replace the drive now
ok i have this mbp for about 3 years and it seems like my hard drive is going out, i hear some clicking noise...
my question is what is good hard drive out there? and should i wait until the hard drive is out to change or should i change it now?
thank you
Hi, I would replace your HD right now, that way its done on your terms and not driven by the random day that the thing crashes, and you lose whatever you had on there since your last backup.
If you can afford it, i would recommend putting in an SSD (solid state drive - no moving parts). It will make your aging machine boot faster, apps will load almost instantly, and its dead silent and very reliable/sturdy. I just got a 512 GB SSD for my macbook from amazon (Made by Crucial), the price was not bad for a sizable SSD. Smaller ones are cheaper but I find I want at least 500GB in my main drive.
If you can't afford an SSD or don't want to spend the money on it, buy a standard HD, and swap out your old drive. You can put in a bigger one than the existing one, by the way - if you want. I always like to upgrade at least in some way when I open the case and replace something! ;-)
So, step by step:
1. Get the replacement HD and a USB enclosure so you can plug the new drive in for cloning (enclosures are cheap)
2. Connect the new drive to the USB port, and use the disk utility to format it (google for instructions if you need help - its pretty easy)
3. Download superduper (free cloning tool that is reliable - have used it several times. its very easy to use)
4. Start up superduper and its pretty self-explanatory to clone your existing internal drive to the USB drive. It will make a complete, bootable image so that when you swap drives everything should be exactly the same.
5. When cloning is done, turn off your macbook, open the case and swap the drives (google for instructions or youtube there is plenty of help for this but its very easy)
6. After you swap the drives, fire up the Macbook and you should be good to go
