Replacing internal drive

[milomak]

I think mine is a MBP 4,1.

The hard drive died on me on Thursday so I need to replace it. I have assembled PCs for a while and looking at YouTube videos the process seems straightforward.

Will this drive work as a replacement - Western Digital 1TB Scorpio Blue SATA300 8MB 5200RPM Mobile Hard Drive

I mostly use this laptop for Office, net related stuff and some light gaming. Will I be regretting the 5200rpm sometime down the line?

 

[Kyffin]

Hi! The drive should work fine in your laptop- as for the speed specs it depends on you, really. Faster drives aren't as large as this one so it depends on what you value most.

 

[milomak]

Silly me. The existing drive is the original 5400rpm drive so at worst it would be comparable performance.

 

[spetznatz]

If you're replacing the drive, you might consider a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid HDD / SSD 7200 RPM. Highest capacity is 500 GB, though. However, I put one in a MBP 1,1 and it totally transformed the machine. Really snappy app launching, doc opening, Finder, etc. Well worth the $100 / £80.

 

[Kyffin]

Silly me. The existing drive is the original 5400rpm drive so at worst it would be comparable performance.

Even though it rotates at the same rate it should still be faster because the information is recorded closer together on the disk- so less time getting to your 1 and 0's. Looking at getting a 1TB drive too- fortunately I estimate another couple of months before having to make that decision!

 

[milomak]

it's actually a 5,3 unibody. still should fit right?

 

[milomak]

it didn't occur to me that replacing the harddrive would mean i wouldn't be able to install using the non-retail disc that came with my mbp. bah.

 

[squeakr]

You should be able to reinstall with the included disk. You just need to boot from the disk (assuming it is not scratched beyond usage) and then go into Disk Utility and format the disk in HFS+ format and then you can reinstall the OS front he disk to the new drive (just make sure and format it in HFS+, a NTFS formatted disk won't work).

 

[milomak]

ah i see you are right. strange cause there was a message that informed me that i wouldn't be able to use the disc to install.

----

edit - looks like i spoke too soon. It allowed me the option to do a restore. which ungreyed up the Disk Utility option. I then partitioned but still didn't have the option to install.

did a reboot and get

Mac OS X can't be installed on this computer.

If you want to restore your system from a Time Machine backup, click "Restore from Backup".

It's a SL disk if that helps.

 

[wikus]

I think mine is a MBP 4,1.

The hard drive died on me on Thursday so I need to replace it. I have assembled PCs for a while and looking at YouTube videos the process seems straightforward.

Will this drive work as a replacement - Western Digital 1TB Scorpio Blue SATA300 8MB 5200RPM Mobile Hard Drive

I mostly use this laptop for Office, net related stuff and some light gaming. Will I be regretting the 5200rpm sometime down the line?

That particular drive is 12.5mm thick, which MAY not fit into your laptop. As a safe measure, you should get the newer one at the standard 9.5mm which is also faster, quieter and shouldnt suffer from failures, the 12.5mm was known to be unreliable. I had it and returned it for the new 5,400rpm 1TB Western Digital.

 

[squeakr]

Strange, you should be able to reinstall from the disk (if it is truly the disk that came with your computer, as that is what it is was included for, to reinstall the OS). I would try and reformat the drive and try the reinstall again. I had this problem before on my mini server, and ended up having to reformat and try it a few times before it finally took.

 

[Rizvi1]

I'm planning on doing the same thing. My MBP's 320gb Hard Drive is almost full. I want to replace it.

That particular drive is 12.5mm thick, which MAY not fit into your laptop. As a safe measure, you should get the newer one at the standard 9.5mm which is also faster, quieter and shouldnt suffer from failures, the 12.5mm was known to be unreliable. I had it and returned it for the new 5,400rpm 1TB Western Digital.

That would be this one right: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-2-5-Inch-Notebook/dp/B005DVJJWQ/ref=dp_ob_title_ce ?

If you're replacing the drive, you might consider a Seagate Momentus XT Hybrid HDD / SSD 7200 RPM. Highest capacity is 500 GB, though. However, I put one in a MBP 1,1 and it totally transformed the machine. Really snappy app launching, doc opening, Finder, etc. Well worth the $100 / £80.

How does a 7200 RPM affect battery life? I think I like this option but really want bigger than 500GB. So that's why it seems 1TB is the way to go.

I also would like to take out my optical drive and put an SSD drive there. I'd Use the SSD for all the applications, and the hard drive for the data. I just have to figure out what to buy and how to go about all this.

it's actually a 5,3 unibody. still should fit right?

Mine's a MacBookPro6,2 (2010 2.4 GHz MacBook Pro i5)

 

[milomak]

the drive fit no problem.

i never managed to get he SL disks I got with the MBP to install. Thankfully I had updated to Lion bvut had forgotten that I had created the DVD install disk. So just installed off that which didn't create any problems.

Sad that my original SL disks are now worthless and I'll probably throw them away.