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Macbook Hard Drive and Ram Upgrade Questions

E

endingstart

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 19, 2008
29
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Hello. I have a Macbook (Late 2006 I believe). The specs are: 1.83ghz 512mb ram and 60gb hd. I have already upgraded the ram to 2gb and definitely need a bigger hard drive! I think I can upgrade this myself but I have a few questions.

These are the two drives I am looking at. Is either of them better than the other?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9500325AS/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/WD5000BEVT/

When formatting the drive can you use the original tiger install disks or do you have to buy a full new copy of osx? Unfortunately one of my install disks went through the washer :mad: and i am DOUBTING it will not work anymore. Can you order new ones from 1 800 my apple? Does anybody have any tips for formatting and is the guide on apple fine?

And a few questions about ram:

I keep hearing different things about the max amount of ram in my macbook. Some websites say 3 and some say 2. Which is true? I had 2.25 gigs in mine at one point the system profiler recognized it but the computer would just restart whenever i put it to sleep. After about 2 weeks it would not start up or charge at all so i just took out the 256 mb and kept it at 2. Now i find myself using most of the ram and was wondering if you could put more ram in and maybe I did something wrong.:confused:

Thanks for any help!
 
endingstart said:
Hello. I have a Macbook (Late 2006 I believe). The specs are: 1.83ghz 512mb ram and 60gb hd. I have already upgraded the ram to 2gb and definitely need a bigger hard drive! I think I can upgrade this myself but I have a few questions.

These are the two drives I am looking at. Is either of them better than the other?
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Seagate/ST9500325AS/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western Digital/WD5000BEVT/

When formatting the drive can you use the original tiger install disks or do you have to buy a full new copy of osx? Unfortunately one of my install disks went through the washer :mad: and i am DOUBTING it will not work anymore. Can you order new ones from 1 800 my apple? Does anybody have any tips for formatting and is the guide on apple fine?
Click to expand...

I would go with the Seagate. Can't go wrong with the 5-year warranty. I don't know if you can get new OS X discs for free.. but i'm sure you can get another when. If you take it into a mac store and tell them to help you with your upgrade, granted they will charge you, they will do it for you as well as installing the OS X for you.
 
Between those two, I'd probably go with the Seagate. In my experiences, I've found the seagates to be better in laptop app's, and WD drives to be spectacular in desktop applications.

That's just my anecdotal evidence however. The 5-year warranty is nice too, but mind you, in case the drive were to fail, the coverage is for the physical drive, not that data ;)

Edit: Also, if you just need more HD space, and the current one runs fine, why not pick up an external drive. They're very cheap now, don't need a power connector, and you won't need to reformat or need the OS X discs. Something like this, cheapest price around for a great drive: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST905...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231551410&sr=1-2
 
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NewMacbookPlz said:
Edit: Also, if you just need more HD space, and the current one runs fine, why not pick up an external drive. They're very cheap now, don't need a power connector, and you won't need to reformat or need the OS X discs. Something like this, cheapest price around for a great drive: http://www.amazon.com/Seagate-ST905...2?ie=UTF8&s=electronics&qid=1231551410&sr=1-2
Click to expand...

The deal at amazon is really good, thanks for posting it
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Thanks for your help. I originally thought about getting an external, but since i bring my macbook around with me I decided to just upgrade the internal hd. Looks like I will go with the Seagate. :cool:
 
I have the Western Digital Sorpio Black 320GB with no complaints but I've had Seagates as well and feel them both reputable companies.

Here's an upgrade idea:

Buy the drive and an enclosure, put the new drive into the enclosure, connect to your MacBook and format/partition it using Disk Utility, clone (using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner) your current drive to the new drive in the enclosure, switch the 2 drives. You now have your exact setup in a new bigger drive and you now have your old 80GB drive as an external drive for backups.

If your MacBook is Core Duo it will only use 2GB RAM maximum. If it's Core 2 Duo, you can put in a 4GB kit (2 x 2GB) to max it out.
 
GfulDedFan said:
Here's an upgrade idea:

Buy the drive and an enclosure, put the new drive into the enclosure, connect to your MacBook and format/partition it using Disk Utility, clone (using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner) your current drive to the new drive in the enclosure, switch the 2 drives. You now have your exact setup in a new bigger drive and you now have your old 80GB drive as an external drive for backups.
Click to expand...
Excellent advice. That's exactly how I would do it. So much easier than installing everything from scratch. Plus, an enclosure would be cheaper than another Tiger install disc.
 
GfulDedFan said:
I have the Western Digital Sorpio Black 320GB with no complaints but I've had Seagates as well and feel them both reputable companies.

Here's an upgrade idea:

Buy the drive and an enclosure, put the new drive into the enclosure, connect to your MacBook and format/partition it using Disk Utility, clone (using SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner) your current drive to the new drive in the enclosure, switch the 2 drives. You now have your exact setup in a new bigger drive and you now have your old 80GB drive as an external drive for backups.

If your MacBook is Core Duo it will only use 2GB RAM maximum. If it's Core 2 Duo, you can put in a 4GB kit (2 x 2GB) to max it out.
Click to expand...

I've tried this with both Super Duper! and CCC and both worked and booted up fine, but the OS was laggy, it had some issues with it snappiness and smoothness of dashboard and other little things. So I ended up doing a time machine backup of my original onto a 3rd HDD I had w/ enclosure and then put in the fresh HDD, wiped it reinstalled leopard and then restored Time Machine. Although it seems the person asking doesn't have the retail install disc. but yeah just heads up.
 
I have the WD 500B Scorpio Blue in my MacBook right now. I'm very happy with it.
 
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