replacing hard drive on macbook

[tyros8000]

Hello,

I have an april 07 macbook and want to upgrade my hard drive.

I am looking at this one - http://www.ebuyer.com/product/146083

A few questions.

1. is it easy to fit a new hard drive, from what i understand i have to remove the battery, unscrew a L shaped panel and it is just a case of pulling the old one out and pushing the new one in?
2. does the amount of cache on the drive make a dramatic difference?
3. does brand effect anything?
4. does anyone have any recommendations of a model/brand/size?

thanks

dave.

EDIT:
I have jsut found this but for nearly half the price - http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0013E0A0M/.

is this one suitable for my macbook too? and would there be a significant speed difference between the drives?

 

[eric]

i've done this, and installation is pretty much as easy as it seems.

as for size, spin, brand. everyone is going to have a different opinion. check reviews on the drives on sites like cnet.
size won't make too much of a difference on speed unless you pack a drive full of data - higher spin and larger cache will certainly boost speed a bit, at least when accessing large files. though these things may consume more power as well, so if you tend to spend a lot of time on battery, you may actually want to go with a slower spin.

 

[tyros8000]

So it seems the 320gb 8mb cache and 5400rpm one is a better deal at nearly half the price. i do watch movies which are around a gb in size but speed of transfer doesn't really worry me.

i think the standard one installed is 5400 so should be pretty much the same which is perfectly fine for my needs.

it looks like these are designed to be swapped out so it won't void the warrenty?

 

[eric]

that's correct, it won't void the warranty.