Hi guys hoping for a little advice here. So my mid 2009 13" macbook pro hard drive has died on me and i'm looking to replace it. I'm don't want to spend a huge amount of money so ssd is out of the question. What should i look at? Also does it matter whether the hard drive is 2.26 or 2.53 ghz? I'm going to be replacing it by myself so any tips/advice/guides would be helpful and appreciated. Thanks in advance!
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Mid 2009 MacBook Pro, new hard drive?
- Thread starter jasonhallceltic
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GoCubsGo
macrumors Nehalem
Your hard drive speed is not measured in GHZ. You want to find a 2.5 9.5 mm (size) hard drive to fit in the space where the old one is. The best guide for replacement is using ifixit.com.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Hard+Drive+Replacement/1337/1
To find the drive that will fit your machine, I would go to http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/ (other world computing) find the right drive and shop around for it.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/MacBook+Pro+13-Inch+Unibody+Mid+2009+Hard+Drive+Replacement/1337/1
To find the drive that will fit your machine, I would go to http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/ (other world computing) find the right drive and shop around for it.
Thanks for your quick reply! Sorry i know thats the processorvspeed, do these numbers not come into play when buying a hard drive? What about 7200/5400rpm, does it matter?
Also any guides for installing mountain lion onto a fresh hard drive? How to i tell if my mac is intel based or power pc based as i think that affects the partition type?
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Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
Processor speed should have nothing to do with it (usually HDD speed is the bottleneck for transferring files).
BTW a 5200 RPM drive is stock for a macbook, likely what you had unless you specified different when ordering it.
7200 RPM is faster than a 5400 RPM drive (most people say the difference in speed is quite noticeable). The 7200 RPM drive would be slightly more energy consuming and would run slightly hotter. Though both these would probably not be extremely noticeable. 7200 RPM drives are also generally a few dollars more than 5200 rpm drives. Also, the highest capacity 7200 RPM drive I have seen is 750gb. You can get 5200 rpm 1TB drives fairly cheaply.
However, a SSD (solid state drive), is like 10 times faster than a standard HDD. Like booting up your computer in 10 seconds fast. But these cost a lot more per GB of data ($170-200 for a 256 gb drive).
So if you don't need a whole lot of space, want über fast speeds, and have the money, I recommend getting a SSD. If you need more storage, cheap, and somewhat faster, get a 7200 RPM. If you need tons of storage and aren't concerned about speeds, get a 5200 RPM.
Thanks for the advice mate! I've ruled out ssd due to the price, i'd love to have one and i don't need a huge amount of storage but moneys tight just now
Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
lol same here. I'd love to have a 1TB ssd if it didn't cost more than I paid for the computer! 😀
Haha, yep we can dream! I'm noticing that theres sata, sata II and sata III will all of these fit or do i need a specific one? Also any ideas on interface type, sata 300/600?
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GoCubsGo
macrumors Nehalem
I believe your logic board is only capable of SATA 2 speeds. While you could potentially get SATA 3, you're wasting your money because you won't achieve the speeds SATA 3 provides.
I would look for a SATA or SATA 2 drive. There may have been a firmware update that allows you to use SATA 3 though.
There is a fairly big difference to me between 5400 RPM and 7200 RPM. Your processor speed has not bearing on how fast the drive spins. You want the highest RPM you can get short of moving to an SSD. You can probably find an older Intel X25-M G1 (that's gen 1 versus gen 2) on the cheap if you're dying to have an SSD. The Intel X25M-G2 is SATA 2 fwiw. (I think). I have that drive in my MacPro.
Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
SATA is the kind of interface the drives use, so all of them will fit (If they are in fact 2.5" laptop drives)
SATA 1 is limited in transfer speeds though to 150 MB/s
SATA II is limited to 300 MB/s
and SATA III is limited to 600 MB/s
based on your model (Mid 2009 13 inch I am assuming), it should only support up to SATA II speeds (which a standard HDD should not even hit). You can put a SATA III drive in your SATA II computer, but you will be limited to SATA II speeds.
I would recommend getting a SATA II drive. Not because its what you have in your computer, but because a standard HDD shouldn't ever hit 300 MB/s. Thats SSD speed land 🙂
Another thing to think about is getting a "Hybrid" drive, which has a HDD and (usually), a few GB of SSD storage as well. I am not sure about these kinds of drives, I've only heard of a few, but they are out there. You might want to check them out!
how does this drive look guys?
http://www.ebuyer.com/146083-wd-320gb-black-mobile-drive-wd3200bekt
also is there anyway of telling if my mac is intel based?
http://www.ebuyer.com/146083-wd-320gb-black-mobile-drive-wd3200bekt
also is there anyway of telling if my mac is intel based?
Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
Your mac is intel based 🙂 I think the powerbooks were the last non intel Macs
As for the drive, its quite expensive (I didn't know you were a brit). Here in the US on Amazon I found one for nearly the same price with 750gb of storage (http://www.amazon.com/gp/product/B0...pf_rd_t=101&pf_rd_p=1389517282&pf_rd_i=507846)
I've also had luck on ebay with HDDs, though there are some scammers out there.
