MacBook – Apple Sudden Motion Sensor and Hard Drive Upgrade

I assume you are aware of the Shareware tools (Like the five mentioned in this article).

In any case, since you want the free option, you will have to rely in your common sense and the tools you have (this is also true for the Shareware options, which really don’t seem to add much at this stage). Most of the benefit of TechTool Pro and DiskWarrior is to have am emergency plan in place in case of hard drive failure. But that is to be done before the problem :)

Back to your case, I suggest you give Onyx a try to check the status of your HDD’s Smart status. Assuming you don’t hear strange noises in the drive, performing a full Clone to an external drive using Carbon Copy Cloner would provide you with an important piece of information: the computer can read your entire drive, block by block.

Both Onyx and OS X can verify your volume so I suggest you also perform a verify (using Disk Utility for example) and verify your permissions.

Finally, use AppleJack to execute some of the above tests to make sure that the OS is in Single User.

If after performing all of the above, you see nothing “out of the ordinary”, you don’t hear “strange click noises” or you don’t detect any strange slowness in your drive, you can assume that the drive has not suffered any damage.

But, all things said, I’d keep my backups up2date just in case. (You do have backups, don’t you?)

I’ve had drives fall from a desktop to the floor and survive for years without any problems, and some drives tipped 0.5 inches and instantly died. Hard drives are like unicorns. :)

I don't know about the 7200, but my mid-2010 MBP has the following (from system profiler):

Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02:

  Capacity: 500.11 GB (500,107,862,016 bytes)
  Model:    Hitachi HTS545050B9SA02                 
  Revision: PB4AC60W
  Native Command Queuing:   Yes
  Queue Depth:  32
  Removable Media:  No
  Detachable Drive: No
  BSD Name: disk0
  Rotational Rate:  5400
  Medium Type:  Rotational

I too had trouble with noise and vibration with a Seagate Momentus XT (the hybrid drive). After reinstalling the stock drive it's quiet and vibration free again.