upgrading an original 15" 1.83ghz. MBP

[stlphotog]

Hi everyone,
I would like to upgrade my original 15" 1.83ghz. Macbook Pro. I know, it's crazy old, but it's worked exceptionally well all these years and quite frankly, I love it way more than the new models. What I don't love, though, is the 75gb hard drive.

Recently on a job out of town, I had to dump my 15gb itunes folder on the spot to create more space for the current job. Luckily, I had a backup on an external at home, but still, I'm sick of only ever having 5-10gb free at any given time.

I'm considering the WD 250gb Scorpio Black SATA 7200rpm 16mb cache. Does anyone have any other suggestions? I've read bits and pieces about some MBPs being incompatible with certain hard drives, but I can't find any info on my exact dinosaur of a model.

During this process, I also want to upgrade to Snow Leopard. My Magic Mouse only half-functions on Tiger and I can't install CS4. I figured this big computer overhaul would be a good time.

So, here's how I think the process should go:
1.clone current HD onto bootable external with Super Duper
2.install new HD (I will take it somewhere. I do NOT trust myself!)
3.install Snow Leopard

After SL is installed, do I use the bootable clone (which will be in Tiger) to move everything back over? or will SL just make everything reappear. I've read a bit about migration. How does that work? Is it the best way to go?

Finally, I have an old LaCie d2 500gb external that I want to make the Time Machine and Super Duper backup drive. I've read that they can both co-exist and I've also read about partitioning.

If my new HD is 250gb and I probably will only use maybe 150gb (I've been living with 75 for so long that I'm very strict about what stays on the laptop and what goes to the 1.5tb OWC external) should I partition it down the middle giving each one 250gb? Or should I run them side-by-side and hope Time Machine doesn't take over all the space?

Is 500gb enough for both of those programs' backups if I don't fill up the entire 250gb?

Thanks in advance for any help. This board has been quite helpful in this process so far!

 

[Jakethasnake919]

I had a Lacie hard drive that had a fingerprint reader and it was not compatible with Time Machine. You might want to check into that. I think mine was the SAFE D2 or something like that. There is a workaround that you can use for non-compatible hard drives in the Terminal if yours will not work. Hope this helps.
I had my 200GB Macbook hooked up to that same hard drive for months using Time Machine and it seemed to work fine. Time Machine uses all available space and then slowly saves the older stuff in longer and longer time frames. Such as an update every week or month instead of every day. But, the most recent things are still in hour and day time frames.