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Hard drive upgrade in a macbook pro

J

jsanfilippo5

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Nov 23, 2005
19
0
I have a 2.5 GHZ Macbook pro17" - i want to upgrade the hard drive - so i went today and purchased a 320gb Western Digital scorpio black 7200rpm drive. Install went fine, OS Loaded fine. but using the OS was torture, spinning beachballs coming up randomly - it would happen for a few seconds, and just freeze the whole system until it came back.. So i pulle dthat drive and put the OEM drive back in, no problems.

Does anyone have any suggestions on drive replacements for my machine?

Never really had these problems in the past.



Thanks in advance!!
 
Does your new hd have anti-shock head parking built-in? Some hds with this feature conflict with the same feature on the MBP, which might be causing your problem. I'd suggest doing some online research into whether the particular model hd you got has this.
 
anyone know of any 7200 rpm drives at 320 gb that doesnt have theis feature? anyone successfully install a scorpio on a mbp?
 
i have this: WD3200BJKT its with sensor, in my mbp 17" (black scorpio)
there is also a WD3200BEKT without sensor.

i transferred before complete data with superduper and then installed the new hdd in my mbp.

from 1 start all went perfect.
 
i actually have the drive boxed up and ready to go back- im debating whether or not to buy another one.. the store i was at had a fujitsu 7200 rpm as well...
 
this is turning into a real pain in the a$$

So i just returned the WD- and got a hitachi 7200 320gb- for STEAL!! I clone it no problem- as soon as I mount it into the mac though- not bootable. if i put it into an external enclosure boots no problem. The original drive has no issues either...

NOt sure what to do here, I am stumped.
 
jsanfilippo5 said:
this is turning into a real pain in the a$$

So i just returned the WD- and got a hitachi 7200 320gb- for STEAL!! I clone it no problem- as soon as I mount it into the mac though- not bootable. if i put it into an external enclosure boots no problem. The original drive has no issues either...

NOt sure what to do here, I am stumped.
Click to expand...

What process are you using to clone the drive?

I suspect you are formating the new drive, and then doing a complete restore without first installing the OS. Normally that should work without a hitch, but there have been cases where it doesn't.

What I recommend you do, if you haven't already, is reformat the new drive, boot from the OS X DVD, install Leopard from the discs, and then restore the rest of you stuff from the clone.
 
i used super duper to clone- nothing i never did before-

the problems seems to be when the drive gets mounted into the chassis- VERY wierd. I just took the drive out of the chassis- rebooted- worked fine. mounted it back into the chassis- fodler with a q mark. Like i said- i can boot this drive off USB no problem too...
 
jsanfilippo5 said:
is that so? how are you sure of this?
Click to expand...

You need to make sure it's
- Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
- GUID partition map

In addition, some cloning apps might not do a good job.
If you can't get it to work properly, then install OS on new drive, and use migration assistant to transfer your account and apps.
 
all that is correct- its formatted properly and guid-- i cant even boot off of a cd..
 
You said you could boot the drive from and external usb connection... I'm glad to hear that, because i had been under the impression you needed firewire to boot OSX from external drive. I have a universal usb connector for ide and sata drives, and a 320gig external drive that I'm just bought, so this is good news to me...
 
320GB Serial ATA @ 7200

Does upgrading to the 320GB Serial ATA @ 7200 reduce your battery life?
 
jsanfilippo5 said:
very wierd- now its booting- randomly- out of 5 restarts booted twice..
Click to expand...

I think I'd try zapping PRAM, and of course making sure the new drive was explicitly selected in the Startup Disk preference.

I put a 7200rpm 320-gig Hitachi in my new 17" MacBook Pro, and it's been working great.
 
jsanfilippo5 said:
Install went fine, OS Loaded fine. but using the OS was torture, spinning beachballs coming up randomly - it would happen for a few seconds, and just freeze the whole system until it came back.. So i pulle dthat drive and put the OEM drive back in, no problems.

Does anyone have any suggestions on drive replacements for my machine?

Never really had these problems in the past.



Thanks in advance!!
Click to expand...

You sure Spotlight was not re-indexing the drive. After I installed my 500GB the system was pretty slow until spotlight finished the re-index and then everything was normal.
 
after battleing this drive for a weekend. i gave up- I put the old drive back in. It almost seems like something is shorting out.. as soon as I mount the drive into the chassis it does not work, its not even recognized, and my cdrom wont boot either. When I pull it all is good.. Very strange. But Oh well.. Maybe next time.. I have 320gb 7200rpm firewire 800 drive now..
 
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