Help with Macbook Hard Drive Upgrade

[phpmike]

So I am a college student and I have a first generation Macbook (got it almost 3 years ago). I am also a programmer and have been waiting for the new iMacs to be released thinking I would buy one of those, but without an upgrade in the processor I think I will be going for the Mac Pro, which I consider less likely to be outdated quickly. Don't have the money for that yet though, so in the mean time I want to put a new hard drive and ram on my macbook. I am not so worried about the ram but I have never replaced the hard drive on this thing. Is there anything I should know or be worried about?

General System Profiler Specs:

Model Name: MacBook
Model Identifier: MacBook1,1
Processor Name: Intel Core Duo
Processor Speed: 2 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 2 MB
Memory: 1 GB
Bus Speed: 667 MHz
Boot ROM Version: MB11.0061.B03
SMC Version: 1.4f12
Serial Number: 4H62959FU9E
Sudden Motion Sensor:
State: Enabled


Serial ATA Specs:


Intel ICH7-M AHCI:

Vendor: Intel
Product: ICH7-M AHCI
Speed: 1.5 Gigabit
Description: AHCI Version 1.10 Supported

FUJITSU MHY2080BH:

Capacity: 74.53 GB
Model: FUJITSU MHY2080BH
Revision: 0081000D
Serial Number: K438T7C2BHWA
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: 74.21 GB
Available: 15.13 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /


Fujitsu Hard Drive Specs:

FUJITSU MHY2080BH:

Capacity: 74.53 GB
Model: FUJITSU MHY2080BH
Revision: 0081000D
Serial Number: K438T7C2BHWA
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: 74.21 GB
Available: 15.13 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s2
Mount Point: /


I have been looking at this one:
$87 - HITACHI 7k320: 320GB, 7200rpm, 16mb cache, 3gbps, 3 year warranty


Any thoughts, concerns?

[angemon89]

Nope, everything sounds good. Do you have a plan for transferring over your files?

[phpmike]

Nope, everything sounds good. Do you have a plan for transferring over your files?

I do have an external hard drive that I use time machine with, but I just realized that I had purchased (and now lost I think) the upgrade for leopard. Will I have to do that again?

[angemon89]

Well yeah, you can't recover a Time Machine backup onto Tiger. You need Leopard for that.

[phpmike]

Well yeah, you can't recover a Time Machine backup onto Tiger. You need Leopard for that.

What I don't understand about that is how Tiger would still be available but not Leopard?

[angemon89]

I'm assuming you have the Tiger DVD's that originally came with your MacBook, right?

You would need to install the new hard drive in your MacBook, then install OSX onto that hard drive from those DVD's.

On your new hard drive would be tiger and not leopard.

Is that what you're asking? I'm not sure I fully understood your question.

[phpmike]

I'm assuming you have the Tiger DVD's that originally came with your MacBook, right?

You would need to install the new hard drive in your MacBook, then install OSX onto that hard drive from those DVD's.

On your new hard drive would be tiger and not leopard.

Is that what you're asking? I'm not sure I fully understood your question.

I don't have either of the installation disks anymore. darnnn...

[angemon89]

Ah, well then you're going to need to use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your drive to the new one, but I believe you will need a usb or firewire enclosure for transferring over your stuff to the new hard drive.

I am not 100% sure on how this is done though, you will need to ask someone else.

[skorpien]

Then your only solution is to clone your MacBook's hard drive onto the new one. Use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Though you will need a 2.5" SATA HDD enclosure to seat your new hard drive in and connect it to your MB for the transfer.

Also, your TM backup is pretty much useless if your drive craps out sorry to say. Time Machine only covers you if you have the Leopard install discs, so when you do a fresh install onto your replacement hard drive, you can restore from a Time Machine backup. Granted you can still use it to retrieve files that may have been deleted by accident and such, but you won't be able to do a system restore onto a new hard drive without the discs.

Edit: And it seems I'm a bit too late with my post... Maybe I should just get some sleep... :p

[angemon89]

Edit: And it seems I'm a bit too late with my post... Maybe I should just get some sleep... :pHehe, your post was helpful nonetheless because it confirmed what I believed about needing an enclosure to transfer your files.

[phpmike]

Then your only solution is to clone your MacBook's hard drive onto the new one. Use SuperDuper! or Carbon Copy Cloner. Though you will need a 2.5" SATA HDD enclosure to seat your new hard drive in and connect it to your MB for the transfer.


What if I carbon copied my current hard drive to my external, switched the internal drives, then booted from the external. Then could I carbon copy again to the new internal, thus avoiding the need for an enclosure?

[qsoundrich]

I just wrote a detailed explanation of how to do this tonight before your first post.

[angemon89]

I just wrote a detailed explanation of how to do this tonight before your first post.So, you boot from the external, then CCC the external onto the new internal? That's an awful lot of copying but sounds like it would work. :eek:

[TheScavenger]

The restore discs are $19 a piece from Apple. Half of the people that come into my store for Apple repair work have lost there restore discs so I deal with this problem a lot :D

[bbaham]

Since Apple doesn't have key's, what would stop someone from getting a reinstall disc and installing leopard on a tiger or older machine? Is there a difference from a reinstall disc and a separately purchased version of leopard?

[skorpien]

The install discs are model specific.

You can't install a version of Leopard from an install disc on a machine that originally ran Tiger since that model's install discs are Tiger only. Others have tried installing Leopard on older machines using newer install discs and have failed.

You can get your Tiger install discs from Apple, but you'll still need a retail copy of Leopard to upgrade.