HDD Replacement

Hi,
I would really like to update the HDD on my 2010 MBP (before thunderbolt ports) from a 250G HDD to a 500G 7200 RPM HDD or even 10000 RPM's, but I do not want a SSD because I'm a college student and I can't afford it and this is the only time I will upgrade my HDD. I just don't know what will fit in my MBP. Also, will it void my warranty? Can someone please help me?

Any good quality SATA drive that's 2.5" wide and not more than 9.5 mm thick will fit. Right now you can go as high as 750 GB and 7200 RPM. Do not buy a 10,000 RPM drive as it will drain the battery down and may run too warm to be used in a MBP confined space. They're more suited for use in either the Mac G5 or Mac Pro desktops.

And no, you do not void your warranty by upgrading either the hard drive or memory. Of course if you break anything while doing it, Apple will charge for the repair.

I can only find hdd that are like 9.5 mm and the width as 2.75. Can you recommend a specific one?

I use this in my 13" MBP:

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

So, once the new one is installed, what about my OS? It's OS X Lion. I can't re-download it because the maximum college limit of downloading here is like 3.75 G and the OS X is 4 Gigs. It'd also take forever.

dmccloud said:

I use this in my 13" MBP:

Newegg.com - Seagate Momentus XT ST95005620AS 500GB 7200 RPM 32MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s with NCQ Solid State Hybrid Drive -Bare Drive

Click to expand...

Thinking about upgrading my 2010 MBP, stock 320gb 5400rpm to the Hybrid. Did you notice much of a speed difference in everyday use?

Anyone? I'd really like to order this soon before classes get tough and I don't want to order it until I know everything first.

kribensis12 said:

So, once the new one is installed, what about my OS? It's OS X Lion. I can't re-download it because the maximum college limit of downloading here is like 3.75 G and the OS X is 4 Gigs. It'd also take forever.

Click to expand...

I haven't done it this way, but I believe you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your existing HD to the new one (mounted in an external enclosure) then just switch them.

EDIT: If you do a thread search you should find lots of threads discussing the mechanics of how to do this

I bought 8 GB of RAM to upgrade my RAM and I bought a Seagate Momentus 500GB at 7200 rpm. I also bought a t6 screw driver to use on the HDD. I took the back off today to make sure there were no complications and I have one. I took the casing off the RAM 3/4ths the way. One of the screws WILL NOT come out and I am afraid that I will strip it and it's already starting to look that way. Is there some trick to this?

FWIW on that Seagate drive, may want to do a thread search before you install. I seem to remember a number of people (including Bobtomay one of our Moderators) having a lot of trouble with it. Those that were successful as I remember it did a clean install rather than clone to the drive.

I kind of wish I had known earlier..

kribensis12 said:

I kind of wish I had known earlier..

Click to expand...

Again, not saying you will have trouble with it. But, as I understand it the cloning method is less successful than a clean install on this particular drive. Do a search and read before installing is all I am recommending. May save yourself some unneccessary headaches.

I took the back off today to make sure there were no complications and I have one. I took the casing off the RAM 3/4ths the way. One of the screws WILL NOT come out and I am afraid that I will strip it and it's already starting to look that way. Is there some trick to this?

Anyone have any insight?

So, everything is installed ect. The HDD seems to be the tiniest of a fraction too small and it moves inside the laptop. Would something like cloth be okay to put in there or something similar to stop the HDD from moving?

kribensis12 said:

So, everything is installed ect. The HDD seems to be the tiniest of a fraction too small and it moves inside the laptop. Would something like cloth be okay to put in there or something similar to stop the HDD from moving?

Click to expand...

Don't really have any advice on that other than I would be very cautious about reducing air flow (cooling) or putting in something that may shift around where it isn't wanted.

Does it move that much?

It's not moving THAT much, but I am concerned about breaking the HDD. I am concerned about air flow as well.

Razormac said:

Again, not saying you will have trouble with it. But, as I understand it the cloning method is less successful than a clean install on this particular drive. Do a search and read before installing is all I am recommending. May save yourself some unneccessary headaches.

Click to expand...

Cloning will be fine unless there is some issue with your current install. 99% of the time there will not be.

kribensis12 said:

So, everything is installed ect. The HDD seems to be the tiniest of a fraction too small and it moves inside the laptop. Would something like cloth be okay to put in there or something similar to stop the HDD from moving?

Click to expand...

Did you remember to remove the four pegs from along the long edges of your old hard drive with a screwdriver and attach them to your new hard drive? It won't fit snugly without those to hold it in place.

Also, you don't need to use Carbon Copy Cloner - you'll be at least as successul using Disk Utility on a Snow Leopard DVD (the one that came with your computer) to create a New Image (there's a button at the top of the screen for it) from your old hard drive's boot partition on an external HDD.

When you have the new hard drive installed, properly format your new hard drive in Disk Utility. Click on "Partition" while it's highlighted in Disk Utility (to the left of the Restore tab), change the Volume Scheme to 1 Partition, choose Mac OS Extended (Journaled) as the format (and name it whatever you like), and hit the "Options..." button below the partition picture to make sure you're using a GUID Partition Table (anything else and it won't be bootable).

Then when you have the new hard drive installed and partitioned properly, use the Snow Leopard DVD Disk Utility again to Restore that image (there will be a few tabs including First Aid, Erase and Restore near the top but below that) to the partition you created on your new internal HDD.

Click "Image..." next to the "Source" text box and navigate to the .dmg you created; then drag the new partition (directly from the sidebar on the left) over to the "Destination" text box.

That's the whole process. You never have to use 3rd party software, and your HDD should fit snugly.

As an addendum, after you boot up your new hard drive for the first time, run Disk Utility and Repair Permissions on the new hard drive. The last time I replaced a HDD, it kept crashing until I did this - I'm guessing the image doesn't respect a lot of the file permissions from the original drive and may have messed up access to a kernel extension.

And one last thing: I wrote this assuming you're using Snow Leopard or haven't created a bootable install USB for Lion. If you're on Lion and created a bootable install USB, Disk Utility on that drive will also work.