This is one of the best vids i seen to change a hd out. I know its long but its very educational. When I first changed mine i youtube a lot of vids and it was like a 30 second vid going in fast forward motion. Luckily i found one that had some better explaining but this has everything you need. I recommend everyone in here who plans on changing the hd in there pro to use this. Thanks for the tutorial video.

what drive did u upgrade to swift,,,,,brand and spec's.

Can't view from work but I about to go from the 320gb aftermarket to the 500gb. Anyone have any issues with a 500 gb in their Mackbook Pro?

Swift. Which one did you upgrade to?

just a side note, this is one of the most helpful websites for mac i have ever come across.
www.ifixit.com

Nice one! Just in time, a-swift. I bought a new h/d saturday, wanted to get everything ready for the gig on saturday. Imaged the drive with dd... finished two hours before the gig and realized - crap, the screwdrivers I have are just torx 10, I thought I had all the correct drivers, but to change the drive you need a T6 (some sites mention a T7?)!

Also good that you have explained why 7200rpm is not a good choice.

a-swift, can I copy all the stuff from my old drive using the Apple boot dvd?

What I did was booting from a Knoppix Live DVD and doing a dd, and then my plan is to enlarge the filesystem. If I do it your way, do I have to resize the filesystem?

I use dd for lots of stuff too but I prefer Time machine for this. If i image the original hard drive with dd and put the image back onto a larger drive, the partition is still the old size with a bunch of room left at the end of the drive. Since I don't know how to expand partitions on mac, I just use time machine. It works. With time machine your hard drive is formatted clean and all your old files are put back on, no need to resize filesystems.

yeah, I double checked. the T6 fits snug as a bug in a rug. not sure why those other sites are saying T7



i'm all about real world results and actual numbers, not marketing hype. just because someone slaps a set of specs on a product does not mean it will outperform hardware from someone else with lower specs. real world performance tests don't lie though. this drive consistently beat 7200 rpm drives and drives with better stated manufacturer specs.

also i think people fail to realize just how little a hard drive speed will influence serato performance or operation. drive speed is a huge concern for me when we're talking about recording many audio tracks or video capture but for serato, the influence of drive speed is minimal.

sup charlie. i'm using the western digital drive. i couldn't remember which one but i just loaded up the video to see if i can read the model number. the HD picture is good but not that good.

www.macgeekery.com < that's what I wanted to use to resize.

I am too scared that Timemachine does something strange. I remember doing the superduper stuff (the "clone" app) and it all came out very awkward. Maybe I missed something. But in such cases I prefer the "dumb" route (dd is pretty dumb ;) ).

Thanks for the video, BTW. It made me even more scared now ;) I remember fixing my laptop display on my Thinkpad X20... all these thin cables etc. you reallllly gotta be careful. And since I modded my XBOX with a hardware mod (no, I don't play games on the box, matter of fact this box has never ever seen a game, it's just that mediacenter which kicks ass :) ) ... I am really careful.

Offtopic: I watched the pics and manuals how to mod the Xbox, and thought "oh, soldering a few cables to the PCB, that's eaaaasy". Of course when I opened the box I realized that all the pics were zoomed and the points on the PCB where you had to solder the cables to were so small I needed a magnifying glass. And you can imagine that with a "normal" solder iron it is very very difficult not to mess up the PCB's... ;) Somehow I managed it, but I will never ever do it again. I would had paid the $80 to get the guy at the store do the mod, but he was a jerk so I decided to do it by myself.

yes i agree that dd is almost always perfect for everything but I wasn't sure if that was the right way to go. i like the time machine because it allows you to pick a point in time, which i guess isn't really useful for a hard drive upgrade.

the only thing weird that time machine does, is after your backup is restored, all of your cached passwords for stuff are gone so every time you connect to something you have to enter your passwords again.

I meant which size. Did you go with a 500gb?

It's just that many people just don't realize and understand, esp. the heating issue. I know my Dell already heats up a lot with just constant h/d access, and that's "only" a 5400rpm. I don't want to think about how it behaves with a 7200rpm.

And as you said... the benefit for SSL usage (even when using videos) with a 7200rpm is marginal - if you can measure any difference at all.

I upgraded my unibody MBP with a WD 500GB 5400 rpm drive. No need for a faster 7200rpm drive...

i remember somebody telling me about all the problems they had with 7200rpm drive in their laptop because of heat. i hope he posts it in here.

