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Hard Drive Replacement

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Borja1055

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jul 25, 2010
172
10
I was wondering if there were any tips as to which hard drive i should choose or if any particular brand causes problems. I am looking to upgrade my A1342 mid-2010 white univody MacBook to 500GB from 250GB.

Also, after replacing the hard drive, what is the best method to restoring all my info? Time Machine? Thanks
 
Weaselboy

Weaselboy

Moderator
Staff member
Jan 23, 2005
34,137
15,602
California
There really is not much difference between brands. I would just get whatever 5400RPM laptop drive you can get the best deal on and pop it in there.

If you have a current TM backup to an external USB drive made with Lion 10.7.2 or better, you can option key boot to that drive and it will boot to the recovery partition on the backup disk. From there you can use Disk Util to format the new drive to Mac OS Extended. Then quit Disk Util and click restore and it will put the OS and all your data back on the new drive.
 
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durhamj

macrumors member
Nov 22, 2008
47
1
Before opening and replacing the internal harddrive I recommend you put the new drive into an external enclosure (about $70 for a Firewire & USB enclosure). I am assuming your MacBook has the FW port. Run Disk Utility to format the external drive. Use a backup utility like SuperDuper to backup the old internal drive to the new ext drive. Then restart the Mac and boot from the ext drive. Test things out for a few hours, make sure all your apps and user data are on the new drive. If all is good then open the case and install the new drive.. Power up and let it boot from the new internal drive...
 
blueroom

blueroom

macrumors 603
Feb 15, 2009
6,381
26
Toronto, Canada
If you've got the coin then an 512GB SSD would be the way to go, but on a 2010 MBP it's a waste of money as the interface isn't fast enough to take advantage of the SSD's speed.

A more affordable approach would be the new Seagate hybrid SSHD slim series.
 
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trevm999

macrumors member
Nov 5, 2013
61
0
Weaselboy said:
There really is not much difference between brands. I would just get whatever 5400RPM laptop drive you can get the best deal on and pop it in there.
Click to expand...

I agree that Seagate vs Western Digital generally doesn't matter, but don't get a Western Digital Blue drive, they are notorious for failing within a year (just the 2.5" drives)
 
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