DIY MacBook upgrade

Yeah, so that black MacBook you bought a couple of years ago with an 80 GB hard drive isn't lookin' so hot now, is it? You know things are bad when you have to delete your pr0n videos to make room for incoming email. You'd like to swap out the hard drive, but your tech skills are sucky. What do you do?

Go to Instructables! They're always doing something fun over there, like showing how to install Tiger on a PC. There's also a recent post (surprise!) about how to upgrade your measly MacBook hard drive and preserve your existing data. Afterwards, you'll be doin' the happy dance, too!

Advance note to commenters: yeah, we know this isn't exactly rocket science, but for those who might be a little squeamish about actually yanking the hard drive out of their MacBooks, these step-by-step instructions should put their minds at ease.

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Source: http://www.instructables.com/id/Fossilize_Your_Apple_MacBook…

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Hardware How-tos Odds and ends MacBook

Yeah, so that black MacBook you bought a couple of years ago with an 80 GB hard drive isn't lookin' so hot now, is it? You know things are...

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elusive

That picture is just golden.

September 03 2008 at 3:33 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Raffi

Funny because I just replaced my hard drive and RAM on my Macbook the other day.

I got a Western Digital Scorpio 320gb 5400rpm, but I was also considering the Seagate Momentus of the same size and speed. I ended up with the slightly more expensive WD because I usually get WD drives lately.

September 01 2008 at 2:48 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

JimGramze

Two words: External Drive

More words: An engineer explained to me that if I was going to put a hard drive into a laptop than size (# of Gig) was not an issue but speed is -- go for slow for low heat and low power consumption. Both have to do with the health and longevity of your machine.

September 01 2008 at 12:58 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Dave

I have an iBook G4... The hard drive replacement on mine is something around 20 separate steps and more tiny screws than I can count. I get the instructions from http://www.ifixit.com/ where they offer parts and step-by-step instructions for all ipods and mac laptops (even older ones). they even have really obscure part replacement instructions, like how to add bluetooth.

September 01 2008 at 12:37 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Slartibartfast

I wish they had a step by step for when I had to replace the hard drive, all of the fans and the CPU of my 20" Core Duo iMac when I need it a few months ago. At least a kind heart gave me the Apple Service Manual instead when I almost gave up trying to find help. At least the parts were easy to find.

September 01 2008 at 12:34 PM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

eric f

While the Macbook has the easiest replaceable HD EVER, it's nice to offer help to those tech-fearing people. Unfortunately, the ones who need the help the most will probably never find it.

September 01 2008 at 10:54 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

Jash Sayani

Nice. Instructables is a really cool site !

September 01 2008 at 10:00 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply

zof

For sheer speed I recommend WD Scorpio Black 320Go 7200rpm hard drive.
I've just put one in my 17 month old macbook and it's like having a whole new machine. I had the Hitachi 160Go before (I guess it was running at 4200rpm).
It's a bit more noisy, and it drains the battery a lot, but that not the most important things for me, so the trade off is acceptable.

September 01 2008 at 9:23 AM Report abuse Permalink rate up rate down Reply