Upgrades? Upgrades?

Hello all, been a while.

My MBP is out of it's warranty period and I havent gotten the apple care (oh please god let my little laptop keep well! :bone: )

Anyway, I am looking around at hard drives and have seen a fujitsu 120Gb sata drive at 5400rpm with 8mb cache. I am pretty sure that would be a good upgrade for me, as I video edit on the fly and am constantly jiggling files around on the 80Gb drive.

Just super quick then, I buy the drive, I install it (I am competent) then what? in a few steps can anyone tell me what happens then? do I power it up and put in the install disks? what do I press etc etc.

Second thing, I am wondering can you buy a Dual Layer Drive like comes in the new MBP to put into mine. Has anyone seen these for sale? (I am in the UK).

That one isn't so much of a necesity, but it would be great to burn off a 7.5Gb disc instead of the 4Gb each time I want to back stuff up for keeps.

Would be great to hear what people know on all of this, cheers for your help in advance.

Yep, install the drive, then boot off the restore cds. Then load disk utility from the cds, and format the drive.

Don't know how much that fujitsu drive is, but if you are doing a bunch of video, an extra 40 Gig may not end up being all that much. Personally, I am looking at external drives for video recording from my EyeTV. For about $200-250 can get up to 500 Gig externals with Firewire 400.

Unless you just need it to be internal:

Here's a 500 gig with FW400 for less than $200

And here is one with FW 400 & 800 for under $225. And it almost matches the aluminum color of the MBP. And according to WD site has a 3 year warranty, not the 1 yr newegg has posted.

While you will see some negative reviews on all drives, from what research I've done, it seems most Mac'ers are recommending Lacie and WD. Seem to be fewer issues with the WD drives reading reviews.

You should be able to find these across the water from me also. You'll probably be able to get a much faster DVD writer with an external also.

bob, which eyetv do you have? could you PM me a little. im looking into one, and have some questions!

Externals

cheers on the info. I have 3 externals at the moment, well, 2 because the 3rd one failed and is currently being repaired. Yeah, Lacie Hard drives are the bees knees when it comes to Mac's, and indeed PC's I have used many many different Lacies and never ever had a problem with them.

Anyway, I want to have more space on my Laptop for when I am out and about, like I said before I just get fed up jiggling files around to make room for stuff.

Also, has anyone come up with any idea if you can buy the Dual Layer DVD writer to fit into the MBP?

I can't see one anywhere, but I wondered if you guys on the stateside knew anything different?

Doesn't the MBP already have a Dual-Layer DVD writer?

the 17" CD, and the C2D MBP's have dual layer burners. The 15" CD (mine), only have single layer dvd burners.

Well that stinks, that means mine isn't either.

personally....DL disks are so **** much money, its not really worth the cost.

single layer, i can get 100 for 25$, try doing that with a DL 8.5 .
just not worth it to me. ive burned 1000's of 4.7's, and only 2 DL's

just not worth it, plus you dont even have the drive to begin with, skip it

Dual Layer

Yeah, my MacBook is the first edition core duo 1.83Ghz model so no Dual layer drive.

The reason I want one is that many of the video files I have are individualy over 4Gb, so I have to split them in FCP then burn them to seperate DVD's, so it's a bit of a pain to do so when you have maybe 3 or 4 large video files.

It is worth having a Dual Layer Burner for this very reason, and I know the discs are more expensive, I author a lot of DVD's for clients. That is the other thing, with a capacity of 7-8Gb I can author more work onto a single DVD for people, or have less work but at a much higher quality.

I can get 25 dual layer discs for £16 ($32) which isn't cheap but it is time saving for me. The Single layer discs I use are Taiyo Yuden -R which by the way are the most compatible discs I have ever come accross. Only £36 for 100!!

Anyway, I just wondered if anyone had come accrross a slimline Dual layer drive which would fit into the MBP as I really want it portable, but if this isn't possible, I will just go with an external writer. Anyone know if Roxio Toast titanium can handle burning to two different drives at once?