Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Comprehensive guide for HDD replacement?

G

gooter80

macrumors member
Original poster
Apr 15, 2010
41
0
Hi all,

I am considering purchasing the "low end" 15" and purchasing a 500gb drive separately to install myself. I believe I could then put the 320gb drive that came with the laptop into a case and use it as an external for backups and such.
Does anyone know of a comprehensive guide that would:
-tell me how to transfer OSX and whatever else I need to transfer onto the new drive
-how to remove the old and put in the new
-any else I may be missing

Any help would be much appreciated! :D
 
Since you're going to have an external drive, you will have an external drive bay, right?

Purchase your external drive bay. Place your NEW hard drive in the bay and plug it into your mac. Restore the image of your internal hard drive onto the NEW drive, but only IF you have information on your stock drive.

If your computer is completely new or you don't mind losing ALL data, simply skip that step.

Visit this hard drive replacement guide: Guide

After your hard drive is installed, start the MacBook Pro with the Restore discs that come with your mac. Install Snow Leopard using these disks.

Done.
 
www.ifixit.com has a guide with photos, Apple has a User Guide (shipping with the Mac and available online on their Support page under Manuals) on how to replace the HDD.

And with MRoogle or any other search engine you will find plenty of threads here (daily almost) and articles/guides on how to clone your HDD with SuperDuper and CarbonCopyCloner.
 
MrCheeto said:
Since you're going to have an external drive, you will have an external drive bay, right?

Purchase your external drive bay. Place your NEW hard drive in the bay and plug it into your mac. Restore the image of your internal hard drive onto the NEW drive, but only IF you have information on your stock drive.

If your computer is completely new or you don't mind losing ALL data, simply skip that step.

Visit this hard drive replacement guide: Guide

After your hard drive is installed, start the MacBook Pro with the Restore discs that come with your mac. Install Snow Leopard using these disks.

Done.
Click to expand...

Wow, thats a lot easier than i expected, thanks! Now if I want to use the HDD that came with the laptop as an external (as you say in an external bay) what would I have to do to erase whatever is on it? I'm sure it's simpler than I am guessing.
 
After you've put it in the drive bay, plug it into the Mac, open Disk Utility and format it.
 
gooter80 said:
Wow, thats a lot easier than i expected, thanks! Now if I want to use the HDD that came with the laptop as an external (as you say in an external bay) what would I have to do to erase whatever is on it? I'm sure it's simpler than I am guessing.
Click to expand...

You can use Applications / Utilities / Disk Utility for that.

Here is a guide on how to use it: http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilformat.htm

And a guide on file systems: http://guides.macrumors.com/Drives_and_Filesystems


Also have a look at the following links, as the information presented there might be helpful in your future endeavours into Mac OS X and could clear up initial confusion and may even prevent harm to your system or your files.

 
Holding C forces the mac to boot to the optical drive media.

Holding Option will list all bootable media, then allows you to select whichever you want to boot.
 
Libertine Lush said:
Though unlike one of the links above (http://macs.about.com/od/applications/ss/diskutilformat_5.htm) which says to hold down the "c" key when you restart the Mac, this guide says to hold the "Option" key. Not sure which one is right.
Click to expand...

C for booting from a bootable optical medium, CD or DVD.

OPTION for booting from any bootable medium connected to the Mac, including the optical drive.


Option
Display all bootable volumes (Startup Manager)

Shift
Perform Safe Boot (start up in Safe Mode)

C
Start from a bootable disc

T
Start in FireWire target disk mode

N
Start from NetBoot server

X
Force Mac OS X startup (if non-Mac OS X startup volumes are present)

Command-V
Start in Verbose Mode

Command-S
Start in Single User Mode

from one of my links: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1343
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back