06-20-2009, 04:54 PM

I recently took my early (2008) macbook in to have the memory upgraded to 4gig. When I got it back it kept crashing so took it back. They said they had to reinstall the ram. It worked fine for awhile after that and then started to crash again. I took it back and they ran tests for two days and decided the ram was bad. They replaced it for new ram and when I was picking it up I noticed that there was a gash on the top of it. I asked if they could get it out. They tried but were not successful. They offered to swap it out for a new model. I had the 2.4ghz with 160gb hd. The one they swapped me to was only 2ghz processor and 120gb hard drive. Before I did the swap I did some research and found out that with the fast bus speeds, it would be a good idea to go for the new model. I didn't care about losing the extra hard drive space because I have an external anyway. I also was advised that the hard drive in the late model '08 was faster anyway.

They stated that they were going to do a memory swap to save everything off my old hard drive. I was just messing around the other day and noticed that I still had the 160gb hard drive. This means that they just transfered my old hard drive. I am a bit concerned by this due to the hd never being formatted to the new computer.

My question for someone is, should I be concerned by having the old hard drive in the new mac? should I request to have the new hard drive, even though less space because of the new performance specs? will the new model hard drive run better in the new machine?

Any feedback would be much appreciated. thanks!

06-20-2009, 04:59 PM

I don't think it maters. As long as the HDD is working then you shouldn't worry about it. If it starts making weird noises or there is a sudden slow down on start up or something then I would consider backing up that HDD and getting a new one.

06-20-2009, 06:14 PM

it shouldnt matter, the hardrives dont change.

06-20-2009, 06:48 PM

Originally Posted by DCstrX

it shouldnt matter, the hardrives dont change.

I called apple support to check up on it. It really doesn't matter. The late '08 model had a faster bus speed in the new hard drives. So if they would have left the existing hard drive in the new macbook it would in fact run faster. I don't know, this just bugs me. They could have told me that they were going to put my old hard drive in my new macbook.. arrrgghh.. I guess it's not worth making another trip and it runs great anyway

06-23-2009, 09:45 PM

ok. now it's getting strange.. I had to run by the mac store to pick something up. While I was there, I thanked the tech for keeping my old hard drive. He said we didn't, we just did a memory swap. So if they didn't swap my hard drive, why is my system showing a 160gig hard drive when the box says 120gig.. is it possible that when they did the memory swap, it kept the partition? this is very strange, any help would be appreciated. Also, when I boot up, it show terminal transactions every time too instead of the splashy screen.. very strange