I'm trying to keep my old 13" 2006 Core Duo (not Core 2 Duo) 2ghz Macbook a little longer. Have 3 questions. I'm currently running Snow Leopard. Can't upgrade to Lion right? Upgraded my Ram to 2gb a few years ago. Is this the max? Currently running a 320gb Seagate Momentus 7200rpm 16mb cache 3gb/s. Can I upgrade to the new Seagate Hybrid drive with 750gb 7200rpm 32mb cache 6gb/s sata?
No, as Lion needs a Core 2 Duo CPU. Yes. Upgrading RAM in MacBooks and MacBook Pros Yes, if the maximum height is 9.5 mm. MacBook, MacBook Pro: Replacing the Hard Disk Drive, transferring data to the new HDDHow to format a new HDD/SSD to install Mac OS X or make a bootable copy onto
Thank you simsaladimbamba for your fast answers The good thing about the hard drive upgrade is if I do replace my Macbook this year I can probably use the upgraded Seagate Hybrid drive ST750LX003 in the new Macbook Pro.
On an older machine, you shouldn't upgrade to Lion even if you can force it to do so. It's quite ram hungry, and it has other issues. Note that a lot of people have gone back to SL. Inability to upgrade to Lion shouldn't be a factor in how much longer you keep the machine unless you require it to install a current software generation. Most software developers have maintained compatibility with Snow Leopard so far, so you're probably fine.
Not on this machine, right. Probably not. Check it here: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=14130876#post14130876 (Yeah, i know what everymac.com says.) Probably not: http://forums.macrumors.com/showthread.php?p=14059189#post14059189 If you have only SATA I (1.5 GBit/s), then you need a SATA II HDD/SSD (SATA III is not backwards compatible with SATA I, AFAIK). @thekev: True.
Yes my motherboards max Sata is 1.5gb/s. My current hard drive is downgraded to 1.5gb/s even though the hard drive is capable of 3gb/s. I found a thread on Seagate site. It said that the drive auto recognizes the Sata chipset and should be able to go down to 1.5gb/s. There are some chipsets it will not recognize though such as VIA VT8237 Southbridge. Is this the chipset in my Macbook 'Intel ICH7-M AHCI'? That's what I found in system profiles under Serial-ATA.
Well I got the Seagate Hybrid 750gb drive ST750LX003 today. And I installed it in my Macbook. Booted from my old drive in an external enclosure into my OS. I then formated the new hard drive. So my Macbook recognizes the hard drive Using Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my old drive to the new. I think this will take a few hours as I have about 140gb on there. Will update when I've tested the new drive (actually booting from it). Update: Seems to be working fine so far. Actual boot up time is 5 seconds faster (was 35sec, now 30sec) . I'm sure on a newer motherboard with sata 3gb/s or 6gb/s it would be an even better improvement. No issues at this point
Trying out the same Hi, Thank You For this thread and following up. I read this and decided to do the same. I bought the same exact drive. I wanted to ask you though, how is yours still holding up? I'll let you know how it goes with mine. Thanks Again.