HD user-replaceable - my bum

[marmiteturkey]

I bought a shiny new macbook last week, with a view to upgrading the hard drive to 500gb and selling my Macbook Pro. 13in form factor that much better for me, and now that it's metal, fast and handsome, the macbook's the right one. Also picked up a WD 500gb caviar drive.

Got home last night, and set about removing the single, solitary screw that holds in the hard drive. Long story short, it's in so tight that I stripped it. I'm a big chap, but I couldn't budge the thing with the right size of screwdriver, and I've now hollowed out the middle - stripped it completely.

Terrified of hurting my computer more, so I've an appointment at the Genius bar on Friday, as it seems from other forums that they can get stripped screws out on the spot. And THEN it's 500gb internal goodness. Til then I've got it in a USB housing, so I can get it all ready.

I'm posting this as a word of caution to others - beware that the Apple robots are stronger than the average human...

 

[No1451]

A longer screwdriver in this case would have been your saving grace, in the future use a longer one(more torque). When working on my PC I always use a really long #1 screwdriver.

 

[SBG]

Yeah i just invested in a torque set for 15 dollars had to after i almost did what u did

 

[nick9191]

Reminds me of the Dell Dimensions. Screws wont budge for love nor money.

 

[phoobo]

familiar with the problem

...as I have replaced a few drives in alu Macbooks. I would venture to say the one you used was almost certainly too big - even though it might have looked to be the right size. I have had the experience of seeing the driver turn without the screw, a problem that went away (without using force) with the next-smallest one in the set. To the naked eye, they looked virtually identical.

 

[barnsleyboy]

I just put a WD Scorpio Blue 500GB in my MacBook (£104 from dabs). I couldn't believe how easy it was. The only hardware issue was getting the 4 retaining screws out of the old drive. Not having the right tool, I just used a pair of pliers. Without them, the drive rattles around inside the case!

Now, getting OS X and Vista re-installed was a different story. I'd left a DVD in the drive, and could find no way to eject it, so I had to reinstall my old drive just to eject the DVD. Not having done this before, I also had to learn how to boot from the Leopard DVD (hold down the option key while booting); and how to format the new drive before the install would run (Disk Utility is available from the menu when the installer is running). I also learnt that a restore from a Time Machine backup does not replace apps that were installed with Leopard (so iTunes refused to open my iTunes 8 library), but that is corrected as soon as you run Software Update. And when I reinserted the aforementioned DVD, it continued playing where it left off from the previous install. Spooky!

Vista and Office 2007 installed (and activated) fine, but I did have fun and games ejecting the DVD from Vista before I installed the Boot Camp drivers. Just right click on the drive icon? How? (alt-F10 did the trick).