Charlie, I upgraded to the 500GB WD Scorpio. I had already upgraded to the 320GB a few months back but now that 500Gb is under $100, I had to do it again. Alsom I was running out of space.

how much did you pay for the drive? and how much is apple charging you to install? thanks.

newegg has the drives for $99.

Yeap, get the WD drive from Newegg...

a-swift wrote:
Swifty is this the one?
www.newegg.com

Im about to order now!

Yes, that is the only 500GB WD drive on Newegg... I put one in both my MBP and MB.

I upgraded my 12" Powerbook G4s to 7200rpm, both had heat issues, needed extra cooling if pushed. But there was a great performance increase for SSL. it was worth dealing with the heat.

yeahh i have a 320 gb wd 7200 drive in my macbook pro i put in bout 3 months ago. It does get super hot.. Like i thought it wasnt normal hott. But im about to change to the 500gb wd 5400 drive. Cause more room and the heat issue. I dj video and all my mp3 internal and my vids external usb. Havent had any issues yet. Knock on wood please for me... haha But this is a good deal with new egg.

When I get a chance Im going to remove the cd drive and replace it with a second hd on my 15" uni.
but again, Im worried about heat

What drive did you previouisly have?

the standard 5400 drives they shipped with

What size? How old was it? Which SSL performance increase did you experience?

WDC WD5000BEVT-11ZAT0:

Capacity: 465.76 GB
Model: WDC WD5000BEVT-11ZAT0
Revision: 01.01A01
Serial Number: WD-WXNX08N24615
Native Command Queuing: Yes
Queue Depth: 32
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Mac OS 9 Drivers: No
Partition Map Type: GPT (GUID Partition Table)
S.M.A.R.T. status: Verified
Volumes:
Macintosh HD:
Capacity: 465.44 GB
Available: 181.74 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /

There is a kit for the old macbook pro (like mine) that will let you ditch the CD/DVD and put a second hard drive instead. I'd actually consider this since I'd use an extra 500GB drive a lot more than a DVD.

seems like a great idea! So you can you use a USB DVD drive if needed. With "old" macbook.. do you mean pre-unibody? I believe you and I have similar MacBooks.... except I have the 17" one.

This was a very long time ago. But I ordered the 7200rpm 100gb drive from newegg first week they came out. Must have been SSL 1.6 or so, not really sure.

I cloned my original drive with CCC or SD to the new one in an external case. Then swopped them. Fired up SSL and there was an immediate performance boost, faster boot-up, loading songs and some other things (not latency I dont think)

Im absolutely sure it was the drive because I changed nothing but the drive, I could boot up the old drive and get the same lessor performance.

I kept the old drive as my emergency bootable buck up (saved my ass couple times)

hmmm, mater of fact, I learned about the 7200 performance boost from Jazzy Jeff who was booting from an external LaCie. I did the same thing till the internal 7200 drive came out.

Nik, I know we discussed this in the past, your just going to have to trust me on this one because Ive sworn by it for several years

I don't have any problems trusting you ;)

It's just that if you change the drive, and do not only change the RPM but also different other things like capacity, which indirectly has an impact on read/write speed (higher capacity = higher density = more data which flies by each rotation), then... you know.

hmmm...
well maybe that was it, whatever it was, it was hella better!

yeah, pre unibody so i guess that would be like the 2.0Ghz MBP all the way up to 2.5 or is it 2.6Ghz?

my MBP are 2.0 and 2.4 and they are essentially the same except the 2.4 has a fw800

I've been using 7200rpm drives for several years (and in several different computers) and have not seen any problems at all from heat. Even under heavy use, the drives neither felt hot (on the case right above them) or measured hot (Hardware Monitor).

The speed boost in SSL *is* noticeable to me, but more importantly is noticeable when doing copy/backups involving large amounts of data.

The only "overheating" problems I've had with drives in the last few years was from Seagate drives. The failure rate for that brand seems to be much higher than normal, and Seagate is now on my "do not buy" list.

All that aside, nice video...a useful supplement to the disassembly guides on iFixit.com.

Just curious... is this when loading tracks?

i run ssl on my non-gig computers with 7200rpm drives and SSL *defintely* loads faster and reads crates faster but other than that i can not detect a speed difference during normal use.

