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Upgrading Macbook Hard Drive from 80gb 5200rpm to 320gb 7200rpm

January 20, 2009 | No Comments »

I recently just upgraded a Hard Drive for a Macbook. I purchased the Western Digital Scorpio Black from newegg.com.  The process was very easy and only took about 5 mins.  Having the correct tools is key.  You will need:

  • coin (or something to unscrew the battery)
  • Small screwdriver (I used a eye glass set)
  • Torx 8 (T8) screwdriver

Since you can access the hard drive straight from the battery location, you can basically just pull the other one out, unscrew the casing, and put the new one in.  Once it was loaded in, I booted off the Leopard Disc and proceeded with a “Restore My Computer” through Time Machine.  The process took about 6 hours over ethernet and everything was restored exactly how it was before.  I assume it could be drastically cut down based on how many backups you have inside Time Capsule. I was curious how much of a performance gain would occur with the new hard drive so I recorded some load times.

Application Before After Diff (% Faster)
Boot Up 40s 29s 11s (28%)
Firefox 17s 8s 9s (52%)
iTunes 16s 8s 8s (50%)
Numbers 17s 7s 10s (59%)
Parallels Resume Windows XP 106s 13s 93s (88%)

So there is actually a HUGE performance gain from using 7200rpm instead of 5400rpm.  Now what are the downsides?  We’ve noticed that the fan for the computer kicks on more often doing simple tasks.  I’m sure this is due to the hard drive producing more heat.  The hard drive is self doesn’t seem to be louder, but the macbook’s fans definitely are.  Most people complain about vibrations, I couldn’t really tell much of a difference but if its spinning fast you can notice it if you feel the bottom directly under where the hard drive sits.

In conclusion, the performance gain and amount of space is totally worth it for the downsides mentioned above.  I would recommend upgrading!

Amazing Positive Support From Apple

February 13, 2008 | No Comments »

I installed the newest 10.5.2 update to my MacBook Pro two days ago and ran into a problem. My computer installed it and restarted but it hung on getting to the log-in screen. I posted my problem in the apple discussion board for help and received some information from people. I decided to do an Achieve and install which moves all your existing stuff to a “Previous Systems” folder and does a re-install of Leopard. I then updated it after that and it seemed to be working properly.

Today, one day after my post, i received a a phone call from Scott Player from Apple Care Engineering Software notifying me that he read my post and wanted to call to make sure everything is working properly since he wants to make sure i am not without a computer. I called him back and explained the problem and he sent me an E-mail to send log information from the pervious system so there software engineers can take a look at the problem to see what happen.

This level of support is unbelievable. I have never been treated so well from a company in all my life. This one phone call totally makes up for the inconvenience this caused me. Cheers to Apple for always going the extra mile!