Ultimate Macbook Pro Upgrade
Posted August 8th, 2008 by DomAs you may have read last year, I got a new Macbook Pro. With it came 2GB RAM, and a 120GB hard drive.
Needless to say, that space quickly got used up, and I started spending a lot of time deleting iTunes content, and backing up stuff to DVD’s and my MyBook. I played with the idea of upgrading the drive a lot, but always held back because I have AppleCare and there is a chance it could void my warranty, or cause problems if I ever have to take this machine in.
But this isn’t a post of regrets, its a post of action. The action being I finally took the plunge. The price was right so I ordered a Western Digital 5400rpm 320GB laptop drive and it arrived swiftly last week. I really couldn’t wait so I immediately formatted it, and started to clone my current drive over using SuperDuper. Three hours later and it was ready. I did a quick check and booted from it via USB. All was good so I was ready for the replacement.
I followed some instructions from iFixit.com and got to work. The whole process took about 90 minutes in total, and that was being very cautious and taking it slowly.
So what gems of advice can I pass on? Screws! The biggest issue is all the screws. In total, there are 8 sets of screws from around the laptop. I had a small screw box/pill box that I used to keep each type apart, and put them in the pot in the order I took them out. This made it easy to put it back together.
I would also make sure you put down a towel or cloth to lay the laptop on. You’ll be moving it around to access all the screws and the last thing you want is scratches when you’re done.
The last bit of trouble I had was removing the hard drive cable from the drive itself. Its a thin plastic cable that is glued to the top of the drive. In an ideal world you have a spudger, a small plastic tool you can use to separate the cable from the drive. I had none so I had to make do with a business card and then a pen lid when the card got too messed up. So before you delve in, make sure you have something to hand. And don’t be too worried about pulling the cable with your hands if you need to. Its fairly robust so will probably come off in your hand if you’re slow and careful.
That was the difficult part. I also bought 4GB RAM from Play.com as recommended by WIl Harris on ChannelFlip.com. Replacing this was easy as removing the battery and taking out 3 screws. Its possibly the ONLY user replaceable part of a Macbook Pro. And that is what perplexes me. Why does the high end machine have to be so difficult to replace a hard drive on? You’re paying more and are likely to be a bit more technically minded, so why is it such a pain and why does it void your warranty? That I will never understand.
But the final story is that I have a 2.2GHz C2D Macbook Pro with the biggest hard drive I can get, and the most RAM it can take. Its a true powerhouse to me.
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Tags: apple, macbookpro, upgrade
One Response to “Ultimate Macbook Pro Upgrade”
August 9th, 2008 at 4:13 am
That’s awesome! I’ve also done a RAM upgrade on my MBP, which at the time saved me US$600. I hadn’t considered doing a hard drive upgrade on mine until reading your post, but now I’m super keen on the idea
With music, some virtual machines, boot camp partition, and some encrypted file containers, my space has just evaporated!
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