MBP 500GB Internal Hard Drive Upgrade

Help 4 ur HD upgrade:

a. iFixIt.com has step-by-step PDF guides, the tools (cheep!) & more ... if a YouTube video won't do .
b. Try Macinstruct: Free Mac Tutorials & Support . Search for 'How to Upgrade Your MacBook's Hard Drive'. Nice stuff about SuperDrive!'s great superezy software.

FYI about a week ago I upgraded my tick-tick-ticking HD with a 320 GB WD.

Hope this helps.

Well, I had to cancel my order with Provantage because they weren't going to be able to get the drive until MARCH 23rd.

So, if anybody out there is thinking about doing this swap as well and comes across a company that has:

Seagate ST9500420ASG 500GB 7200RPM 16MB Buffer,Serial ATA II/300,2.5INCH,Seagate Momentus 7200.4 G​

...in stock, please let me know a.s.a.p., as I don't want to wait another month to get this done. My 150GB HDD that came with my MBP has only 10GB left and is running alot slower than I would like.

If anybody finds that drive in stock anywhere (in/near the U.S.), let me know.

Thanks,

Justin

Google Shopping seems to get plenty of hits for the Seagate Momentus 7200.4, but they all seem to be out of stock.

That exact model seems to be out of stock everywhere, but you can get the one with 8MB cache easily:

Seagate 500GB 8MB

I bought a 2.5" Western-Digital Passport HDD of 500 GB.
The good thing is that I was able to put my other HDD in the closure of the passport, so I use that one as an external HDD. It costed me around 109 euros. An upgrade from 160 gb tot 500 gb is not bad for that price.
Opening the Passport is quite a pain in the ***, but after that, it's all easy as pie
Good luck everyone with doing this!

No, I definitely want the 16MB Cache, and don't want to do any case swapping or have the HDD drive be external.

Thanks for the input and let me know if anybody finds that Seagate drive back in stock anywhere.

Justin

Kash said:

That exact model seems to be out of stock everywhere, but you can get the one with 8MB cache easily:

Seagate 500GB 8MB

Click to expand...

From a practical standpoint (useability) how big of a difference is the 8MB going to be from the 16GB?

To be honest, the 5400RPM is the bigger limiting factor than the lower cache amount. So the performance difference between a 16MB and 8MB drive at 5400RPM would be negligible.

Kash said:

To be honest, the 5400RPM is the bigger limiting factor than the lower cache amount. So the performance difference between a 16MB and 8MB drive at 5400RPM would be negligible.

Click to expand...

Absolutely true - and that's exactly the reason I decided to forgo the extra space. 320GB is plenty for my needs, and I'd rather have the speed.

Kash said:

To be honest, the 5400RPM is the bigger limiting factor than the lower cache amount. So the performance difference between a 16MB and 8MB drive at 5400RPM would be negligible.

Click to expand...

I figure the bigger the better (in almost all things....except girlfriends).
Here's what I currently have to put on the (eventual) new HDD:

1. Adobe CS3
2. 40,000 mp3's (I used to be a DJ at a Gentleman's club, so have a lot of songs....which currently, by themselves, take up 240GB)
3. 5,000 movies (you know, all the funny stuff your friends send you...."Redneck Rollercoaster"...."Backyard Slingshot", etc....and of course, the kinkier stuff friends send you ;D...I keep and catalogue it all (if it's good)).
4. 250,000 pictures
5. All sorts of other programs and Dental School books, etc. that take up huge amounts of space.

So, I'll hold out (for the time being) for the biggest, fastest drive I can put in the machine.
If they had a Terabyte drive, I'd be gunning for that (and that'll probably come out 2 weeks after I buy this 500GB HDD (only half kidding here)).
It's kind of like that rule that now matter how much time you have to accomplish a task, things will go wrong in such a way as to totally use up all that free time you thought you had.
Same goes for my HDD's...no matter how much free space I start off with, I always seem to fill them up quickly (and then they run slowly, which drives me crazy).

So, if anybody finds that Seagate 500GB, 7200rpm, 16Mb cache, blah, blah, anywhere (in stock) for sale, please let me know a.s.a.p.
My MBP is running slower than I would like (due to limited HDD space), and even though it still kicks the cr*p out of a PC (in all ways), the slowness is starting to give me flashbacks to my PC days.

Justin

djlanky said:

Justin,

I have an alum 15" 2.4ghz Macbook pro and my stock hard drive was a Fujitsu. I can't really comment on Hitachi as I've never owned any of their drives, but I have had several Western Digital drives in my desktop that run strong without any problems. I chose Seagate as all the Western Digital drives were sold out...as far as I know, there's no big difference. Although, as I mentioned before in a previous thread, I should have waited the extra week purchased the 7200 rpm drive.

Here is the you tube video I used. I know its fast, but watch it through a few times and pause it as necessary. If this isn't something you want to attempt, I would seriously suggest taking it to an apple certified tech and have them install it for you.

YouTube - How-to Change a Macbook Pro 15" 2.4GHz hard drive

And as for your last question, I bought my new drive at a place called Canada Computers (canadacomputers.com) - I live in Toronto.

Hope this helps - let us know how the install goes!

Click to expand...

Follow-Up

Did the install.
Took about 30 minutes (since it was the first time I've cracked the case on my MBP and also had to watch the video step-by-step on another computer).
Went very smoothly and the drive is working perfectly. It's amazing how small a 500GB drive is (form-factor wise).

Thanks for all of the input.

Justin

How is that seagate drive working for you 6 months later Jman?

I'm also looking into getting this drive but, there are just as many "don't buy its" as there are "buy its" out there and would love to hear from a user a few months after to see if it's still humming along nicely.

Hope it's still working great for you as my decision rests solely upon your shoulders now! haha!

Thanks and have a good one!