Thinking about Upgrading Hard Drive, now what?

Okay so my hard drive is literally full (100 out of 112 GB used) so I'm thinking about upgrading my internal drive to 250GB (the bigger the better obviously-but I'm planning on getting a new macbook in 2012). I'll be doing the upgrade myself since the warranty ran out (either that or my mom knows someone who works with computers).

I have a 2.16GHz C2D 15inch MBP, need to know which drives are compatible with my laptop and what I need to do once I get the new drive in (and well what I need to do to get the bloody drive in-damn should have bought the macbook).

Oh and do I have to buy OS X again?

thanks

 

what OS? do you have a time machine backup? thats the easiest way... you just pop in the new drive, install Mac OS X from the original disc... then run Migration assistant to transfer settings from the Time Machine Backup.

 

I'm still in Tigerland so no I don't have Time Machine. I might be able to borrow my sister's recovery disc and get Leopard on the new drive....

I do have the recovery discs for my computer too.

 

well.. there is stuff like Carbon Copy Cloner... you'd need an adapter to plug in your hard drive to a USB or Firewire port. You could plug it in and make a clone of it that way... then turn it all off and swap the drives out... they sell adapters to make it so you can plug internal hard drives quickly into USB.

 

(Edited by moderator - Removed quoted post from banned user)

As much as that sounds good, if I were gonna spend $700 upgrading my HD I might as well buy a new laptop.

I'd like to keep the whole upgrade under $200 if I can, since I have to replace my battery too (40% health).

Is it enough to just get one of those HD enclosures?

I'm also curious if my laptop can handle 7200rpm drives.

 

theoretically it should be able to run any 9.5mm height 2.5" SATA drive...

an external enclosure should work fine... and give you access to keep using the old hard drive

under $200 should be easy to do for a hard drive and an enclosure.
I always suggest newegg... good prices and a great company... I've spent many many thousands of dollars with them.
Newegg.com - Notebook Hard Drives, Laptop Hard Drives, Notebook Internal Hard Drive, Laptop External Hard Drives, Hard Drive

 

Um what is TCR with regards to hard drives? Seagate or Hitachi?

I'm thinking about getting one of these (kinda tempted to get a 1TB drive):

Search Results for DIY Express at MacSales.com

I have to get all the tools for it too

 

TCR???

Seagate and Hitachi are both pretty good. The Western Digital Scorpio series is nice too.

watch out for the bigger drives like the 1TB. 12.5mm height drives will not fit right in your machine, they are too thick... you need 9.5mm or thinner. You might be able to cram them in there, but you don't wanna take chances with data and killing hard drives with too much pressure.

 

TCR=The Credited/Correct Response

Thanks! I didn't see the dimensions. Good catch.

Um what's the actual speed gains from getting a 7200rpm over a 5400rpm vs. increased battery consumption? Is it worth the extra cost and losing (I'm guessing) 20 minutes of battery life?

 

MacSales isn't exactly cheap... but they aren't a total rip off either... but they look like all 5400 rpm drives.

heres a nice seagate 500Gb 7200rpm at newegg that says it comes with a free enclosure (limited offer)... (enclosures are like like $7 - $10 anyways) for $75
Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus 7200.4 ST9500420AS 500GB 7200 RPM 16MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

if you go with 5400rpm drives, you can save some too.

 

How much does a toolset run though? I don't have a toolset for computers. But yeah you're right Newegg seems to be cheaper. I don't see toolset running more than $10.

EDIT: Pulled the trigger on the set from MacSales. Being from CA Newegg charges sales tax and it turned out that Macsales' bottom line number was cheaper so....yeah. will update when I finish the upgrade.

thanks for your help everyone

 

I have so many tools setting around.. guess I never think to factor in tools... I could probably give some away to 10 people and still have plenty to do everything

all you really need is a tiny little screw driver.

 

God damn the cloning takes forever....almost an hour and counting and not even 1/4 of the way done.

 

When I recently swapped into my current M7E, cloning ran ~50-60GB per hour over USB2 line.

 

I did that once and only once. After that I just did a fresh install after installing a new hard drive.

 

Double post.

 

and the hitachi 7k500 travelstar is a favorite among many including myself. I bought one recently for $70 at a local Frys electronics.

* edit: doh, guess you already got the drive since your already cloning. Yeah, USB cloning takes forever. Thank goodness for esata express card

Macsales (owc) is one of my favorite online stores. They've got nice inexpensive toolkit for about $3 (philips, flat head and a plastic little crowbar doo-hicky for prying fragile things apart). But guessing you've got everything you need now.

 

I just ordered a new 500GB hard drive for my MacBook Pro.

From buy.com, only $65, I got the WD5000BPVT model which supports AF (Advanced Format). AF makes for more efficient use and better error recovery.

If you want to learn more about AF, read this.

buy.com has the non-AF version of this drive for $3 less. (All the specs are the same, except for AF support.)