.

Nate KoppenhaverMichael ShnitzerMichael Shnitzer

5 Answers

Ususall they are stock drives (I know folks who have replaced drives in MacBoo/Pro and I have replaced iMac drives). This link also suggests this is possible with the Mac/Pro.

I personally once had a problem with replacing a drive in a Lenovo laptop, because there Lenovo used a Hitachi drive with a specific BIOS extension (in that case a drive bios to handle phyiscal shock situations), but I never heard of such a thing with Apple, and I have followed the Apple support forums for months last year.

In any case, jump over to the Apple Support forum ... folks there are very helpful about such questions.

With the original drive you may just pay for a sticker or a bit of extra quality assurance. I know of one maker of SSDs who sells the very same drive with an 'Apple ready' sticker for a few extra bucks.

(Also about your update: The Apple drive could very likely be a Caviar Black, they put those in the upscale iMacs too).

There isn't any difference.

I have replaced a lot of stock Apple drives with standard OEM drives - the only thing is Apple buys them in bulk and there is a little Apple logo on the sticker.

I have not noticed any other sort of difference.

William HilsumWilliam Hilsum

The firmware is usually a custom version, which won't ever change without the blessing of Apple Engineering (Sun Microsystems does much the same thing).

For example, the following update applied to Apple-branded drives only (although retail drives could have probably used it, the updater checked for the presence of the Apple-specific firmware first):

AlexAlex

Though I can't be 100% sure, it looks to me like one of the features of 'Apple'd' drive is some sort of quiet mode - the head makes much less noise comparing to exactly same drive directly from manufacturer. I suspect this would also affect performance, but cannot confirm this.

I can tell you for a fact that you will have problems with non apple drives.The apple firmware to which they refer is to do with temperature sensing. Early imacs used an external sensor glued to the body shell of the hard drive. On later models apple used the internal sensor of apple drives and exited it through spare pins on the drive. No problem so far. However on the very latest drives from about 2013 onwards the sensing was still inside the drive but exited the drive in the firmware data stream. A replacement non apple drive will not have this feature. If the drive looks identical , one way around it is to swap the PCB from the original drive ( providing that the PCB is not at fault) and fitting it to the new non apple drive. There are also a few in line adapter that fool the mac in to thinking that it has an original drive but by the time you add the cost on to the purchased drive you may as well buy from apple.Peter

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Product Information

• The Hitachi Travelstar 5K750 HTS547550A9E384 HDD can add a massive 500GB storage boost to many different types of devices. This 500GB capacity is packed into a slim 2.5-inch form factor. This makes it a great hard disk for laptops and netbooks. With an interface adapter, you can also use this in machines that require a larger type of device.Get any of the information you have stored and save information quickly with the 7-pin SATA connection. The drive's 5400 RPM spindle speed translates into low latency performance. The unit boasts an average seek time of about 12ms because of the high rotation. Each platter in the HTS547550A9E384 chassis has received a low-level advanced format, which has increased physical sector sizes to 4KB. This sector size update improves storage capacity and even improves compatibility with some file systems.Improved error correction abilities take all of the guesswork out of marking bad blocks on the HTS547550A9E384. Whenever your software drivers indicate a write check failure, the SATA controller makes a note of the physical location where the error occurred. After moving the data to a safe location on the hard drive, the SATA hardware marks the block as bad. You won't even have to do any work. The hard drive does it all automatically, which dramatically reduces the risk of data loss.Since this HGST compatible drive has a fast 8MB buffer, you could also use it as a mobile external volume. It fits any standard adapter, so you can plug this hard drive into an enclosure and then use it via a USB port. If you'd rather use it inside of a computer or mobile device, then this class of drives comes complete with an internal enclosure for this application. An attached copyright label also displays the cylinder and sector counts on top, taking the guesswork out of installation.Since it's compatible with so many different BIOS and UEFI configurations, this is the perfect drive if you want to dual-boot OS X and Windows 7 on an Apple machine. You can install OS X or mac iOS Sierra in a primary partition, and then put another OS in the next one. Hitachi tested the volume to make sure it was compatible with Apple Boot Camp. Since this drive features such a wide array of hardware support, it, by extension, will support all libraries needed to run games on Windows.Many game consoles also support the Travelstar. Hitachi made sure to test this disk with the FAT32 file system. Game systems often need volumes with 32-bit file allocation tables to store game and save file data. While Windows usually doesn't allow users to make huge FAT32 partitions, the manufacturer has ensured that this drive is compatible with third-party tools to make it work with your game system. If your game console supports storing shows and movies as computer files, then you can use this volume to backup all of those video files. It can even store console DRM data so you won't have to deal with digital rights errors when viewing playback.

Ipod Touch A1574 User Manual

Product Identifiers

• Hitachi
• 0J11561
• 0829686001756
• Travelstar 5K750
• 110760528

Product Key Features

• 8MB
• 500GB
• 5400RPM

Dimensions

• 3.6lbs.
• 2.8in.
• 0.4in.
• 3.9in.

Additional Product Features

5k750 500

• eSATA-300
• PC Products
• 2.5'
• Thermal Flyheight Control (TFC)
• Internal
• HDD