12-30-2009, 09:25 PM

Hi

Got a crazy question! Bought my MBP 13" Model MB990B/A a few weeks back. I really should have got a bigger HD though, thought I'd get by with 160GB and I simply can't, what was I thinking!!!?? Anyway looked at tutorials on cloning drive with Superduper and installing a new drive, it all looks super easy - nothing I can't handle.

So what's the question? Well here it is: I've got a Western Digital External Elements Drive (WDBAAR3200ABK) (DRIVE DETAILS) just like that one! 320GB, things are the wrong way round here, my external is 320 and my internal is 160.... Can you see where this is going?

I'm sure I can open the WD enclosure (I've seen tutorials on that), but would the drive inside the WD enclosure be compatible with my MBP? What I'm thinking is this, clone MAC HD to WD External, open external case, open MBP as per youtube tutorials, put WD 2.5 drive in Mac and the 160 drive from MBP in external case - then balance would be restored to the force and things would be the right way round.... But is the WD drive that sits in that case compatible? How can I find out?

Any clues thoughts would be welcome.

Thanks

12-30-2009, 09:39 PM

Not a clue, nothing in that specifies what kind of drive is in the enclosure.

12-30-2009, 10:49 PM

To jobborrow:

The drive in that WD enclosure will have to be SATA and 2.5" otherwise will not be compatible with your MBP. Go to the WD site and get the specs for what kind of drive is in that enclosure before opening it and destroying your warranty.

Regards.

12-30-2009, 10:54 PM

Not sure what's in that enclosure - I assume it's a standard 2.5" notebook drive. If it is, it should work, but it's most likely going to be a 5400 RPM drive and not a faster 7200 RPM drive. They're pretty cheap nowadays. If you can afford it, I would just pick up a new 7200 drive and keep that 320 external for extra storage.

12-31-2009, 10:32 AM

Thanks for your thoughts here, with regards to the 5400 and 7200 speed, as far as I understand it, the current drive in the MBP is 5400, so having the larger on in there would be the same only bigger.

Because of the fact that this drive is sold as an external, I can't find the inner specs of the drive anywhere, I think the only way of knowing what it is would be to open it and google the model number. I realize this will void any warranty on the hard drive.

I might see how easy it is to open this nut, if it's hard I'll probably just buy one. If it's easy then we'll see. I'll post back.

12-31-2009, 10:53 AM

right, opened it, really easy to open.... Here are the details DETAILS. It's a WD Scorpio Blue WD3200BEVT, SATA.


Full Specs.

Performance Specifications
Rotational Speed 5,400 RPM (nominal)
Buffer Size 8 MB
Average Latency 5.50 ms (nominal)
Seek Times
Read Seek Time 12.0 ms
Track-To-Track Seek Time 2.0 ms (average)
Transfer Rates
Buffer To Host (Serial ATA) 3 Gb/s (Max)
Physical Specifications
Formatted Capacity 320,072 MB
Capacity 320 GB
Interface SATA 3 Gb/s
User Sectors Per Drive 625,142,448
Physical Dimensions
English
Height 0.374 Inches
Length 3.94 Inches
Width 2.75 inches
Weight 0.26 Pounds
Metric
Height 9.5 mm
Length 100.2 mm
Width 69.85 mm
Weight 0.117 kg
Environmental Specifications
Acoustics
Idle Mode 24 dBA (average)
Seek Mode 0 26 dBA (average)
Temperature (English)
Operating 32° F to 140° F
Non-operating -40° F to 149° F
Temperature (Metric)
Operating -0° C to 60° C
Non-operating -40° C to 65° C
Humidity
Operating 8% to 95% Non-condensing
Non-operating 5-95% RH non-condensing
Altitude (English)
Operating -1,000 feet to 10,000 feet
Non-operating -1,000 feet to 40,000 feet
Altitude (Metric)
Operating -305M to 3,050M
Non-operating -305M to 12,200M
Vibration
Operating 0.00459 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Non-operating 0.05102 g²/Hz (10 to 500 Hz)
Electrical Specifications
Current Requirements
5 VDC
Read/Write 500 mA
Idle 400 mA
Standby 50 mA
Sleep 20 mA
Power Dissipation
Read/Write 2.50 Watts
Idle 0.85 Watts
Standby 0.25 Watts
Sleep 0.10 Watts
As used for storage capacity, one megabyte (MB) = one million bytes, one gigabyte (GB) = one billion bytes, and one terabyte (TB) = one trillion bytes. Total accessible capacity varies depending on operating environment. As used for buffer or cache, one megabyte (MB) = 1,048,576 bytes. As used for transfer rate or interface, megabyte per second (MB/s) = one million bytes per second, megabit per second (Mb/s) = one million bits per second, and gigabit per second (Gb/s) = one billion bits per second.

Anyone know if this would work in my MBP, I'm thinking it would!?

12-31-2009, 01:17 PM

That drive should work just fine in your Mac.

12-31-2009, 04:58 PM

Yes it is SATA 2 and a 2.5" drive.

12-31-2009, 07:56 PM

Thanks for all your advice. I'm just cloning the drive using Superduper, as soon as it's done I'll do a test boot from the USB then I'll stick the thing in. I'll post my results.

12-31-2009, 08:07 PM

But now you don't have an external drive large enough to back up your 320 gig once it has more then 160 gig on it and we can assume it will since the 160 wasn't big enough in the first place.

Clay

12-31-2009, 08:54 PM

Originally Posted by clayneal

But now you don't have an external drive large enough to back up your 320 gig once it has more then 160 gig on it and we can assume it will since the 160 wasn't big enough in the first place.

Clay

Ha Ha, yeah, you present me with the paradox!!! I will get myself a bigger drive, but I can do that later in the year when I've got money, also I have a fair few drives knocking about, most of them are 3.5" drives that need to be powered, I have a 500GB drive sitting in a Windows PC that I don't use, so I think I will use these for my back ups and keep my 160 external for on-the-fly storage.

Just to let you know where I've got to now, I've created the cloned drive, and just booted in to it from the external drive, it works perfectly; I'm actaully running the OS from the drive now as I type! Now I will have to do the scary bit and mount it in the macbook. Will give you a further update soon.

12-31-2009, 10:36 PM

Well that couldn't have been any easier!!! I watched a youtube tutorial on installing a new HD in a 13" MBP (I'm a visual learner!).

My Macbook booted perfected from the newly installed hard drive and all my stuff was just where I left it!! The only difference now is I'm sporting 320GB and not 160GB! Amazingly easy, I love Macs! Even the seemingly tricky jobs are straight forward. The ability to create a clone of your drive that easily is amazing.

The only one thing that bothered me was the fact that my Mac HD was now called WD (as I had named it when I reformatted it) rather than Macintosh HD, so I did a Mac key I to get info and just typed the name in there that I thought it should be, Machintosh HD, then hit return and closed out, and there it was all renamed to look and behave just like the old drive, except much bigger!!

Thanks to all of you here who posted with suggestions and advice, it really is helpful to know people have your back! I hope this little string of events comes in useful for someone else with similar questions.