Need a larger hard drive for my MBP

[bijou]

I have the 15" 2.33 ghz C2D version, maxed to 3 gigs RAM.

Here are my daily programs being run and storage requirements:

Adobe PS, Illustrator CS3 and Contribute used several hours per day.
HEAVY usage of Aperture and iMovie/DVD. Am constantly editing pictures then putting them into multimedia presentations (movies and Keynote).

Over 25 gigs of music alone, needed to remain on the laptop for the presentations. The pictures need to remain on there too, although I am archiving the older ones using vault in an external FW drive.

Daily the laptop is taken to an office, hooked up to a large screen to work with different projects. Afterwards it's brought home and hooked up again to a large screen (with access to external hd's). Often I'm working away from both desks with clients, however.

So the need is for a robust hard drive which can 1) do the work quickly and 2) provide adequate storage when away from the external drives. Battery life is not an issue for the most part.

Also, who can install the hard drive so I can maintain my Applecare warranty? I've done it myself in other Macs and iBooks, but know that the MBP is more difficult. I also have a Genius manual with directions, but don't want to void the warranty at all.

Sorry fo the long post.

 

[lord patton]

Looking on the website for Other World Computing it looks like the largest 2.5 laptop drive you can get is 250 GB @5400 RPM, or 200 GB at 7200 RPM.

Are the RPMs worth the tradeoff in storage capacity? That's debatable (very debatable) so it's probably a matter of your own priorities.

 

[hexagon]

Changing a HD on a MBP is annoying.

If you take your time, it shouldn't be too hard. I've done it myself and the whole process went by smoothy. But if you're worried about the warranty, just take it to an authorized Apple service center.

 

[bijou]

Today I spoke with an authorized Apple technician (not employed by Apple) and he told me that changing a hard drive on a laptop will NOT void the warranty, just like changing memory won't either. He's been in business since 1986, too, and is a pretty popular service person with our local school system for their classroom Macs.

Now who am I to believe? I've changed hard drives in many notebooks, including iBooks and the Cube. Just never in a MacBook Pro. Just how complicated is it take apart the case?

 

[TheStu]

Today I spoke with an authorized Apple technician (not employed by Apple) and he told me that changing a hard drive on a laptop will NOT void the warranty, just like changing memory won't either. He's been in business since 1986, too, and is a pretty popular service person with our local school system for their classroom Macs.

Now who am I to believe? I've changed hard drives in many notebooks, including iBooks and the Cube. Just never in a MacBook Pro. Just how complicated is it take apart the case?

ifixit.com has some great guides...

To get to the hard drive in teh MBP, you need to pull the battery, pull the RAM door, and remove an additional 17-20 screws all around the laptop. Then, you carefully remove the keyboard/trackpad/palmrest assembly and there you will see the hard drive.

 

[Veritas&Equitas]

Just how complicated is it take apart the case?

Use the guide at ifixit.com. Usually takes me about 10 minutes, but I've done it probably 20 times.