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akwarner · 10:41 AM

As most of you know, HD storage prices have been dropping very rapidly over the last few years. Well I was browsing the Circuit City flyer last week and noticed that they had a WD 160GB 2.5" SATA drive on sale for $99.99 out the door. I thought this was an excellent price. I have one of the first gen MacBook Pros and it came with an 80GB drive. While I store lots of data on external storage, I had been pondering upping the internal storage. My buddy who has the same model that I do was thinking about doing the same thing. We decided to go for it. We also had a $15 off $150 coupon so the the drives ended up costing us $92.49 each.

We were wondering just how difficult the upgrade would be, but it turned out to be much easier than we expected. I had previously upgraded the CD drive in an older iBook G3 and it was intense. I popped over to ifixit.com and they had a very nice walkthru .PDF file that I pulled down and printed out. There were definitely less steps and way less screws to mess with on the MacBook Pro. I grabbed my trusty screwdriver and jumped in. It was pretty straightforward and once I paid attention to the screws and put them safely on a table so as not to loose any of them, it was pretty simple.

Before I started, I did a full bootable backup to an external USB drive. I then installed the new 160GB drive and ran into my first issue. After some messing around, I realized that I could boot off of an external USB drive. I would need use a firewire drive instead. Once I remembered that, I had to put the original 80GB back into the MBP, do another backup to a firewire drive, and then put the 160GB back in again. I got to the point of being able to do the swap in about 22 minutes. Anyway once the 160GB was re-installed and I had the external firewire hooked up, I booted off the external drive and did a bootable backup to the internal 160GB. I then restarted from the internal 160GB and I was back in business.

All data was fully restored and my system looked EXACTLY as it did before except I now had 160GB (well 149.xGB after formatting) to play with. I'm very pleased with the upgrade and it was pretty simple. Only tools needed were a screwdriver with a Torx T6 head and one with a phillips head. I have a screwdriver with interchangeable bits so it was the only tool I used. Just be diligent and patient and it is not hard at all.

I'm looking for an external case that I like to put the 80GB (that I took out of the MBP) into. It will then become my external drive that travels with me all the time in my tech toolkit.

Good luck.

A.

mduell · Sep 4, 2007, 05:24 PM

Two things for other future upgraders to note:

$100 is a typical every-day price for 160G/5400R laptop drives.

All Intel Macs will happily boot off USB drives; just hold down the Option key at boot time.

MacLover08 · Sep 4, 2007, 06:42 PM

does this void the warrenty?

mduell · Sep 4, 2007, 06:58 PM

Yes, upgrading yourself voids the warranty on the entire machine (which is a ridiculous policy IMO).

CompUSA will do the swap for $30, preserving your warranty.

ghporter · Sep 4, 2007, 07:32 PM

That sounds like a $30 well spent, especially if you have AppleCare.

I'm surprised that this is as apparently easy as it seems-much easier than the process for a G4 iBook. I may just save my pennies and get a really big drive for my MBP. I wish CompUSA's notebook drive prices were comparable to "every-day" prices; they are often noticably higher, except for sales.

akwarner · 10:45 AM

Originally Posted by mduell

Two things for other future upgraders to note:

$100 is a typical every-day price for 160G/5400R laptop drives.

All Intel Macs will happily boot off USB drives; just hold down the Option key at boot time.

I tried to boot off of the USB drive several times with no success holding down the Option key. Once I switched to firewire it started up immediately showing me the drive icon on the screen as expected. Not sure why it would not boot from my Seagate Free Agent USB drive but booted just fine from my Adaptec firewire one. Oh well.

I hadn't realized that SATA notebook drives had come down so far in price. Great for all of us who need more space.

Also, the upgrade is so simple that if I need a warranty repair, it is pretty trivial to put the original Apple 80GB drive back in if they insist. I have AppleCare on the unit for another year and a half and will make use of it if I need to. Of course if something went wrong with the upgraded drive, then that would be on me and not Apple.

A.

finboy · Sep 5, 2007, 07:44 PM

Originally Posted by akwarner

Also, the upgrade is so simple that if I need a warranty repair, it is pretty trivial to put the original Apple 80GB drive back in if they insist.

If you have to send it to AppleCare, they WILL insist. Even if they LET you send it back with the new drive, it makes it more likely that they'll try to blame whatever the problem is on the new drive.