Hard drive Question

melmation · Sep 1, 2006

Howdy,

I have a MacBook Pro 1.8Ghz, 80Gb hard drive with 1.5Gb ram (cheers to Crucial).

Basically, I do a lot of video editing, and whilst I would normally hook up an external drive if I am working at home, it isn't allways practical to carry around a big old drive with a brick to power it. Nor do I have the money to buy a little 120Gb portable drive from the Apple store.

So, what I am wondering is this...

I am very tempted to void my warranty with Apple and put in a 120Gb 5400rpm drive (cheaper than the external one from the apple store). The only thing is, would anyone reccomend doing this? I also would like to know what happens when the new blank, unformatted drive is in there? All the online videos show the expert guy physically putting one in, and that's it. But do macs have a built in eprom with info for the new drive? or do I stick in the installation disks and hold down a button on restart? I really don't know.

If anyone has done this with their MacBook Pro, would be really good to hear how you got on. I mean, I am a little bit weary of fitting a new hard drive, but 80Gb is just too small for my needs now.

Also, who agress that Apple should have put the retractable hard drive bay in the MacBook into the pro instead? I found that unbeleivable when I watched a video tutorial on fitting a new hard drive into one of those things. Undo the screws, slide it out. Good lord above, I would kill to have that feature on my pro!

sixslinger · Sep 1, 2006

I changed out the hard drive in my pwrbook 15"... no problem. I would think long and hard before I void that warranty though....

melmation · Sep 1, 2006

Yeah, the warranty is a sticker. To make it even harder to decide, my brother has offered to pay half of the apple care for me before the first year runs out! Grrr. So, anyway, when you put in a new hard drive in your powerbook, what did you do to install osx again? how does that go?

sixslinger · Sep 1, 2006

I backed up to an external....then restored it. I used an app called "backityMac" (free).
I tore apart the powerbook after the warranty, but you couldnt pay me enough to rip into my MBP......my advice is to buy applecare, and dont mess with the HD. too much can go wrong with a portable not to have at least a full year warranty on it.

CShannon · Sep 3, 2006

Did It Twice

melmation said:
Howdy,

I have a MacBook Pro 1.8Ghz, 80Gb hard drive with 1.5Gb ram (cheers to Crucial).

Basically, I do a lot of video editing, and whilst I would normally hook up an external drive if I am working at home, it isn't allways practical to carry around a big old drive with a brick to power it. Nor do I have the money to buy a little 120Gb portable drive from the Apple store.

So, what I am wondering is this...

I am very tempted to void my warranty with Apple and put in a 120Gb 5400rpm drive (cheaper than the external one from the apple store). The only thing is, would anyone reccomend doing this? I also would like to know what happens when the new blank, unformatted drive is in there? All the online videos show the expert guy physically putting one in, and that's it. But do macs have a built in eprom with info for the new drive? or do I stick in the installation disks and hold down a button on restart? I really don't know.

If anyone has done this with their MacBook Pro, would be really good to hear how you got on. I mean, I am a little bit weary of fitting a new hard drive, but 80Gb is just too small for my needs now.

Also, who agress that Apple should have put the retractable hard drive bay in the MacBook into the pro instead? I found that unbeleivable when I watched a video tutorial on fitting a new hard drive into one of those things. Undo the screws, slide it out. Good lord above, I would kill to have that feature on my pro!

I'm a hardware guy at heart so digging into PCs is a challange to me. Anyway, I purchased a MBP with a 100GB 5400RPM drive. Storage capacity was not an issue but performance was.

I watched the video at www.macsales.com a couple of times and then changed the MBP drive to a 80GB 7200RPM model. Then as luck would have it the screen failed after three weeks. The vendor has a 30-day return policy so they authorized a return and sent a replacement MBP.

So I had to remove the 80GB drive that was just installed and reinstall the original 100GB drive. The process only takes about 30 minutes if you work carefully and keep track of the various screws. The one thing you must have are quality screw drivers, both the Phillips #00 and Torx #10 must be very high quality. For laptops I use Wiha brand screw drivers.

Good luck if you decide to "go for it."

Hard drive Question

melmation

sixslinger

melmation

sixslinger

CShannon

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