Bigger HDD

I'm thinking about replacing the 160 GB HDD in my 15" 2,4 MBP with 250 GB verison of those:
http://www.seagate.com/www/en-us/products/laptops/momentus/momentus_5400.4/

Does anybody have any expirience with them? I'm looking for approx. same speed as I have with original HDD, and also same battery consumption.
How would 7200 rpm drive do in that respect?

Here is a detailed guide, with pictures, for how to do the upgrade of the disk. However, before you do it, is there a simple way to completely clone the hard drive contents from the current 160GB drive to a new larger and faster drive?

I can't say I've had any experience with that particular drive, I upgraded my MB back in feb and I haven't had any problems it's ridiculously easy and totally doable by almost anybody.

I would however recommend that you consider the 5400 rpm drive? There honestly is relatively little difference between a 7200 and a 5400 rpm drive in terms of performance unless you're taking it to the max. A 7200 drive will suck power and shorten your battery life some.

As far as cloning your drive goes, I used superduper. It's a brilliant, awesome, FREE piece of software that can form a bootable volume anywhere. I cloned my drive over to my external HDD, then I rebooted it holding the T button down to select my Target Disk, then checked that it booted properly. Be aware it will be a lot slower booting from the external HDD since the mac is running via. a USB connection so it will be slower than SATA is. Once you're sure your HDD clone is working, you can replace the internal HDD. this takes about 5 minutes and once that's done you're ready to roll with your new HDD. Start the mac, booting to the external HDD and run disk utility (found in utilities). Your new HDD will not be mounted on the desktop and when you run the **** utility, it will be flagged up as an unknown device. When asked if you want to initialise it, click yes and mac will prep and mount the drive and format it for you.

Once you've done this, you have a couple of options. You can either:

a) superduper your external HDD over to the new internal HDD. This will port the entire image back to your new hard drive, as if nothing had ever happened, and the mac will be ready to roll once more. When you do this, remember to check the startup disk which has been selected. If you don't do this your mac will flash a question mark folder every time you restart. It eventually finds the right disk image but it is REALLY worrying xDD. To do this just select startup disk in system pref and make sure the internal HDD is selected and then click the lock to prevent further changes.

b) you can do a fresh install of OS X and just port your bits over (apps files etc...) This is your best bet if you've had problems with apps not working wince your upgrade to 10.5 or you just fancy a fresh start!

Hope this has helped xDD

Dave

Above poster is incorrect.

There really isn't much of a difference power wise and there is a noticeable performance gain. There are many benchmarks out there showing both.

If you can, 7200rpm drive is the way to go.

mac57: it is a 5400 rp drive.
durkajosh: moch of a difference is realive. I'd hate to loose 15 mins of battery power due to new HDD. To some it may be insignificant, to me it isn't ...

Another question: replacing HDD voids warranty or not? And if yes, I guess if I keep original HDD as it was removed from my MBP, I could just pop it in in case anything goes wrong and pretend I din+t touch it or are there any waranty seals or similar?

meh ^^ I'm sticking by my point. More revs will mean more power usage and there are things floating around on the internet to back me up so I'm standing my ground there. Maybe I over exaggerated but my point is it will reduce battery life.

And I'm afraid all the discussions on these here forums point to the fact that swapping out the HDD does void the warranty. There aren't any seals that I saw when I swapped out my HDD, but it's obvious enough when the serial no. says it's a 60GB HDD and I have 200 GB of material on here xD lol. I think the wording of the warranty goes something like "modifying non user serviceable parts or accessing any hardware by an unauthorised port" will void the warranty.

Of course, if you have applecare (i think) or you take it to your local apple store, they will do it under warranty, although they will charge you for the pleasure (I think my store was going to charge me £40 for the swap alone, not even including data cloning etc...).

I'd say that if your mac in within warranty (IE under a year old) it may well be worth doing it under warranty to protect it (just in case) and doing the data transfer yourself. If you're feeling brave you can do it yourself but if something goes wrong during the swap it's on you I'm afraid that's just how the cookie crumbles sometimes.

Dave

SJTV1,

Check out this thread for some additional guidance. It sure helped me: http://www.mac-forums.com/forums/showthread.php?t=39132&highlight

Noel

lightsguydave said:

Of course, if you have applecare (i think) or you take it to your local apple store, they will do it under warranty, although they will charge you for the pleasure (I think my store was going to charge me £40 for the swap alone, not even including data cloning etc...).

