Hard Drive options for UK MacBook owner

Good Morning everyone,

I have had my MacBook exactly a week now and I love it up to now. It only came with the 120 gig drive though and so I want to upgrade.

Am I correct in thinking the MacBook can only handle a maximum of 500 gig?

Due to newegg not delivering to the UK and the ridiculous price for the Seagate 500gb model over here I am thinking of getting this:

Seagate ST9320421ASG 320GB 2.5" Hard Drive SATA300 7200rpm 16MB Cache - OEM - Ebuyer

Is this a suitable upgrade for the money?

Any adive or opinions is much appreciated.

Thanks

Yeah that drive should work just fine.

It is 9.5 mm too, drives above that size wont fit.

MartZR, if you go ahead and replace your drive please report back to the forum.

I am also in the UK and have exactly the same Macbook as you, so I'd be interested in hearing how it goes.

Bungy, I have ordered my 4 gig RAM upgrade and the 320 gig hard drive but ordered just the AS as opposed to the ASG as I believe some people have issues due to the MacBook already having shock portection.

They should be delivered tomorrow so will install in the evening and let you know how I get on.

I have the same MB with 160GB HDD and 4GB of RAM out of the box, I also have had mine for just over a week!

I am based in the UK.

So you went for the 7200rpm over the 5400rpm, you could have got the 5400 500GB drive for the same price as your 7200rpm 320GB drive.

Is it really that much quicker to warrant the lower capacity?


How are you doing the drive install? Cloning, or fresh install?

chrismac said:

I have the same MB with 160GB HDD and 4GB of RAM out of the box, I also have had mine for just over a week!

I am based in the UK.

So you went for the 7200rpm over the 5400rpm, you could have got the 5400 500GB drive for the same price as your 7200rpm 320GB drive.

Is it really that much quicker to warrant the lower capacity?


How are you doing the drive install? Cloning, or fresh install?

Click to expand...

Hi Chrismac, yes we must have bought them at the same time.

I see your point about the smaller but faster drive versus the bigger but slightly slower one. I made my decision as 320gb is more than enough for me as I will keep any movies or large files I download on my external drive. With regards to going for the 7200rpm I just thought that I may as well get a faster drive if it helps improve boot up times and general loading etc.

I am just going to do a clean install as my MacBook only has the OS on it at the moment anyway as i have yet to transfer my music and documents.

I will let you know how I go on.

chrismac said:

I have the same MB with 160GB HDD and 4GB of RAM out of the box, I also have had mine for just over a week!

Click to expand...

Did you order the extra 2gb's of RAM? I can't find any Macbook configuration that has 4gb's as standard.

That is the way it got shipped out to me:-

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook5,2
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 3 MB
Memory: 4 GB
Bus Speed: 1.07 GHz
Boot ROM Version: MB52.0088.B00
SMC Version (system): 1.38f5
Serial Number (system): xxxxxxxxxxxxxx
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled

NVidia MCP79 AHCI:

Vendor: NVidia
Product: MCP79 AHCI
Speed: 3 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.20 Supported

FUJITSU MHZ2160BH FFS G1:

Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: FUJITSU MHZ2160BH FFS G1
Revision: 00810091
Serial Number: K679T9227A96
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 148.61 GB
Available: 103.79 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /


Good luck with your upgrade!

Who did you buy yours from?

I got mine from PC World as they have been on sale there for £689, which is a pretty good price.

I am guessing chrismac bought his from someone who had upgraded the ram themselves or he bought it from apple refurbished and the original owner had specced up the ram when they bought it new.

Mine is a refurbished one I got from Apple for £579 so even with the cost of upgrading the ram and hard drive it still works out much cheaper than the new MacBooks which are only marginally faster.

No - I got mine direct from Apple.


BANK 0/DIMM0:

Size: 2 GB
Type: DDR2 SDRAM
Speed: 667 MHz
Status: OK
Manufacturer: 0x2C00000000000000
Part Number: 0x3136485446323536363448592D3636374531
Serial Number: 0xE608E359

BANK 1/DIMM0:

Size: 2 GB
Type: DDR2 SDRAM
Speed: 667 MHz
Status: OK
Manufacturer: 0x2C00000000000000
Part Number: 0x3136485446323536363448592D3636374531
Serial Number: 0xE608E363

Chrismac is yours the early 2009 MacBook?

Just to let everyone know yesterday I installed my 4GB Ram and Seagate 320GB 7200RPM hard drive into my MacBook. Reinstalled Leopard and Apps which was far faster than reinstalling Windows on a PC. I then transfered my files over and carried out the updates.

Up to now I am very impressed with the Seagate, it is as quiet as the standard Hitachi drive that came with my MacBook and coupled with the extra RAM my machine is even more spritely that it was.

I bought a caddy for £7 and put my original hard drive in that so I can use it as backup/portable storage.

Nice one Mart, sounds like you did a good job.

4GB of Ram in a MacBook is sweet, things are just instant.

I just need to upgrade mine now though. lol

Thank you Chris,

You will have to keep us informed of your upgrades etc!

Well I certainly upgraded! I bought a MacBook Pro!

I am now awaiting my 4GB DDR3 memory and I am just in the middle of a HDD upgrade.

chrismac said:

Well I certainly upgraded! I bought a MacBook Pro!

I am now awaiting my 4GB DDR3 memory and I am just in the middle of a HDD upgrade.

Click to expand...

Haha thats a pretty quick jump from MacBook to MacBook Pro! You must have really fallen for Apple eh?

Hope all goes well with the HDD upgrade and you are happy with the Pro!