Can I put a 7200 RPM hard drive in my MacBook Pro?

Solution 1:

No, no, no and no.

Have fun with the 7200 rpm drive of your choice. Mac drive mounting hardware is excellent and the drive screws are standard sized. Unless you get a drive with exotic firmware or physically too large to fit, there will be no issues relating to design. Only a faulty drive (or failing Mac) will cause issues.

Simple physics means a 7200 RPM drive has to generate more heat than a 5400 RPM drive, but in practice, this is well within a normal Mac's ability to cool - even when you never let the drive spin down - something else like CPU load will be needed to get the internal fan to spin up.