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Biggest Hard Drive for Macbook Pro?

The Flashing Fi said:
It's a form factor. They are all the same size physically in length, width, and height.
Click to expand...

No they're not. 2.5" refers to the platter diameter. There's no specification that requires them to be a fixed length, width, and height.

Most are the same width and length, but not all are the same height, which is why previous large drives (with three platters) did not fit in the MacBook Pro.

The WD one is two platters and should be short enough to fit in the MBP.
 
For those of us not very tech savvy...is it a good idea to change the drive ourselves on the MBP or have some authorized Apple tech guy do it for a price? :confused:

I haven't gotten a Mac yet since I'm waiting to see what's in store for Macworld, but I would love to have a massive hard drive and not pay $250 for a 250GB upgrade Apple offers....
 
Since there won't be an apple store where I live at until Fall 2008, is this an easy task to accomplish by myself? I've installed an extra harddrive in a PC before, but I've never replaced a harddrive, and I'm not looking to lose any data.

With the new Time Machine included with Leopard, how would I back up my information? My guess is that you back it up to the external HD, and once you install the new HD, you install a fresh copy of Leopard, and use Time Machine to restore everything (including files and the OS) from the backup HD. Is that the best way to go?
 
jmpmntwnty3 said:
Since there won't be an apple store where I live at until Fall 2008, is this an easy task to accomplish by myself? I've installed an extra harddrive in a PC before, but I've never replaced a harddrive, and I'm not looking to lose any data.

With the new Time Machine included with Leopard, how would I back up my information? My guess is that you back it up to the external HD, and once you install the new HD, you install a fresh copy of Leopard, and use Time Machine to restore everything (including files and the OS) from the backup HD. Is that the best way to go?
Click to expand...

I just did my MBP 17 a few days ago and it was a little intense. About 40 or so screws have to come out and some brackets and what not. I think as long as you are very gentle and take your time you will be fine.

As far as the restore you don't need to even install Leopard. Just pop in the upgrade or install disk for Leopard and tell it to restore, copies it all back for you. Personally I would not go with the 5400 RPM drive if you can help it. I just upgraded from my old 120 gig 5400 that came with the machine to a 200 gig 7200 and it is much better. Really can notice a difference right away. Keep your system drive at 7200 and use an external in my opinion.
 
I ordered the Western Digital Passport 320GB drive - for $229 - the inside drive is the same and for $10 I get a decent USB case for my "old" 160GB drive I'm replacing. (Opening the passport is screw-less, it just snaps open..)

I was going to try and find someplace to do the installation for me but opted to give it a go myself - the step by step instructions I found here were perfect and helped with every step.. In all there were 27 screws.

The hardest part of the upgrade was getting the top cover re-aligned above the SuperDrive - the metal casing is so flexible there you have to be careful, but now its all good. Everywhere else the casing lined up perfectly and you can't see that the case was ever opened.

I just reinstalled Leopard and now I'm going through the application re-install.

For what its worth the 320GB actually equals 297.8GB through Disk Utility.
A stripped Leopard Install, (Only HP, Canon and Lexmark Printer drivers and no foreign Language Support) with all of the base Software Updates takes 12.8 GB leaving me with 285.0 GB free.
 
I just installed the WD Scorpio 320GB HD in my MBP. Overall its a definite improvement over the 250 Samsung Spinpoint I had before... and not just in size. Seems to run a little faster, even though they're both 5400RPM.
 
NeXTLoop said:
I just installed the WD Scorpio 320GB HD in my MBP. Overall its a definite improvement over the 250 Samsung Spinpoint I had before... and not just in size. Seems to run a little faster, even though they're both 5400RPM.
Click to expand...

I can't say I've noticed it to be any faster, but then again I'm not doing anything intensive enough that I'd necessarily notice it.
 
Just finished installing the Scorpio 320, which I got from Newegg this morning (for $209). Am restoring from Time Machine as I type (on my Dell craptop).

The WD Passport drives available with the 320GB might be the SATA 1.5 rather than the SATA 3.0 drives. I don't know but I'm guessing they are since they just have the USB2 interface.
 
Hls811 said:
I can't say I've noticed it to be any faster, but then again I'm not doing anything intensive enough that I'd necessarily notice it.
Click to expand...

I think I was having some issues with the SpinPoint drive. It was one of the early ones that required a firmware update to work properly. Even then, it never quite seemed "right". I would get random freezes, sporadic clicks, and the worse performance of any 5400RPM drive I've ever owned. So it was probably just that disk.

Overall I'm thrilled with the WD. My only concern is regarding long-term reliability. If you read the reviews on NewEgg concerning the 250GB WD SATA drive, around half of them had to be returned due to the drives failing SMART tests after approximately 300 hours of use. So far, I haven't seen any reviews like that for the 320 (or the standard ATA 250GB)... so I'm keeping my fingers crossed that WD figured out the problem and fixed it in this generation...
 
Hls811 said:
I ordered the Western Digital Passport 320GB drive - for $229 - the inside drive is the same and for $10 I get a decent USB case for my "old" 160GB drive I'm replacing. (Opening the passport is screw-less, it just snaps open..)
Click to expand...

Hi,
I just picked up one these passport drives but for the life of me can't seem to figure out how to get the case open. I'm trying every way to pry it open with my hands/fingernails but it won't budge. Last thing I want to do is end up cracking the case.

Can you please explain in detail how I should go about to open the case?

Thanks,
Summer2000
 
Biggest Hard Drive for Macbook Pro? Answered

So far, the largest drive available is the WD 320G drive.

Apple will not perform a drive swap for you.

However, you can do it yourself - it's not difficult. It will void any
remaining warranty on your laptop - so be sure and save the original drive
in case you have to put it back in order to get Apple warranty service.

I recently purchased a WD 320G drive from the WD store. I spent yesterday
afternoon installing the new drive. The only tools I needed were a #T-6 Torx
and a #0 jeweler's screwdriver.

I restored everything from my Time Machine backup. It took about 30
minutes to install the drive and 2 hours to do the restore.

Restoring from Time Machine is sweet. No more OS installs, upgrades and
trying to install all the 3rd party software packages to get your machine
back to they way you want it. Time Machine creates a perfect clone of your
old system.

Here's instructions for doing the drive swap:
http://www.richardsnotes.org/archives/2006/12/26/macbook-pro-hard-disk-replacement/

Here's a video showing how to replace the drive:
http://www.macsales.com/clicks/fclick.php?id=96

Here's instructions for doing the Time Machine restore:
http://gizmodo.com/gadgets/time-mac...e-machine+assisted-hard-drive-swap-333319.php

Good Luck!

-E
 
In the end I found a cheap deal on the 250GB Western Digital hard drive so went for that considering it was £60 cheaper than 320GB at Komplett.
 
Ebcdic said:
Restoring from Time Machine is sweet. No more OS installs, upgrades and
trying to install all the 3rd party software packages to get your machine
back to they way you want it. Time Machine creates a perfect clone of your
old system.
-E
Click to expand...
I did the exact same thing, except my Time Machine restore didn't work. The restore completed, but the restored system wouldn't boot. It just went into an infinite cycle of show the booting white screen (just before the Apple), spinning for a minute and starting the boot over again. I finally gave up, and used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy my old hard drive to the new one (I have the old drive in a FW enclosure).

And before anyone pipes in, my Time machine backups don't exclude anything, and I did have the new drive setup as a GUID partition. It should have worked, but failed to do so. TM is a major disappointment for me. I can not rely on it to save me from catastrophic drive failure.
 
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