Hard Drive upgrade? and fan noise.

I have a 2008 MacBook 4,1 (Early 2008) MB404LL/A. Im thinking about switching out the hard drive for a bigger one. Would the 2.5" HGST 5400RPM 7mm HD be compatible? Or would you guys recommond a different one? Also, every now and then, my fan will blow pretty loud. Any ideas on how to fix that? Any tips would be appreciated.

Most 2.5" SATA drives should work with the machine; the drive that originally shipped with the machine was a 9.5mm so 7mm will fit.
Regarding the fan noise - your machine being 5 years old, there's probably lots of dust clogging the fins of the heatsink along with dried up, degraded thermal paste impeding thermal transfer, hence leading to high system temperatures and the fan working harder to dissipate heat.
Since you'll have the machine apart while replacing the drive, take the opportunity to remove the fans and blow out the heatsink fins with a can of compressed air.
If you're feeling up to it, you can remove the motherboard along with the heatsink assembly and replace the ancient factory paste with a fresh new coat - I suggest Arctic Silver 5 thermal paste.

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Hard-drive upgrade and warranty

Hi,
I bought a laptop online and upon reception noticed that the seller upgraded the hard-drive and did not mention it when i asked how he upgraded the laptop. "we upgraded the RAM from 2GB to 4GB" did he say... only!
I knew this could have some issues with the warranty so I browsed the web about this issue but could not find any official information.
I contacted Apple support who told me that changing the hard-drive can only be done by an Apple-Authorized technician otherwise it voids the warranty. Apple told me that when an upgrade is done to an Apple machine the upgrade is recorded in the Apple database.
1. Can anyone confirm that? My seller says it is not true.
I contacted the seller who told me that "the upgrade was performed by the largest Apple VAR and Service Center but there is no such system to log any upgrade"
I asked the seller to provide me the service receipt indicating the serial # of the laptop and the upgrade performed but after 2 days he has failed to do so.
I bought the laptop with Apple Care but i am afraid that it would be useless.
Any feedback? Anyone had the same experience?

There's some debate about it and it's been discussed here quite a bit.
If you read the warranty, my view is that legally, the wording means that only damage resulting from the replacement drive itself or damage caused in the process of replacing the hard drive is not covered.
As a practical matter, someone at Apple could claim (even if incorrectly) that a future fault was caused by the drive or in the process of changing it. The longer the machine runs, the less credible such a claim would be.
UNLESS - replaced by an Apple authorised provider - in which case the assumption is that it was done correctly.
I think the support person is lying about the database. I know of Apple Authorised Centers who have replaced drives and just provide a receipt - so I'm with your vendor on that one.
Chances are if you have an unrelated fault AppleCare won't be looking at your drive. The drive itself is not covered obviously.
Personally, I wouldn't be too concerned - but then I'd be quite happy to argue my view of the warranty wording. If you're really concerned, you could always ask an Apple Tech to open the machine and check it - and give you a receipt that all is well.
Hope that helps.
Best of luck.

Hard Drive Upgrade and AppleleCare

Hi Everyone,
There is all kinds of conflicting information, both here and at the Genius bar about upgrading the hard drive in the MBP. I was told point blank by an Apple Genius that the warranty was only void on a MBP if you screw something else up while doing the upgrade. But then I here that if an Apple Authorized Service Center does the upgrade, warranty and AppleCare remain intact. This seems like a volatile situation. So my question, is there anyone here who has upgrade their MBP hard drive, and then received warranty/AppleCare service? I need more space, as with BootCamp and Age of Conan installed, both my Vista partition and OS X partition are sitting at over 60% full, not much space for growth. But, I am concerned with the possibility of a bad nVidia card, and don't want to be stuck with a $2000 paper weight because I upgraded my hard drive. Thanks in advance!
Rich S.

There is a recent post here: http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=7941198#7941198
250GB done by an amateur and the result is a dead as a smelt MBP. Pay for someone to do it.
Not sure why you have to have only a non-portable 'wall-wort" drive - I have quite a few external drives for the MPB - two Maxtor One Touch, one OWC Mercury on the go, a Rocstore encrypted drive and a pair of no name drives - USB 2 to SATA that I can carry in my pocket, need no power supply at all and have added a total of 80160+100+100+250250 or 940GB plus my internal drive that gves me a lot of flexibility.

