Hard drive replacement

On a Mac Book Pro I would go with an SSD. Then hold your iTunes media Library on an external. You MBP will feel new with an SSD.

Msaavedra said:

Thanks for your reply.

Since the solid state are very expensive and have not that much capacity I was thinking in one of the new hard drives with hybrid technology, some like this for the one I'll replace (this one or other brand...) http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.aspx?id=1190 , and for the second one a 2 TB, exactly because iTunes library but don't know if it goes for may macbook pro...

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That drive requires that you jump through hoops using a Windows-based computer in order to use the spinning part of the drive. It will not work on a Mac unless you do that.

I think your Mac book Pro 5,1 it had a SuperDrive in it. The you could get an SSD and a regular hard drive and make your own DIY fusion drive. I could link to a tutorial but it is different from 10.8 to 10.9 so let use know what version of OS X are you running.

Plus here is video of a OWC Data Doubler.

My suggestions:

Get a 240-256gb SSD to go inside (replace the existing HDD). They are not all that expensive now (about $130 US).

Leave the CD/DVD drive "in place". Don't mess with it.

Once you take the old HDD out, put it into an external case like this one:
http://www.amazon.com/Optimized-Ina...=1400428544&sr=8-1&keywords=inateck+usb3+2.5"

You can use it either as a "storage drive" (for your iTunes, movies, etc.), or a backup drive.

(NOTE: if you move files onto it that are no longer on the internal SSD, you must BACK THEM UP to ANOTHER DRIVE, as well. Don't keep important files on ONLY ONE drive)

As another poster said above, this will make the MacBook "feel like new".
Actually BETTER THAN new.
That's the result I got when I put an SSD into my 2010 MacBook Pro...

Msaavedra said:

Hi, I'm new to the forum and joined to get a few doubts clear, cause I think here is the right place to do it

I got a MBP 5.1 (2,66 ghz, 320 gb, 4gb), late 2009 model I think, and since I've installed the new OS it's a little bit slow so I want to upgrade Ram to 8 gb (I think it supports not more...) and I'd like to know which ones I must buy, and since I'm going to open the laptop I was thinking in replacing also the hard drive for a bigger/faster one (here stands other doubt, can I put one of this new hard drives with hybrid technology? which brand it's the best for this hardware, I was thinking in western digital) and also put a second hard drive in the place of the dead multimedia drive (which kit its better to do it????), so the question here is, which capacity (since nowadays we have 2 Tb 2,5 hard drives) hard drive can I buy to get access to full storage capacity?

Greetings!

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First, as a cheap solution, you can get a 750 GB hard drive with 7200 rpm and 16 MB cache which will run a lot faster than your old 320 GB drive. 7200 rpm is good, 16 MB cache is good, the transfer rate will be a lot higher, and hard drives are faster when they are empty, so if your drive was almost full and therefore slow, the new drive will be less than 40% full and a lot faster. It's not an SSD drive, but it's a big improvement for very little money.

For the fast and big solution: Hard drives over 1GB are 15mm high and won't fit, so 1GB is the limit. If your multimedia drive is broken, here's what I did (bit more work than it should have been, but was quite cheap): I bought an adapter on eBay for £4.99 and a 120 GB SSD drive for £50 (240 GB will cost £90). The adapter didn't fit where the old CD drive was, so I removed just the electronics, removed all the innards of the original CD drive, put the SSD drive inside, fixed it with strong double-sided tape, put it in with the connector from the £4.99 adapter, and it works just fine. You need a time machine backup obviously, and then you find instructions on the internet how to turn all this into a 1.12 or 1.24 GB fusion drive.

If you buy an external drive instead of an internal one, that has the advantage that you can just swap the hard drives over (external into Mac, internal into external), so you can just boot from the external drive and use Disk Utility to do what needs doing when the hardware work is done. Might even be cheaper; for some reason external drives seem to be cheaper.

I'd do things in this order: Make sure you have a Time Machine backup. Install the SSD drive, check that it works, swap internal/external drive, check the new internal works, turn it into Fusion drive, restore your backup.

Msaavedra said:

how can I do that?

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I'm running 10.9.2

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Then follow a post by Dark Dragoon to make a 10.9.x DIY Fusion Drive.

Msaavedra said:

Im considering put two drives, but not for now, now I'm going only update to an SSD and Rams, later a second drive in the place of the multimedia drive cause I think two independent drives work better between OSX upgrades, or am I wrong?

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What I am finding out today that maybe you do as you wrote because some DIY users have reported the 10.10 betas users are reporting the 10.9 DIY fusion drive is causing troubles. So maybe you should hold of until 10.10 is out and others have figured out a DIY Fusion fix.

upgrading MBP '09

I have a '11 MBP (2.3 i5). Here is what I did:
-backed up internal HD onto new 512 SSD HD from Macsales. Also backed up
to Time Machine on external HD for added measure.
-followed video directions from Macsales.com on swapping HD's.
-replaced internal HD with 512 SSD from Macsales.
-replaced optical drive (never use it) with 1TB HD using Macsales frame kit.
(watch the video, pretty straight forward, 30 minutes total time to convert).
-use 1TB 2nd internal HD as overflow if not using external HD via Thunderbolt connection
-normally use 1.5TB external HD (seagate go flex) with Thunderbolt adaptor or
firewire 800 connector at work, depending on whether or not using VGA connector to LED projector in classroom.
Startup is much quicker.
BTW
-Keep files off the desktop, off the internal main drive and onto external drives.
-Empty wastebasket often
-Defrag HD's every so often. It does help. Idefrag works well.
Enjoy