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please help me choose an internal hard drive for black macbook

B

bob2131

macrumors 6502a
Original poster
Jul 27, 2008
853
0
hi
i own a black macbook.
my current drive is FUJITSU MHY2250BH which came with the macbook.
I need a biggeer drive, the biggest possible, and I would like 7200rpm as i do alot of audio intensive work etc and really push the laptop.

i found a 500gb fujitsu, but the dimensions are slightly diff to my current drive.
should i make sure the dimensions are exactly the same? eg to the millimetre??

i just want to know about what specs to watch out for.

i live in uk, so dont really want to buy from a usa retailer.

can anyone help?

thankyou

also, would i be able to use my current drive as an external drive? how could i plug it into macbook? an enclousre? or just a wire?

i also have a bootcamp partition currently.
would the new drive be a simple change over? ie. no need to reinstall any app or boot camp from scratch again? i think i read that we can just use a time machine back up to put my current macbook drive state onto the new drive.....right?
 
The hard drive needs to be 2.5" Sata - 9.5mm tall. See the "upgrade" link at the top of this page.

Don't worry about the brand name. Any will do. But 7200rpm will not necessarily help your audio work. It's the CPU which is typically the bottleneck. (And there's nothing you can do about that).

Put your current drive in a USB enclosure. It will work fine as an external.
 
fujitsu and toshiba have some 500gb ones but none are 7200rpm


usb enclosure?

isnt there one or two uk websites that can sort it all out?


this kind of stuff is difficult and too complicated. no fun at all.



500GB Fujitsu MJA2500BH 2.5", SATA 3Gb/s, 5400rpm
£60
good choice?
 
ive chosen this one
500GB Fujitsu MJA2500BH 2.5", SATA


i need help buying the enclosure.
whats it actually called?
what is the best connection?
SATA to USB?
SATA to Firewire? or a diff one?
any other spec i need to watch out for?

i want to clone my macbook to new drive and then swap them around and then use the old drive in an enclosure thing.

thanks.
 
Here's what I'd type in google: 2.5" disk enclosure firewire usb uk

There's one on eBay which goes for a bit over 40 Pounds and it does USB and Firewire. Maybe you'll find better offers if you dig around in the other links.

To transfer your data to the new disk I *think* the easiest way would be to make a backup with Time Machine before you take the old disk out of the Mac.

Then place the new disk and do a new installation of your OS X. Make sure to install the same version as the old one has, otherwise TimeMachine won't accept a restore.

Once you've got it installed including all the update bits, run TimeMachine to restore your data onto the new disk.
 
Lscribe said:
Here's what I'd type in google: 2.5" disk enclosure firewire usb uk

There's one on eBay which goes for a bit over 40 Pounds and it does USB and Firewire. Maybe you'll find better offers if you dig around in the other links.

To transfer your data to the new disk I *think* the easiest way would be to make a backup with Time Machine before you take the old disk out of the Mac.

Then place the new disk and do a new installation of your OS X. Make sure to install the same version as the old one has, otherwise TimeMachine won't accept a restore.

Once you've got it installed including all the update bits, run TimeMachine to restore your data onto the new disk.
Click to expand...

thanks.
bought this one:
http://www.scan.co.uk/Products/Icy-...losure-for-25-SATA-HDD-with-Smart-AP-software

couldnt find an answer about if i needed firewire so ignored it.

yeah i use time machine.
install same version? what do you mean? OSX..?
ive not updated leopard in several months, im running 10.5.4 i think.
i only updated it once like 9 months ago. I dont like updating, as it has knock on affect on some apps.

I guess my OSX disc would have the old version of leopard on them.... and THEN my time machine back up would put the current (still older leopard) onto my mac.........correct? i DONT want to install the updates etc.

might just go with the super duper method, seems less complicated and easier. Eg clone first...and test it out via the enclosure eg startup disc from external....see if it works.....and THEN swap it over.

still not sure how to deal with bootcamp partition. need to think and read up about that.

cheers.
 
Firewire is a tad faster than USB, it's not that you *need* it to make things work.

Cloning should probably do the trick as well. Should you go for the reinstallation and restore the data with Time Machine, key is that you're installing the same OS X version. I ran into an ooops when i tried to restore a backup made on Snow Leopard on a new installation of Leopard. That will not work...

Good luck!
 
Lscribe said:
Firewire is a tad faster than USB, it's not that you *need* it to make things work.

Cloning should probably do the trick as well. Should you go for the reinstallation and restore the data with Time Machine, key is that you're installing the same OS X version. I ran into an ooops when i tried to restore a backup made on Snow Leopard on a new installation of Leopard. That will not work...

Good luck!
Click to expand...

how do i make sure im installing the same version on leopard? (time machine method) if the one on my OSX disc is older than what i use currently...
so time machine doesnt restore the OSX system files/version i guess... just the data/apps etc...

cheers.
 
hmm so you're talking about two different versions within Leopard (10.5.x)...

restore data from a more current OS X 10.5.x onto a new installation of an older OS X 10.5.x.

not sure if that works, I don't have any experience with that. Maybe someone else can tell?
 
lol no no...

yeah ill do the super duper,

but just for info and to learn:

my mac came with OSX discs, say 10.5.1
My mac is currently 10.5.4 (updated once via net update ages ago)
So how would Time Machine new drive installation go about this?
i thought i read i would install OSX from discs and then just time machine to restore data (and probably restore my mac to 10.5.4 via the time machine restoration)
 
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