i'm looking at upgrading my macbook's hdd and thought it would be nice to take the old hard drive and make it into an external... has anyone tried this http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Samsung/HM320JIMFWU2/ or similar upgrade bundle? would you recommend it?
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anyone tried the hdd upgrade bundle from owc?
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jeremy.king
macrumors 603
I have - in a way. I upgraded my wife's Macbook and put the original drive in that very case. It's just a hard drive and enclosure - nothing special about the "Upgrade Bundle" name
yeah i was thinking more in terms of value... is this the way to go if i want more hard drive space or would an external be better?
sickmacdoc
macrumors 68020
Well the convenience of having a larger internal to minimize the number of times you need to lug around the external (although small and without a power cord of course) still has me sold on the internal upgrade. That way you lose nothing since you can still use the old drive as external when needed.
In addition to the bundle that my favorite Mac parts supplier OWC sells, watch your ads from Circuit City and Best Buy too. They have been running specials on the Western Digital 250 Gb Passport Essentials external drives for $99. Using one of these (and probably others, but I have done this with two Macbooks and WD Essentials) you have the best of both worlds. The 250 Gb drive in them is a WD Scorpio 250Gb SATA drive- perfect to replace the internal in you MB. So, just open it up and pull the drive out- then pop it in your MacBook and put the old internal you just pulled out back in the WD External case and you have it made with a 250Gb internal and a smaller external as a bonus!
thanks for the heads up... how difficult is it to remove the hard drive from the passport?
krye
macrumors 68000
Yes, it worked out great....
http://web.mac.com/ryemac3/RyeMAC3/Home/Entries/2007/11/1_MacBook_Updates.html
http://web.mac.com/ryemac3/RyeMAC3/Home/Entries/2007/11/1_MacBook_Updates.html
sickmacdoc
macrumors 68020
Not difficult at all- a bit trying on the nerves the first time as the case makes some unpleasant noises as you figure out how to open it up (if I were home I would post a couple of pictures of how to remove it but won't be able to do that for about four more days) but once you have it open the drives just slides right out. You basically just have to pry the two sides of main part of the "clamshell" open and slide the whole inside out, then reverse it once you have put your old internal back into the Passport case. Just email or PM me and I can shoot you some pics the middle of next week as I have one on my desk I need to swap when I get home.
i installed this successfully this weekend... thanks again for the tip... it was a bit interesting getting that thing open...i wasn't sure if i would be able to put it back together because i was sure i broke something, but to my surprise, i popped the old hard drive in there without a problem
mizelly41
macrumors regular
I am glad I read this post. I was considering upgrading my Macbook's hard drive so that I could move all my music to it. I currently have my music stored on a PC which means my iPod (maybe geting an iPhone) has to sync with the PC. I have about 20GB left on my Macbook and I have about 20GB of music. I am trying to delete some of my music (I have ALOT that I don't listen to or haven't even heard of) to free up some space, but it will still not leave me with much room on my Macbook if I were to move everything over right now. Getting this bundle will let me move my music over, keep my old hard drive as a backup, and get rid of my PC. 😛 Thanks for posting this bundle. It is already on its way to my house.