Add building overviews and booting the computer to the above.

Gotcha. These are not issues for me however.

But I see that booting up your computer quickly may be helpful for me in case your machine freezes up. ;)

i don't build overviews or reboot my computer while gigging

I do know about acronis but time machine is free. I like that.

EVERY hard drive manufacturer has drives that fail. Seagate, WD, Maxtor, Toshiba, Hitachi. They all fail. If you find a report that says one brand fails more than another, I'll show you another report that says the opposite.

i worked for western digital for quite a few years. i wouldn't say their drives are better than any other brand but i definitely wouldn't say they are any worse.

i have at least 50 hard drives spinning at my house right now and one thing is for sure, they all fail.

What a coincidence. I was planning on upgrading mine and my son’s hard drive.
My concern is that I have 1 and a half years Apple Care left and my son has over 2 years left.

The drive replacement will void warranty (I’ve already had Apple replace my CD/DVD drive).

So, Should I replace the drive with the old one if something goes bad and I have to take my MBP back to the Apple store?

If warranty is a concern, don't upgrade.

Gotta upgrade. Having a 120gb HD is not fun.

Do you think that it would be a good idea to keep the 120gb HD the way it is after the upgrade? This way I can put it back in if I have other issues with the Mac and they need to open it.

Would they notice if I peplace the HD and swap the old one back?

I'll bet you can put the 120GB back in unnoticed if there is a warranty issue that needs resolving.

i think i'm going to make a video of me replacing my pc laptop's hard drive. 1 screw slides out the drive bay, haha. i love my quad core laptop ;)

Great, I'm definitely going to do it now.

Thanks SWIFT! Just ordered my 500gb drive!

Thanks Swift. The video is informative.
I just ordered one for my son and me.


Keep us updated if you decide to buy it.

eshop.macsales.com <- this is also a good video.


I would not recommend it. Maybe Apple has ways how to find out whether the Mac has been opened previously (you can't change the h/d without leaving any traces).

Also, I don't know your technical skills Kenny, but swapping the harddrive is not so easy IMHO. I've done it now but I would not recommend esp. if your warranty gets voided.

Wohhoo. That link was the wrong one. However the one which I wanted to post originally is wrong as well.

So the correct way is...

Just use the internal disk utility! Since leopard you can resiize even your boot partition on the fly! The only problem is when you dd a drive OSX thinks the drive is too small to be enlarged since the last part of the GID is at the end of the old partition. This can easily be fixed. Just run "parted /dev/sda", then "print" and it will complain about the error and asks you whether you want to fix it. Enter "fix", then reboot to OSX, run diskutil, repartition and resize -> done. :)

Too late, I already bought the drives.
Thanks

Thanks.
He's paying for it with his own money.

oh there that went out the window lol... jk my dad does the same thing puts it on his credit card n makes me pay him back... id rather owe american express than him lol.

i just bought a couple more 500GB drives from newegg. 1 for my other macbook pro. i also got a stack of 2.5 aluminum firewire drive cases to match the stack of old laptop hard drives i have sitting here now. a few 120GB, a few 200GB and now a few 320GB. i like these self powered aluminum firewire drive cases. they are sweet.

I couldn't find the price for the extra internal hardrive kit.

Swift,
Is this the one you mentioned.
www.mcetech.com

I found the price. Freakin' expensive
store.mcetech.com
It doesn't look like they'll sell it without the hard drive.

Why not just getting the enclosure for $129?

i'm really loving these little aluminum firewire cases. i might be tempted to velcro one to the lid of my macbook pro and go firewire external!

i know we're talking laptop drives, but western digital just released a 2 TB 3.5" drive. whoa!

www.pcper.com

I'm thinking about making an "Instructional Porn Video" with Swifts 10K super JVC camera.

Nice cam Swifty!

well if this whole dj thing don't work out ...

Kind of off topic here but........ I'm kicking it with DJ Mad Matt in Erie, PA right now and his club has 2 DJ booths 3 projection screens and 2 plasma! In Erie, PA! There is no excuse for Club not to be "Doing Video"! No matter what market your in.

