Using a WD My Passport drive as an internal upgrade?

Hi all,

I've been searching all day and hope you guys can help.

I have a late 2006 MacBook Pro (2.33 GHz) that can only accept 9.5 mm internal HDs. I also have a new Western Digital My Passport Essential SE (link) and want to use that as an internal drive, and put my current 120 GB internal drive in that enclosure.

I called WD and the technical support person said the drive is 9.5 mm tall and uses SATA, which means it would work exactly as planned.

But if he was wrong and I break open the drive and it doesn't work, I'm out $90 (I got it on sale) and I'll void the warranty. And the WD site shows that all their internal notebook drives are 12.5 mm, so where would this 9.5 mm drive come from? It is special for this enclosure? Are they using a third party hard drive? Or did the tech lie to me or guess?

Has anyone opened this drive, or know if this drive is actually 9.5 mm tall? If not, has anyone installed a 12.5 mm drive in a MacBook Pro this old?

Any help would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

-Scott

Thank you

Thanks for the reply.

I decided to buy this, which is 9.5 mm and 7200 rpm, and I'll use the Passport as a local Time Machine backup since my current backup is over a slow network.

USB connector

I read that on another forum and someone replied that it's a standard HD with a SATA connector but it has a SATA -> USB connector soldered on that's hard (but not impossible) to remove.