Macbook Pro
Macbook Pro Harddisk upgrade / replacement
18/10/08 10:45 Filed in: Macbook
Today I upgraded the harddisk in my
Macbook Pro 15”, from a 320GB 5400rpm to a 320GB 7200rpm drive.
This is a separate upgrade from the one that I have previously
wrote about, the idea behind this upgrade was to remove a
bottleneck with the 5400rpm drive and speed up the system as
opposed to gaining more space - even though more space is alway
good!
In fact, I saw that there is currently a 500GB 2.5” drive available and while I was sorely tempted, it only runs at 5400rpm, even so, I was still considering it but what decided it for me was that I released I dont have another 500GB drive available to clone it to, in order to make backups in the future.
At home I basically have the 1TB TC, which we are using with time machine but I also like to make clones using Superduper or Carboncopycloner, partly so that I have another type of backup to recover from, should the need arise, also so that I dont have all of my backups on the same HDD and finally because in an emergency, I could boot from the clone and work immediately, without having to wait for a restore to finish. Then afterwards I can restore either from the clone or the TC.
So that being said, I committed myself to the speed increase and decided to install the 7200rpm drive.
The hardest decision was deciding on the right 7200rpm, I had two under consideration, a Seagte Momentus 7200.3 drive and the Western Digital Scorpio 7200rpm drive. Price-wise there was little to separate them, the Seagate was marginally more expensive cost-wise but the amount was negligible.
I then started comparing the drives specifications, first I examined the benchmarks on Toms Hardware and the reviews for the two drives. Here it seems that the Seagate is slightly faster than the Scorpio, so at the beginning I was leaning more towards the Seagate but again the difference between the two was only slight.
Reading further though I came to power consumption and here although the Seagate idles at a lower power rate than the Scorpio, during usage, the Scorpio has the lowest rating, so essentially, while watching movies or using the computer, the battery should take less of a hit, which really appealed to me.
I went through the rest of the specifications and the difference between the two on paper is really quite small, in fact both companies even offer a 5 year warranty, which also would have been a deciding factor.
Having gone through the articles at Toms Hardware, I went to each of the manufacturers sites and examined the specs for the drives there, the warranties and so on but did not see anything to change my decision. One thing that you should be aware of though, at least with the Western Digital drive is that it comes in two versions, one with a motion sensor built in, one without. According to some reports I read on the internet, the motion sensor in the drive can conflict with the motion sensor in the Macbook Pro, though I dont think that anyone has determined this one hundred percent for sure yet. Either way, it makes sense logically that if you can avoid areas of conflict its a good idea so I chose the drive without the motion sensor - these drives have BEKT in the serial number so you can tell.
Now all that was left was to perform the installation itself.
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In fact, I saw that there is currently a 500GB 2.5” drive available and while I was sorely tempted, it only runs at 5400rpm, even so, I was still considering it but what decided it for me was that I released I dont have another 500GB drive available to clone it to, in order to make backups in the future.
At home I basically have the 1TB TC, which we are using with time machine but I also like to make clones using Superduper or Carboncopycloner, partly so that I have another type of backup to recover from, should the need arise, also so that I dont have all of my backups on the same HDD and finally because in an emergency, I could boot from the clone and work immediately, without having to wait for a restore to finish. Then afterwards I can restore either from the clone or the TC.
So that being said, I committed myself to the speed increase and decided to install the 7200rpm drive.
The hardest decision was deciding on the right 7200rpm, I had two under consideration, a Seagte Momentus 7200.3 drive and the Western Digital Scorpio 7200rpm drive. Price-wise there was little to separate them, the Seagate was marginally more expensive cost-wise but the amount was negligible.
I then started comparing the drives specifications, first I examined the benchmarks on Toms Hardware and the reviews for the two drives. Here it seems that the Seagate is slightly faster than the Scorpio, so at the beginning I was leaning more towards the Seagate but again the difference between the two was only slight.
Reading further though I came to power consumption and here although the Seagate idles at a lower power rate than the Scorpio, during usage, the Scorpio has the lowest rating, so essentially, while watching movies or using the computer, the battery should take less of a hit, which really appealed to me.
I went through the rest of the specifications and the difference between the two on paper is really quite small, in fact both companies even offer a 5 year warranty, which also would have been a deciding factor.
Having gone through the articles at Toms Hardware, I went to each of the manufacturers sites and examined the specs for the drives there, the warranties and so on but did not see anything to change my decision. One thing that you should be aware of though, at least with the Western Digital drive is that it comes in two versions, one with a motion sensor built in, one without. According to some reports I read on the internet, the motion sensor in the drive can conflict with the motion sensor in the Macbook Pro, though I dont think that anyone has determined this one hundred percent for sure yet. Either way, it makes sense logically that if you can avoid areas of conflict its a good idea so I chose the drive without the motion sensor - these drives have BEKT in the serial number so you can tell.
Now all that was left was to perform the installation itself.
Read More...
Macbook Pro Harddisk / DVD Drive replacement and upgrade
17/07/07 11:52 Filed in: Macbook
Ive finally finished the last (for now) of the upgrades to my first gen core duo Macbook Pro and I have to admit that I'm quite happy at the moment.
The first upgrade was a few weeks ago, when I exchanged the superdrive that came with the laptop for another one, specifically an 8x speed, dual-layer burner (a step up from the 4x burner that came with the Macbook). The model is a HL-DT-ST DVD +- RW GWA4080M, which I found on eBay and is supposedly an authentic Apple replacement part (the sticker on the drive has the Apple logo on it). So far the drive has been working fine, Im playing with the idea of upgrading the firmware on it but on the other hand I'm thinking, if its not broken... I guess I need to do some more research first.
My second upgrade was a new hard drive - I installed the Western Digital Scorpio 250GB WD2500BEVS-11UST0, it formats to around 232GB which is still a big jump from the standard 100GB drive that came pre-installed.
I performed both upgrades following the guide available on www.ifixit.com which was a great help. There were a couple of points that they missed in the case of the hard drive installation though.
The first is that the bluetooth module is stuck to the side of the case with glue. This matters because the module is next to the drive and you need to be able to lift it up in order to get at the screws to remove the drive. A credit card or some other similar tool that you can slide down between the bluetooth module and the case in order to break the bond should do the trick.
The second issue is that you will need a Torx 7 screwdriver to remove the supporting struts from the original pre-installed hard drive, you will need to mount these onto your new drive to ensure that it stays snug and doesn't bounce around.
Neither of these are major sticking points but I thought Id share them with you so if there are any brave souls out there planning to do this you'll know what to expect.
For me both of the updates took 45 minutes to 1 hour but that was because I was being incredibly careful about it, I took time so that I wouldnt scratch the case, I made a labeled diagram and placed the screws on it in the correct location so Id know where to put them back later and so on. I think the extra care was worth it as both of the upgrades worked first time.
Afterwards I created a 170GB partition for OS X and a 62GB partition where I installed Windows Vista - but I'll save that for a later post.
Any questions let me know...
