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How hard is it to upgrade hard drive in Macbook Pro C2D?

R

RickR

macrumors member
Original poster
Oct 28, 2006
51
0
I purchased a MacBook Pro Core2Duo last fall. I often max out my hard drive in systems and would have gone with 200 gigs but because of the lower speed chose 160 gigs. Well I'm down to only 25 gigs free already. I bought a external Lacie firewire drive which is 160 gigs. That solves my problem but I move my computer all around the house and also take it with me on business trips and the hard drive is just a extra item to carry. I've thought of offloading some rarely used software to it. But today I read how both Fujitsu and Western Digital have 250 gig hard drives coming out now that are mac compatible and 5400 rpm so it's so tempting!
My question, how hard it is to upgrade them? I've heard it isn't supposed to be done by a user but can be done. Will it void my warranty? I can't go without my laptop for long but if I went to a Apple store could they do it while I wait? Will they have these hard drive options available or can I take one of these drives in? I figured they have their own hard drives at a premium price.
 
Just as a sidenote: I found this Macworld article where the author uses the same iFixit guide that I linked to in my previous post.

However, he also goes on to note that:


iFixIt’s guides are generally very good, explaining—and illustrating with color photos—every step down to the smallest screw. Well, almost: missing from this particular guide is any mention of two metal guides holding the MacBook Pro’s hard drive in place, along with four rubber-covered bolts on the drive (pictured at right) that hold the drive in those guides. But it was easy enough to figure out how to switch those bolts over to the new drive and fit the drive in the guides. In fact, thanks to the iFixIt guide, the entire process was fairly simple; if you’re comfortable with a screwdriver, you should be just fine. The scariest task—which occurs after removing most of the screws—is lifting off the upper case (the piece containing the keyboard); it feels like it might snap off in front, but some patient jiggling eventually convinces it to detach.


A couple tips before you start: First, iFixIt’s guides tell you, right up front, what you’ll need (in this case, two screwdrivers—a very small Phillips and a Torx 6); make sure you have those tools or else you’ll find yourself running to the store mid-disassembly. Second, perhaps the most challenging part of the process is simply keeping track of all the screws; swapping the drive on the MacBook Pro involves nearly 30 of them. I recommend keeping a roll of office tape handy and using it to tape each screw to the particular photo illustrating when to remove it; when putting your MacBook Pro back together—you just follow the instructions in reverse—this will make it much easier to figure out which screw goes where.
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