Click to expand...

Great. So i can get new drive and not void warranty. I wouldn swap it myself anyhow (2 left hands ;D ).

lol 2 left hands *heh* I'd still phone ahead, just to double check

Noels' link is absolutely spot on. I used it on my DIY hard drive job and the OP was bang on every step of the way *note to self: need to give him good rep *

Dave

Sure I'll call them but so far they have been helpfull (as they should be with the amount om money our company spends there) ...

Update: got new HDD (250 GB Seagate 5400 rpm) for les than 100 EUR (that would be 150 USD approx.), Apple service say they'll switch it in an hour or a bit more, warranty is not voided. So I need to clone my old HDD to external drive over weekend, go to service monday morning, then clone back.
A few questions:
- how long (approximatelly) does it take to make a bootable image (backup) of my old disk with SuperDuper (160 GB disk, about 90 GB data)?
- is there a way to clone windows partition, too (I use bootcamp). Not a big deal, but still ...
- I guess cloning back takes same time as cloning to external drive?

I replaced my MacBook HDD and just keep the old HDD in the MacBook box. That way if anything happens, i can swap the drives back in and bring it to the store.

I'm not worried about what apple would say knowing that i replaced it, i just don't want them to exchange the HDD and I lose the 320GB for the stock 160GB.

SJTV1 said:

Update: got new HDD (250 GB Seagate 5400 rpm) for les than 100 EUR (that would be 150 USD approx.), Apple service say they'll switch it in an hour or a bit more, warranty is not voided. So I need to clone my old HDD to external drive over weekend, go to service monday morning, then clone back.
A few questions:
- how long (approximatelly) does it take to make a bootable image (backup) of my old disk with SuperDuper (160 GB disk, about 90 GB data)?
- is there a way to clone windows partition, too (I use bootcamp). Not a big deal, but still ...
- I guess cloning back takes same time as cloning to external drive?

Click to expand...

SJTV1,

I used SuperDuper before changing my hard drive and it took me about an hour to make a bootable clone image, as I recall (about 50 GB copy) . I'd guess you could do your hard drive in about 2 hours. It's also a function of transfer speed based on your external hard drive... And since the Boot Camp is part of the original hard drive, I would think it could be copied as well if you make sure you're copying both hard drive partitions (the entire hard drive).

Cloning back to the new hard drive took about the same time, too...

Noel

Got to go 7200rpm I recently upgraded to a 7200 seagate drive and the whole laptop feels so much more responsive. Battery life doesnt seem to be any different. The upgrade is really easy as well

Did the upgrade no problem, SuperDuper really makes it easy. Dropped MBP in service in the morning and 2 hour later they called to pick it up.
Battery life seems same, however, this Seagate is quite louder than original Fujitsu. I couldn't hear the Fujitsu at all, and I can barely hear Seagate when idle (it sounds like I would use SMC to raise fan speed tp approx 2500 rpm), and clearly hear it when working (clicking and stuff). Is it possible that there has been some mistake putting it in (insulation or stuff like that)?
I'll see if I can get used to it, otherwise I'll try Fujitsu ...

PS: couldnt clone BotCamp partition ...

SJTV1 said:

Did the upgrade no problem, SuperDuper really makes it easy. Dropped MBP in service in the morning and 2 hour later they called to pick it up.
Battery life seems same, however, this Seagate is quite louder than original Fujitsu. I couldn't hear the Fujitsu at all, and I can barely hear Seagate when idle (it sounds like I would use SMC to raise fan speed tp approx 2500 rpm), and clearly hear it when working (clicking and stuff). Is it possible that there has been some mistake putting it in (insulation or stuff like that)?
I'll see if I can get used to it, otherwise I'll try Fujitsu ...

PS: couldnt clone BotCamp partition ...

Click to expand...

SJTV1,

Glad it went well for you!

I think the noise is strictly a function of the individual drives. At least in the Macbook, there was no visible insulation to buffer that noise, so I don't think there was any mistake made by the techs during the exchange of drives...

I'm surprised you couldn't clone the Boot Camp partition. If you still have the old drive, seems you could make a copy of the partition and restore it to the new drive... If not, I guess it's a re-install of Windows.

Noel

Ah, the Win reinstall was so easy and fast, I didn't bother to search for option t backup BootCamp partition (as SuperDuper didn't offer it on main screen). I only need win, excell and one other program ...