For those of you who are considering upgrading your RAM or HDD in your Macbook, here are my experiences. I am neither a super-duper Mac user and have only had the machine for 2 years, nor do I work on computer hardware for a living (just use MS Office daily).
I had a 15", 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD machine and wanted more RAM and HDD capacity. The machine was running SL and did regular backups to TM wirelessly.
I bought 8 GB RAM from OWC. The price difference between 8GB and 4GB was marginal. It was originally listed that this machine would only accept 6GB RAM, but according to an article 8 GB was now feasible (MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 15" (Unibody) Specs (Late 2008/Unibody, MB470LL/A, MacBookPro5,1, A1286, 2255) @ EveryMac.com)
I decided on a hybrid 500 GB HDD. There are numerous threads on this and other boards about the pros and cons of such drives, along with various good and bad experiences. I decided to give it a try with the argument that I could always return it to the seller if it didn't work. I bought this: 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
I bought Lion and made a bootable USB stick as recommended here:How to make a bootable Lion install disc or drive | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld
Just make sure you read the whole thing before starting; and put Lion on the USB before you install it on the Mac.
Under my keychain I made note of my password to my router. I ran TM for the last time and then shut the whole computer down and took out the battery. There are plenty of videos on YouTube showing how to replace the RAM and HDD on a MBP, so I just followed those on a PC that is also in the house.
The manual labor took about 20 minutes; make sure you have the right screwdrivers.
I first installed the RAM and restarted. I didn't want to install both the RAM and HDD in the same go, since if either was broken I wouldn't know and I would have to trouble shoot. So, once the RAM was in I made sure that they were working by just restarting. That went fine, so I replaced the HDD next.
I started the MBP and told it to boot from the USB. Installed Lion, which took about 20 minutes. I found my router and logged on. I used Migration Assistant to install the previous accounts, but it did not work. My NAS box (Netgear NV+) was not compatible with Lion, but there is a beta version for Lion compatibility on the Netgear site, which quickly solved that problem.
Migration Assistant took about 8-9 hours to install all the information. The only incompatibility after that was Dropbox (which Migration Assistant told me...thank you ), which I simply downloaded again from their site.
That was it. Amazingly simple. No hassle. I had to sit at the computer for no more than 2 hours (RAM installation to telling Migration Assistant to start), while I let it do its thing overnight with Migration Assistant. My past experiences with PCs and new HDDs or reinstalling the OS has been a nightmare compared to this.
My MBP now runs much, much faster and so far the drive has been stable, quiet, and I don't see much degradation in battery performance. If you are thinking about upgrading don't let any concerns about the installation of equipment stop you...it really is easy.
I had a 15", 2.4GHz, 2GB RAM, 250GB HDD machine and wanted more RAM and HDD capacity. The machine was running SL and did regular backups to TM wirelessly.
I bought 8 GB RAM from OWC. The price difference between 8GB and 4GB was marginal. It was originally listed that this machine would only accept 6GB RAM, but according to an article 8 GB was now feasible (MacBook Pro "Core 2 Duo" 2.4 15" (Unibody) Specs (Late 2008/Unibody, MB470LL/A, MacBookPro5,1, A1286, 2255) @ EveryMac.com)
I decided on a hybrid 500 GB HDD. There are numerous threads on this and other boards about the pros and cons of such drives, along with various good and bad experiences. I decided to give it a try with the argument that I could always return it to the seller if it didn't work. I bought this: 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
I bought Lion and made a bootable USB stick as recommended here:How to make a bootable Lion install disc or drive | Operating Systems | MacUser | Macworld
Just make sure you read the whole thing before starting; and put Lion on the USB before you install it on the Mac.
Under my keychain I made note of my password to my router. I ran TM for the last time and then shut the whole computer down and took out the battery. There are plenty of videos on YouTube showing how to replace the RAM and HDD on a MBP, so I just followed those on a PC that is also in the house.
The manual labor took about 20 minutes; make sure you have the right screwdrivers.
I first installed the RAM and restarted. I didn't want to install both the RAM and HDD in the same go, since if either was broken I wouldn't know and I would have to trouble shoot. So, once the RAM was in I made sure that they were working by just restarting. That went fine, so I replaced the HDD next.
I started the MBP and told it to boot from the USB. Installed Lion, which took about 20 minutes. I found my router and logged on. I used Migration Assistant to install the previous accounts, but it did not work. My NAS box (Netgear NV+) was not compatible with Lion, but there is a beta version for Lion compatibility on the Netgear site, which quickly solved that problem.
Migration Assistant took about 8-9 hours to install all the information. The only incompatibility after that was Dropbox (which Migration Assistant told me...thank you ), which I simply downloaded again from their site.
That was it. Amazingly simple. No hassle. I had to sit at the computer for no more than 2 hours (RAM installation to telling Migration Assistant to start), while I let it do its thing overnight with Migration Assistant. My past experiences with PCs and new HDDs or reinstalling the OS has been a nightmare compared to this.
My MBP now runs much, much faster and so far the drive has been stable, quiet, and I don't see much degradation in battery performance. If you are thinking about upgrading don't let any concerns about the installation of equipment stop you...it really is easy.