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Hard drive Upgrade

V

Voxelx

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jul 8, 2012
9
0
Hey I have a question about my hard drive.

I wanted to upgrade to a bigger hard drive and wanted to know what would happen after I put it in.

I know I will have to use my os installation disks, but will those bring back all of the preloaded applications?

and is any mac hard drive compatible with any other mac? I'm planning to buy a mac hard drive for my mac off of amazon and do not know if it will work in it.
 
As you don't mention, what exact Mac you have, answers might be a bit unspecific.
Anyway, Macs use the same HDDs as Windows or Linux based PCs, they are just formatted differently, which you can do yourself*, thus there is no need to get a "special" Mac HDD.
As the grey Restore DVDs contain the OS and applications your Mac came with (if bought new), reinstalling Mac OS X will reinstall those applications. iLife is contained on the second DVD.

If you have a MacBook or MacBook Pro:
MacBook, MacBook Pro: Replacing the Hard Disk Drive, transferring data to the new HDD

the guide includes:
  • 0. Identify your MacBook or MacBook Pro
  • 1. Getting a new HDD
  • 2. Guides to replace the internal HDD with a newer one
  • 3. Transferring data from the old HDD to the new HDD
  • 4. Using the optical disk drive (ODD) slot for placing an SSD or HDD inside the MB/P (OPTIBAY)
​


 
1. Use time machine back-up before you replace your drive to restore all your apps, settings and data on the new hdd.
2. Hard drives know nothing about if they are inserted into mac or general pc :)
Just check your mac specs to be sure what kind of drive you should order - ssd, ide, sata, etc.
 
Having done this twice, my preferred way of doing things is:
put the new drive in an enclosure,
connect to Mac,
format it and then clone the Mac's existing HDD to the new one,
boot Mac from the external cloned drive,
check that everything is OK,
then swap drives.
 
Dave Braine said:
Having done this twice, my preferred way of doing things is:
put the new drive in an enclosure,
connect to Mac,
format it and then clone the Mac's existing HDD to the new one,
boot Mac from the external cloned drive,
check that everything is OK,
then swap drives.
Click to expand...

Thanks, but do you think this
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/YWD5000BEKT/

will work with the specs I posted? I'm worried about it not fitting or overheating.
 
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