MacBook Upgrades + HDD Caddy?

[Treadstone]

I'm very wary of buying things for my MacBook without peer approval. Therefore allow me to ask a few questions.

I have a "MacBook4,1" (via Apple -> About this Mac -> etc) and it has 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB (upgraded to 4) and a 160GB HDD.

I would like to upgrade this HDD to something closer to 500GB. Can I use any 2.5" drive to do this? Does anyone have any recommendations? Also, for my current 160GB HDD, can I buy a caddy for this to access via USB?

 

[_bgb]

I'm very wary of buying things for my MacBook without peer approval. Therefore allow me to ask a few questions.

I have a "MacBook4,1" (via Apple -> About this Mac -> etc) and it has 2.4 GHz Core 2 Duo, 2 GB (upgraded to 4) and a 160GB HDD.

I would like to upgrade this HDD to something closer to 500GB. Can I use any 2.5" drive to do this? Does anyone have any recommendations? Also, for my current 160GB HDD, can I buy a caddy for this to access via USB?

2.5" is a standard really for laptop HD's and just go onto amazon and check choices against your budget. I'm not sure what rpm your macbook can take, but increasing from 5400rpm to 7200rpm will boost your preformance for the sacrifice of a little noise. and a usb caddy is around £6 off amazon.. link -
http://www.amazon.co.uk/IOMAX-Exter...QQ8Q/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1307709079&sr=8-1

make sure its for your HDD, ie SATA HD which im guessing it should be? and if you want to boot of it when connected just turn on holding option key and select the external drive, or just move your files acros to it and use as an external.

 

[_bgb]

oh and download Mac Tracker, most useful bit of kit to check what maximums and upgrades you can do to your specific mac

 

[Skizoboy]

Any 2,5" SATA drive is "compatible" with your Macbook.
I also have a 4,1 model and I've used a 500Gb WD Scorpio blue in it for more than a year.

There's a catch though, most people don't know it but Apple's stock HDDs have a modified firmware.
The replacement drive (That you most likely won't buy from Apple) will have a regular firmware and therefore undergo an annoying problem.

Current drives use something called "Head parking" when idle. The problem is this function is Windows only and if you use your drive with any other OS, the drive will park its heads like crazy (Every 8 seconds even when active).

This causes slight freezes of your system (less than a sec but very annoying) and a Load cycle count explosion. This means your drive's lifespan is drastically reduced

My drive reached a 226k count in less than 4 months, it would have taken years to get those numbers under Windows

There are workarounds to this problem, unfortunately I don't remember what I did precisely.

PS: I got an SSD this week, no more problem and a far better solution if you want my opinion. I just can't believe how fast my old macbook has become with this thing