Hard Drive Upgrade and Time Machine

I am a relatively new Mac user so I am still learning the ropes but swimming in the deep end non the less. After I upgraded my 2012 Mac Mini to Yosemite I started having a lot of wierdness around permissions, facetime, and so forth. I had been meaning to upgrade my hard drive to an SSD for a while now and figured I would just bite the bullet and change the drive and install Mav/Yos fresh. This all went fine but I wanted to be able to use my old time machine backups to put back certain apps. The backups are still on the drive and addressable but I can't get to them through time machine. I have tried everything I could find on my own with no luck. I can't even seem to find any .sparsebundle files anywhere that seems to be mentioned a lot and the ability to inherit them. I have spent several hours on this with no luck. Is there any way in noob terms that I can get this fresh install to see my old backups? Thanks!

I would suggest you go to system preferences and then energy saver. Set the go to sleep slider to never and the display sleep slider to never. Start your process over again and wait over night.

Western Digital Scorpio 2.5" IDE hard drive upgrade soft clicking noise

Just replaced the original hard drive in my 17" Powerbook G4 with a Western Digital Scorpio 250GB 2.5" IDE drive, model WD2500BEVE. I notice a strange noise coming from the drive every minute or two, almost like the drive is going to sleep and waking up. I contacted WD tech support and this was their response:
Thank you for contacting Western Digital Customer Service and Support. I apologize for the inconvenience. This issue is caused by a system initiated power management command being interpreted incorrectly by the hard drive. The sound is normal and as of yet, we do not have a fix for it.
Not sure if it is a larger issue with all WD 2.5" drives but if you have the noise, you are going to have to live with it or settle for a smaller capacity Seagate or Toshiba drive or hope that WD has a firmware update for MacOSX which is slim to none imo.
Anyone else have this problem or more importantly, are using a WD 2.5" drive and do NOT have this problem?

dausone:
This is a known issue with these drives, although not all drives have the problem; indeed, I have seen only a few reports from the many people who have installed them. WD is aware of the issue and there is a fix for PC users of this drive, but not for Macs. I suggest that you call WD Tech Support, or Customer Relations and tell them you would like to have the drive replaced.
cornelius

Hard drive upgrade and Win 7 installation on MacBook Pro

I am planning on installing Win7 on my MacBook Pro using bootcamp. I also plan on installing a new 500 gig HD. I also have a new unformated external hard drive I plan to use a a backup drive for both the mac OS and The Win7 OS. What is the most efficient way to accomplish these tasks? Since this is my first Mac exposure I am not exactly sure what order I perform these tasks. I am fairly familar with The MS OS family having used the OS since the DOS days. Some expert direction would be appreciated.

This should be fairly simple, first you will want to make a backup of the current internal drive. I would recommend using the external drive for that. I recommend an external FW drive for speed but a USB will work, it's just SLOW! Here is how you will format the external drive.
1. Launch Disk Utility
2. Select the external drive on the left side of the pane.
3. Click the Erase tab and format the external drive as *Mac OS Extended (Journaled)*
Next you will want to download a copy of SuperDuper (SD), you can get a free license however I strongly recommend paying the $27 for the full licensed version so you can do things like schedule backups, access all it's features and finally get support if needed.
Once you have installed SD create a bootable clone of your internal drive, then you have a full backup in case something goes haywire. Directions for doing that are very straight forward.
Next physically install the new HD into the MBP. Once it is installed you will want to format it from the install disc that came with the computer. You will find Disk Utilities on the install disc, format it the same way you did the external HD.
After you have formatted the new internal HD then you will do one of two things:
1. Either do a fresh install of OSX from the Install Disc OR
2. Restore the SuperDuper backup from the external HD.
If you choose option 1 then go ahead and do the installation from the Install Disc following the simple directions.
If you choose option 2 then you will boot from the External HD (hold down the Option Key on startup) and then using SD restore what you have on the external HD to the new internal HD. Once you have completed this task then you can boot from the new internal HD, the first time you will again hold down the Option Key on start up choose the internal HD. Then using System Prefrences-Startup Disk and choose the internal drive.
Once you have completed either Option 1 or 2 then you can begin Bootcamp Assistant and CLOSELY follow the instructions for loading Microsoft Windows.
Once you have ruined your MBP by installing MS Windows then you can still use SD for creating backups of the internal HD to the external HD.
Regards,
Roger