Edit: Here is a 500gb on Amazon UK for £47 (http://www.amazon.co.uk/Western-Dig...8&qid=1373913236&sr=8-2&keywords=wd+black+2.5)
As an Amazon Associate, MacRumors earns a commission from qualifying purchases made through links in this post.
thanks for the research mate! yep from Scotland. i'm balancing whether i need 500gbs or speed of delivery. i deally i would like to get this item tomorrow which i can on ebuyer but not on amazon🙄
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Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
Ahh.. well then its up to you.
Also may I ask whats your plan for setting the drive up? Are you copying all the data from your other drive or just going for a reinstall of the OS?
I'm sorry but I can't stop reading your previous posts in a star-trek Scotty accent... 😀
unfortunately i didn't have a time machine backup of my files! luckily i managed to make a disk image of my hard drive so my files are backed up that way. going to have to use the migration wizard to restore my files from the disk image. so i'll be doing a fresh install of mountain Lion onto the drive. any advice or tips on preparing the hard drive for this and going about it, only read a couple of guides online so far i presume it'll be fairly straight forward.
haha! i wish i had had scotty to beam me up and use some op his technical skills on my mac had a nightmare with it these last 2 weeks!
Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
Reinstalling the OS isnt hard as long as you have a disk with it or some way of install.
Basically you erase the new drive with the correct format, and then reboot to the disk/online/flash drive with ML on it.
I actually did this last week with my sisters computer to upgrade HDDs, using a guide like this
Migration wizard after that is straightforward. Never done it with a disk image, but I have done it with a straight HDD so you will probably be fine.
What happened to the drive anyway? I've never had a catastrophic failure of a system drive (My seagate 2tb backup went out once, yikes. Not a fun week). Was it just a big drop or was it corrupt?
thanks for the guide. i thought one way of doing it would be just to go into the recovery section of the mac, thought that it might be stored on the mac somewhere besides the hard drive, if not that way then i have a usb stick set up as a recovery partition so i presume i can boot to it and do it that way. should i format the hard drive to mac journaled format before going ahead with the install?
I honestly have no idea what happened to it. i was sitting on the internet and it just froze up. i powered off and powered back on and the mac was booting to a prohibotory symbol. tried a couple of fixes but got nowhere. i phoned apple support tried loads of diffrent things then finally erased the drive and tried to reinstall mountain line. it froze up while trying to install. back to apple phone support and they tried to erase the drive again, but for some reason it wouldn't erase properly, it kept thinking that the partitions were there when they weren't. i kept getting an error message when trying to erase that it couldn't in the last block or something. it was wierd. guy on the phone told me he thought the logic board firmware needed to be updated so booked me into the genious bar. turned up today and within 5 minutes the guy told me that wasn't the problem, it was either the hard drive data cable was faulty or the hard drive was dead. told me that if it was the data cable it would cost 40 pounds, i wasn't ecstatic about that cost as i thought i was getting the firmware updated for free, but was happy to pay it to get it fixed. the guy told me that if the hard drive was dead it'd be alot cheaper to just replace it myself. left it with them and when i went back the guy told me it was a dead hard drive. the upshot is that they didn't charge me for the data cable, they replaced my battery and fixed my stickie trackpad, all for FREE, didn't charge me a penny😀😀
glenthompson
macrumors demi-god
Some else you might consider is a hybrid drive. Not as fast a a SSD but better than a regular drive at similar costs.
Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
Odd way for a drive to die but it happens...
As for the recovery partition, I think thats stored on the drive itself, so you'll have to reinstall from a USB stick. You will have to format the new drive (both the flash drive and the HDD actually) as Mac Journaled before installation
I did consider it mate but just out of my price range.
ahh damn, so gonna be more of a pain in the ass and a longer process than i thought. fingers crossd it all goes smoothly!
NewishMacGuy
macrumors 6502a
Go with a hybrid. At $99 for the Gen2 Momentus XT, it really makes no sense to buy a regular HDD anymore.
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KUguardgrl13
macrumors 68020
I had the same thing happen to mine last year. Apple gave me a clean install drive with Snow Leopard and I got my data from a backup. So far so good. Although I've replaced my HDD and hd cable enough times now that I have some theories. First the hd failure is related to the hard restart, and second there is some underlying issue that has yet to be resolved.
Good luck! If you can find a Toshiba drive for a decent price, that's what Apple generally uses for the 2009.
Astroboy907
macrumors 65816
But obviously the drives are failing? 🙂 Honestly, I've never had a problem with a WD drive... But each to his own.
KUguardgrl13
macrumors 68020
I'm not really particular to one or the other. I haven't paid for a hard drive replacement, so I don't complain about Toshiba. Just informing OP of what they likely have currently. I have two WD externals. Seagate drives are decent too.