macbook harddrive upgrade questions

[FederalBmx]

im looking at upgrading to the WD Scorpio WD3200 5400 320GB HDD. i have read things about people getting better battery life after doing the upgrade. how is this possible? has anyone had any heat issues after doing this ( i have the incase hardshell and am convinced it ruined my battery life lol because its running my fans hotter)

any feedback from personal experiences would be great! thanks guys.

Edit: also if i am to upgrade what would be my best option of saving all my data (i dont have an external hdd anymore but i hope to use the current 250gb hdd as one )

 

[SFStateStudent]

My hope is that you back-up everything on an external hard drive about 500GB should do; they're only $79 for a Seagate. I've just seen too many people lose everything due to a glitch, and no back-up within reach.

 

[MM07]

I upgraded my MacBook with that same drive. I got it from Newegg. I bought an enclosure for my old 160 gb drive. I planned on just migrating my info from the 160 over, but I used Time Machine instead. It worked like a charm. All my apps, etc... came to the new drive. I had to tweek a few things but it was easy.

Make sure you have a Torx 8 (I think) screwdriver.

 

[tbohlsennswssrg]

You should read this PDF from Apple before you upgrade

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY.pdf

 

[JoeKozy]

I've just seen too many people lose everything due to a glitch, and no back-up within reach.

I'm about to upgrade too so could you expand on this? sounds worrying!

I planned on just migrating my info from the 160 over, but I used Time Machine instead. It worked like a charm. All my apps, etc... came to the new drive. I had to tweek a few things but it was easy.

What tweaks were needed? I've already got an external drive onto which my entire hard-drive is backed up, so i was planing on going down this route too. Is it simply a case of selecting the applications, library, user etc. folders and clicking restore? and am i right in assuming that, after installing Leopard from the disc that came with the MacBook, all the updates will have to be downloaded again (10.5.2, keyboard updates etc.), or are some of these retained from the Time Machine backup (the keyboard updates seem a good candidate for this as they're just files downloaded to the utilities folder).

 

[chatoyer]

I installed this drive as well. Did a complete mirror with SuperDuper to an external firewire drive, pulled out the old drive, put the new one in, booted from the external, copied everything across using SuperDuper - right back where I left off.

It's a good drive. Not sure I"m getting better battery life, though. Couldn't say either way.

 

[bobwill]

Personally, I bought one of the Western Digital Passport external portable drives from Best Buy when they first went on sale for $150 maybe two months ago.
I ripped that thing apart, took the scorpio drive out of it(yes it is infact a scorpio), put my 120gb that came with my mac in the passport casing (took a few tries, kept screwing up on the alignment of the usb port).
So far, both work fine, though I'm comfortable with the fact that I have no warranty on either drive. I do have time machine backups on a 500 gig external.

I haven't noticed any change in battery life, though the mac is much faster in harddrive intensive operations, especially noticeable when running disk utilities.

 

[djforge]

I did a passport swap-out as well. Honestly the hardest part of the swap was getting the passport casing off the original drive! I just cloned my macbook's original hdd over to the passport, then swapped em out. pretty painless

 

[JoeKozy]

So is it simply a case of downloading superduper, putting this inside this casing and then opening superduper? Will superduper format it into one partition for me?

 

[Matek]

i have read things about people getting better battery life after doing the upgrade. how is this possible? has anyone had any heat issues after doing this ( i have the incase hardshell and am convinced it ruined my battery life lol because its running my fans hotter)

Theoretically, you could get better battery life. Since the scorpio is a newer, modern drive, it probably has slightly lower power consumption / better power management than the drive you're currently using. YMMV though, depends on the current drive. The scorpio shouldn't produce more heat though since it spins at the same speed (5400).

Higher temperatures can in fact decrease your battery life, not just because your fans draw more electricity, but because Li-ion/Li-poly batteries current laptops use are sensitive to temperature changes - they will deteriorate rapidly if they get too hot.