Mothra,

Get as much hard drive as you feel you can afford without breaking your budget.

Some alternatives: [link]

I take it your MacBook Pro has SATA?

Thanks, Daniel, and thanks for the links. So you're saying size matters and it's more important than speed? Apple does restrict what size drive can go in the MacBook Pro. I think the max is 320GB.

I do not have SATA. I have two external hard drives and each is connected directly to the computer by USB cable.

I find it hard to believe there would be a max drive capacity for the MacBook pro. Maybe a max physical size, but not a max HDD GB size. There may be some limitation I am not aware of.

Hmmm. See if you can find your model at everymac for us: [link]

Anyway, speed does help. 7800 rpm will feel faster, but not double fast. It all depends on the Gb/s rate.

Also a 7800 rpm drive would probably run hotter and use more power.

Remember, I'm working with an authorized Apple store so while it may be technically possible, Apple won't do it and I wouldn't know how. Plus I still have a year on my warranty and don't want to blow that.

Here's my machine - Apple MacBook Pro "Core Duo" 2.16 17" Specs (MA092LL/A). It was the first one with the dual processor.

So, remembering that you're talking to someone who asks these questions because I have no technical knowledge and I know people here do, let's try this question. If I'm adding a 1G memory chip in the slot that's currently empty that's identical to the one already installed and Apple says they have 3 hard drives I can choose from, the 200GB that runs at 7200 rpm or a standard 250 or 320 GB, which one will give me the best speed and performance? When I say speed, we're talking fewer whirling beachballs, not blazing speed for games.

Generally (and speaking without Mac-specific knowledge), the faster a hard drive spins, the faster data access will be.

When I say speed, we're talking fewer whirling beachballs

This is almost always due to lack of RAM. Going from 1GB to 2GB should help that a lot.

I doubt you'd be able to notice the difference between the 7200 rpm drive and the larger 5400 rpm ones, unless your doing something that does a lot of disk accesses, like some sorts of software development or some kinds of video editing.

Although, shouldn't she check the RAM buffer each drive offers? That would aid with speed of accessing, no?

so...i did the update for my itouch and the damn thing erased every single thing on my ipod. WTH? i am not amused and have spent the past hour or so attempting to reupload everything. now i need to get my playlists back in order.

apple is really not endearing themselves to me.

yep. My iPhone is not getting anywhere near my computer for updating for at least a week.