Matt is the 'ish I'd come back here anytime!

glad to hear it worked out

I upgraded to the 500gb WD with Time Machine. SIMPLE! First time I used Time Machine for a fresh install.

nice, hope the video helped. i just did my backup laptop too!

duhhh Im pc guy so I assume time machine allows you to make disks to back up your drive and you use that to boot. Or you backed it up to external...ahhhhhhhh..

i'm paranoid of data loss. lost too much stuff too many times over the years. time machine is ALWAYS on for my macs. everything is always backed up, not just when it's time to upgrade hard drives.

sometime in the near future I wanna add the secondary drive to mac for Videos... but I have all my master library on my PC workstation. I usually sync up external drives to it and then take it mobile with my mac. Is there a way to share a drive on a Mac so my PC can see it through a network? (still learning mac stuff)

Absolutely:
kb.iu.edu

You forgot the 3 LCD's in the Front bar and 1 more Plasma in the Club and the Plasma in the Ultra-lounge. Hahahahahahaha

Thanks Man! Were definatly gonna have to have you back. Everyone had a Blast!

LOL. Summer time baby. That way I can walk around in a T-shirt and people won't think I'm crazy....Where are the pics and video?

great vid a swift.

yeah matt. where are the pics and video?

Where are my pics damn it! j/k

Props swift. Just did the upgrade the other night. The only part I was worried about is removing the keyboard cable from the motherboard as I couldn't see what you did in the video. Just decided to pull it and see what happens. Other than that it was perfect.

that's when i realize i really need a camera guy. it's impossible to get the right angles for the camera and to keep a good grip on the laptop without dropping it.

glad it helped you do your upgrade though.

Seems easier than the PowerBook G4 I used to have. When I first switched to apple from PC, I was pissed at how hard they decided to make doing your own upgrade.

I know have the same model as in the video. I haven't needed to replace the drive it came with yet because I keep the library on an external.

Definitely good info, thanks.

I upgraded my hard drive and used Time Machine to load my files. I don't have all of my (Non Mac) email though.

For those who are going to upgrade their drives in the future. I just want to mention that instead of removing the ribbon that connects the keyboard to the mother board. I used a pencil to prop up the keyboard and removed the hard drive with ease.



I doubt they would notice if I put the old hard drive back in.

I'm looking for an external case for the hard drive that I just pulled out. Something that has firewire 800.
This is what I've found
eshop.macsales.com
Has anyone found one that works well and cost less?

Please provide a link.

-Kenny Q

Scratched screws, not properly seated cables... who knows what they are looking for.

I just bought that case, but with the 500gb hdd from macsales.

You can get an enclosure cheaper on ebay, but macworld did a review of that case and said it had the fastest transfer speeds of any 2.5" enclosure.

I'll be watching swift's video tomorrow while I toss in the new 500Gig drive.

Nice vid swift, thanks.

Kenny. I bought a stack of lil cases for my 2.5" drives. FW400 only though. They work really well though.

Hopefully, I won't have any problems with my computer in the future.

I don't like FW400 because they disconnect with the slightest movement. I've had mine accidentally disconnect on me many times.

I'm going to look for it on ebay. If you see it again, please send me a link.

Vids are up www.youtube.com

when dealing with external cases, 400 works great and i think they are more common than a 800

i use a 400, works fine with video

this doesn't matter to me since i don't dj with external drives. as a side note, my video camera also uses fw400 to record to hard drive and when i'm video recording stuff with the camera i'm jumping around all over the place and i've never had a cable disconnect while recording.

Now that I have a bigger hard drive, I was able to install Final Cut Studio and Logic Studio. This took many hours within 2 days.

I really don’t want all of these files in my internal HD. I would rather have music videos instead.

What files do you recommend moving to an external and where can I find them?
Also,

I see that Logic and FCS both have compressor and Soundtrack. But I still had to wait to install the software and files from FCS even though I think the same files were already installed from Logic. What happened? Did the files install on again, taking the previous one’s place or do I have doubles? During the install process, I was never asked if I wanted to skip any files.

There are tutorials out there that will show you how to move the many GBs of Logic, FCP content to external drive while keeping the applications (not very big) on your internal. Just track down one of the tutorials and have at it.

As far as installing the apps twice, the Logic & FCP Studio installers are broken. There's a few nagging things they don't do that they are supposed to, when you install both apps on the same system. They'll get this fixed next time around. Till then we just have to deal.