Hard Drive Upgrade DIY?

I spoke to an apple genius today, and he said as long as you did a good job with the upgrade, have it checked at the store, it would not void your warranty.

anyone with similar experience or knowledge about this?

OH, and we were talking about the new MBP.

 

well if he told you and that is your local apple store, then it doesn't seem as it could hurt.

he was talking about the MBP however, right? my guess is no.

 

off topic but could the people at apple stores do the actualy upgrade?

 

they said no to me.

 

I don't think that just because you did a "good job" your warranty will still be valid. Taking apart your MBP to put a new HD in is taking apart your MBP to put a new HD in no matter how you look at it.

 

If you do a good job the only one who will know you did the upgrade will be you (unless you look in the System Profiler). If you ever need to send it out for service put the old drive back in. As the PB/MBP design has been changing over the past couple of years it's actually easier to do the HD swap. It still isn't as easy as a MB, but I can do one in under 10 minutes now.

 

Yes I've swapped mine a couple of days after purchase. It's a bit more fiddly than a MacBook. I don't see why it would invalidate your warranty unless Apple can clearly identify you've damaged the laptop.

 

what hard drive did you get?

 

Seagate Momentus.2 160gb 7200 rpm with G-shock.

I do a lot database work and the performance benefit is noticeable. It doesn't appear to have had any real significant hit on battery life or heat. I'm now getting over 3.5 hours on battery.

Having said that I'm sure you'd only notice the difference between the standard 5400rpm drive and the Seagate if you did a lot intensive graphic, sound or development work.

I upgraded because the Apple shop informed me that the 7200 rpm drive to be fitted to the new MBP is a Fujitsu rather than Seagate and I'd have to wait a minimum of 4 weeks.

It's pretty straightforward swapping the drive as long as you take your time. The trickiest bit is gradually releasing the catches on the front of the case and then trying to get the catches back in place over the DVD drive after you've upgraded.

I've also put 4gb RAM on-board and it's a seriously quick notebook.

 

I got the base model 2.2Ghz. Do you know if it is 2x1Gig sticks or is it 1x2Gig?

Did you get apple's 4 gig kit or someone else's?

thanks!

 

It's two 1gb sticks unfortunately as it's DDR2 one 2gb stick wouldn't be as effective.

I bought a 2x2gb stick pack from crucial.com. Buying direct from Apple is quite expensive. You can probably find cheaper still by shopping around.

 

thanks for the info!