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How hard is it to upgrade Hard drive in a Macbook Pro?

G

Gomff

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Sep 17, 2009
802
1
Hello all
I have a 3 year old Macbook pro which is still going strong. It's my birthday soon and I'm thinking about treating myself to a new 500 GB Hard drive.

I have looked up how to upgrade it myself on iFixit.com and it looks OK but I'm just checking here to see what the general level of opinion is about difficulty / risk of buggering it up. The link to the process is here:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/...-A1226-and-A1260-Hard-Drive-Replacement/670/1

I paid to upgrade the stock HD to a 250 GB whilst it was still under warranty but since that has expired now I don't think I have as much to lose by opening it up myself. Thoughts?

Thanks
 
Gomff said:
Hello all
I have a 3 year old Macbook pro which is still going strong. It's my birthday soon and I'm thinking about treating myself to a new 500 GB Hard drive.

I have looked up how to upgrade it myself on iFixit.com and it looks OK but I'm just checking here to see what the general level of opinion is about difficulty / risk of buggering it up. The link to the process is here:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/...-A1226-and-A1260-Hard-Drive-Replacement/670/1

I paid to upgrade the stock HD to a 250 GB whilst it was still under warranty but since that has expired now I don't think I have as much to lose by opening it up myself. Thoughts?

Thanks
Click to expand...

I have done it to my MBP Early '08 17" models so many time, it became second nature to me.

Couple of tips:
1) Get a small box with multiple compartments or something like that. This is to keep all the screws in and organized so that you don't lose any and get confused.

2) Don't rush it, just be slow and methodical, like operating on a patient.
 
It is a fairly straightforward process
If I can do it... you can do it

Take your time
Follow the video

You may want to purchase a portable enclosure for your old HDD

Woof, Woof - Dawg
pawprint.gif
 
No answer (other than watching some YouTube movies — they always help me out with stuff like that), but just a tip: maybe consider upgrading to an SSD? Even though it probably has an older SATA connection, you'll definitely get a really nice speed bump out of it that would breathe new life into the MBP with daily use. Might be nice on an older machine.

Because SSDs are quite expensive you'll still have a small(er) disk in the MBP itself if you don't want to spend too much, and need to keep stuff on an external USB/FW disk, but it just depends on what you're priorities are.
 
Gomff said:
Hello all
I have a 3 year old Macbook pro which is still going strong. It's my birthday soon and I'm thinking about treating myself to a new 500 GB Hard drive.

I have looked up how to upgrade it myself on iFixit.com and it looks OK but I'm just checking here to see what the general level of opinion is about difficulty / risk of buggering it up. The link to the process is here:

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/...-A1226-and-A1260-Hard-Drive-Replacement/670/1

I paid to upgrade the stock HD to a 250 GB whilst it was still under warranty but since that has expired now I don't think I have as much to lose by opening it up myself. Thoughts?

Thanks
Click to expand...


Don't worry. This isn't too hard of a process. Make sure you lay your screws near where you removed them. Take your time and make sure you're careful with the components inside; cables break easily.

Don't worry; you'll do fine.

Habitus :apple:
 
This is fairly easy and there are so many people who have done it, it has become second nature to some of us. I went from a 160 -> 250 -> 320 -> 500. then after all that I sold that machine and bought a UNI. Print good directions just in case your connection goes down, and take your time. No drinks in the area also!

Good luck if you need assistance hit one of us back!
 
Csmitte said:
This is fairly easy and there are so many people who have done it, it has become second nature to some of us. I went from a 160 -> 250 -> 320 -> 500. then after all that I sold that machine and bought a UNI. Print good directions just in case your connection goes down, and take your time. No drinks in the area also!

Good luck if you need assistance hit one of us back!
Click to expand...
Did you get a good deal on those drives? I can't imagine it being cost effective to do it more then once, maybe twice depending on price drops.
 
Thanks everyone for the advice, really appreciate it.

@ C64 - I like the sound of SSDs and when they are more affordable at the capacity I want then I'll go for it. For the moment though, it's more about having an HD big enough to have an OSX partition with all of my MP3s & Mac stuff on it and a Windows 7 partition big enough for all my work and project files. The drive I'm looking at is 7200 so it should be fast enough for my needs.

Cheers

Gomff
 
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