Mac Book Pro Drive Upgrade

i got a new mac book pro about a month ago and i love it, but the one thing i wish could be different was if i had a bigger hard drive. i wanted to get it ON my birthday instead of order it and wait forever (woulda taken a long time cuz they were low on production cuz of the new LCD screens etc blah blah....) so i got the last one at the apple store in San Francisco and it was just what i wanted except drive size. i took it, and figured id upgrade it myself.


its a 120gb and im basically looking for whatever the biggest available drive is...looking at newegg quickly, i saw their biggest was 250gb...? is that the biggest available right now? will it work with my mac book pro?

that would be fine, just wondering.

i want to maybe use bootcamp to run xp/vista but with a bigger drive....i do video related stuff also for school and what not so i need lots of space in addition to external hard drive....

i figure its better to do this upgrade now while i haven't got a ton of stuff already on here etc etc...although i kind of already do....


also, can superduper! essentially transfer my comp to the new hard drive, no problems? i have an external hard drive and everything....could it work?

The 250GB is the largest available laptop drive, yes, and it will work fine with the mbp; though there are 200GB 7200RPM drives which will be measurably faster than the 250GB 5400RPM drive, if that makes any difference to you at all.

However, you need to be aware of something; this is very, very important. Upgrading the hard drive in a MacBook Pro **WILL** void your warranty. I've checked with three different Apple stores (Los Gatos, Stanford and Valley Fair) and they all said the same thing. It *WILL* void your warranty. The only upgrade you can make on a MacBook Pro that will not is a RAM upgrade, and that will still void your warranty if something goes wrong that's related to the use of non-Apple RAM.

Now, you may not care about your warranty, but the MBP does not have the greatest track record for reliability in the world (but then, most notebooks aren't particularly reliable when compared to desktops), and if your logic board up and dies in 11 months, you're going to be kicking yourself for upgrading that hard drive.

all you need to do is when u have a problem with your MBP just keep the factory HD and put that drive back in your MBP when you send it in for repairs

Technically speaking, yes. There's no reason you can't just swap the old drive back in. There is a potential issue with this, however. The MacBook Pro, from what I have been given to understand, does not come apart as readily as some other notebooks do. The top case is supposedly fairly fragile, and there is apparently at least some chance that someone who has never disassembled one before will leave some evidence of the fact that they have been in there. I've heard of Apple (and other companies) voiding warranties simply because they suspected someone had played with something they shouldn't have.

It's entirely possible that you could upgrade the drive and get away with it. But if you don't, you're not going to be very happy, now are you?

can you get a bigger hard drive put in by apple?

You might be able to, I don't know. You'd have to call Applecare. If you can it's just going to be whatever drives they offer in the machine when it's sold new.

yeah...wouldnt void warranty though id think...

It's not ideal but what about one of those 'portable' external firewire/usb drives? They're pretty small and lightweight, saves voiding your warranty.

Take it to an Apple Authorized Service Provider. They should be able to install the drive if you include it. (for a fee, shouldn't be more than 1/2hour charge)