Upgrading a MacBook Hard Drive...

[rwskemer]

I currently have a 120 GB hard drive on a SR MacBook that I'd like to upgrade. I was curious if anyone could offer me some recommendations on which hard drive I should purchase. I feel I should stay at 5400 rather than 7200. I think space is the better option rather than speed and supposed decreased battery life. I'd love to purchase off of Newegg and get my upgrade going right away.

A second question is can I use my Time Machine backups to reimage the new hard drive?

 

[Cave Man]

The hard drive you get should be based upon your usage. If you do a lot of random accesses (e.g., databases, games) or startup frequently, a 7200 might be best for you. If you do a lot of sustained read/writes (e.g., handbrake conversions of DVD or other video), then a larger (for the price) capacity 5400 is probably better. Battery usage will be just about the same.

 

[rwskemer]

The hard drive you get should be based upon your usage. If you do a lot of random accesses (e.g., databases, games) or startup frequently, a 7200 might be best for you. If you do a lot of sustained read/writes (e.g., handbrake conversions of DVD or other video), then a larger (for the price) capacity 5400 is probably better. Battery usage will be just about the same.

Can I use Time Machine to restore everything to the new hard drive? How could I go about this but still partition the drive? Just throw in the new hard drive, use the Leopard DVD to run disk utility to partition and then run restore from Time Machine?

 

[Cave Man]

The easiest thing to do is to put the new drive in an enclosure or attach it with a Universal Drive Adapter and connect to your MB. Launch Disk Utility, select the drive (and not its partition, which is below and indented from the drive name), click on the Partition tab, select 1 partition from the pull-down (or more, if you like), click Options and choose GUID map, then initialize. Once done, use the free Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate your old drive onto the new drive. I'd do a test boot after using CCC, then just swap the drives. Your old drive can be used as external storage.

You can use TM, but CCC is much easier, IMO.

 

[rwskemer]

The easiest thing to do is to put the new drive in an enclosure or attach it with a Universal Drive Adapter and connect to your MB. Launch Disk Utility, select the drive (and not its partition, which is below and indented from the drive name), click on the Partition tab, select 1 partition from the pull-down (or more, if you like), click Options and choose GUID map, then initialize. Once done, use the free Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate your old drive onto the new drive. I'd do a test boot after using CCC, then just swap the drives. Your old drive can be used as external storage.

You can use TM, but CCC is much easier, IMO.

I purchased a 320GB Western Digital HD and a Macally enclosure. I'm going to use CCC like you suggested. Much easier to do it this way. I'd just copy my current hard drive to the new one using CCC and then switch them. Thanks again for your help. The surgery will start tonight!