Upgrading hard drive on a Macbook......

[izhkabam82]

Hey all, I'm pretty new to this whole mac experience, but from what I've experienced thus far I've got to say, I love it. I have one question though, I bought my macbook from an apple retailer, and I didn't have the money to buy one of the other macbooks with a bigger hard drive, and so I'm stuck with a smaller hard drive. I have an external drive but I'm trying to steer away from using it all the time since I'm planning on using that for backing up my macbook with time machine.

Sorry...too much typing, anyway, I guess I have two questions (and most likely stupid ones, but again I'm new )

1. is it possible to get a hard drive upgrade from either a certified apple dealer, or from apple themselves? or to do it myself?

2. if the whole hard drive thing is possible, is it also possible to put my time machine backup on the new hard drive since it was put on an external hard drive before I did the upgrade?

 

[BlueRevolution]

1. is it possible to get a hard drive upgrade from either a certified apple dealer, or from apple themselves? or to do it myself?

Yes to all of the above. Your MacBook will work with any 2.5" SATA hard drive, so go nuts.

2. if the whole hard drive thing is possible, is it also possible to put my time machine backup on the new hard drive since it was put on an external hard drive before I did the upgrade?

Yes. Alternatively, you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create a bootable backup on the external, then clone back when you're done.

Oh, and welcome.

 

[izhkabam82]

Thanks for the welcome, and thanks for the information.

It was very helpful, I'll be putting it to good use in the next month or so.

 

[rhythmac]

Its Very Easy

I upgraded my hard drive with an extremely quiet Seagate Momentus 500GB @7200RPM drive...( I am using the OEM drive in an enclosure making it an external drive!)

There are tutorials on youtube and OWC;

Basically, you discharge any static electricity in your body, open and remove the battery, the hard drive is to the left of the battery compartment.. remove one screw attached to a retaining bar...disconnect the sata connection...replace with new hard drive and your done!

 

[BlueRevolution]

I upgraded my hard drive with an extremely quiet Seagate Momentus 500GB @7200RPM drive...( I am using the OEM drive in an enclosure making it an external drive!)

There are tutorials on youtube and OWC;

Basically, you discharge any static electricity in your body, open and remove the battery, the hard drive is to the left of the battery compartment.. remove one screw attached to a retaining bar...disconnect the sata connection...replace with new hard drive and your done!

Great, but those aren't MacBooks.

 

[robo456]

Great, but those aren't MacBooks.

I didn't watch the vids (at work), but all you need to do is take out the battery... loosen (not remove) the three little screws on the long L-shaped metal piece, remove it.... the hard drive faces the perpendicular to the 2 memory slots.

Just pull the white plastic rolled up tab and wallah! the hard drive case comes out... swap them out and just reverse the process.

I just bought a WD scorpio to replace my original 100gb macbook (white nvidia) I'm planning (and hoping that it works) to use Super Duper to clone it to a backup drive and clone it back.

--rob

 

[BlueRevolution]

Ah, I see. The process is the same for both the MacBook and MacBook Pro, but the ones you linked were talking about the MacBook Pro. No biggie.

Pre-unibody MacBooks use a slightly different process, but it's pretty easy to get at there too. In both cases, you will need a T8 Torx screwdriver.

Nice change from my old iBook.