Hard Drive Upgrade - Incorrect Capacity Shown In Disk Utility After Installation

I have an older model Macbook Version 2.1 that had an 80GB hard drive installed. I have just installed a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB internal hard drive upgrade and successfully cloned my data over using Carbon Copy Cloner. The problem I have encountered is that only 98.1GB of capacity is shown in Disk Utility for the new hard drive. After starting the computer using my bootable copy via an external USB drive, I formatted the newly installed 500GB drive with the appropriate Apple formatting (e.g. GUID and Mac OS Extended Journaled) but it only shows 98.1GB of space available on the new drive. I was able to successfully clone the information from my bootable back-up of the old drive to the new drive but I just don't have the full 500GB capacity available to me.
What should I do? Is this a problem with the new hard drive or is there something I need to change on my Macbook to "see" the whole capacity of my new drive?
Thanks for your advice,
Dave

Hi Andrew,
When I formatted the new drive did it with 1 partition and it displays a TOTAL of 98.1GB free space (both in Disk Utility and About This Drive). As far as I can tell, the Macbook is treating the new WD drive as if it is only a 98.1GB drive rather than the 500GB drive that it is.
Thoughts?
Dave

MacBook fan running high most of the time after HDD/Hard-drive Upgrade

Hi guys,
I've just recently upgraded my MacBook white's (MacBook5,2, 2GHZ duo core, 4GB ram) stock harddrive to a WD 2.5" black 750GB. After which, I noticed my macbook fan running at high speeds majority of the time... Even when just doing light weight stuff on it, such as surfing the net using Safari or even just leaving my computer idle after startup.
I did a clean install twice, the second was too see if it was really just a badly installed OS, but the problem still persisted, well at least till I decided to come here to type the post =P (maybe my macbook's scared about being talked about). Do note, that I did a pc migration each time.
After the upgrade, My fan usually runs at about 5000-6200 rpm, but right now as I'm typing this post, its surprisingly alot lower then what I've been experiencing. About 3000rpm-4000rpm.
As for the harddrive temperature, I noticed it runs between the 37 degree to 40 degree celsius range, so I'm guessing the hard-drive temperature sensor isn't busted, which was the problem for others from what I've read from other discussions here.
Also, when I boot my windows partition, the fan doesn't go as crazy, but it eventually will too.
Any idea what the problem could be? =s Or could it be that my MacBook can't handel 7200rpm hard drives =/ If so I'd probably downgrade to a 1TB WD blue =s
On top of that, does any one know if the 2.5" WD blue are as reliable as the 2.5" WD blacks? As I'm heistant to downgrade as I've read that the blues have a higher failure rate, and wouldn't want that happening. Oh and I'm not considering an SSD for this particular MacBook at the moment, as I may upgrade in another two years or so!
Thank you!
Edwin

Hey Mende1,
Well I guess I'll try returning the drive at the end of this week then my fan seemed to have slowed down abit since the upgrade, it's sorta spinning around 3000rpm now. I'm not sure if it's gonna be the same thoughout, and I'm pretty sure it doesn't spin as much as it did when I had my old HDD on. So I'm giving it a few more day probably till the end of this week. And if the noise issue still surfaces I'll try a different hard drive! and update you on the results!
Thanks alot Mende1!
And hello there rauldoppler!
Well, firstly, I'm using a early 2009 MacBook white! The pre-unibody one. It's running on a 2GHz Intel Core 2 Duo processor with 4GB for ram.
As for the hard-drives, I'd actually reccommend you to upgrade to an Solid State Drive if you can afford it, but if you're like me who needs more memory space then boot speed etc, I guess a HDD will be fine =) As for which brand of hard-drives, I would actually recommend WD (their black drives especially, 5 year warranty, 7200rpm speed hehe), but right now I'm having the fan problems, so I'm not too sure anymore.
I did however, do quite abit of digging around on the net and concluded that WD was a better choices amoungst the rest... But yeah the fan issue is still something I didn't expect. All in all, I guess as for which drive is better, it really depends on your needs or wants, if it's for casual internet surfing and stuff, a WD blue HDD would be fine, or a black if you want a slightly faster boot speed etc at the expense of your battery life and all. If you however value blazing fast boot times and application start up times, go for an SSD. If you need the memory space more then anything then I'd say go for a HDD again too, as it's cheaper interms of gigabite to dollar ratio. (for example, the older 500GB version of my new WD black would cost USD $43, while a Samsung 500GB SSD Pro would cost $349) Also, You could do abit of reading up on SSDs if you're interested in it There's alot of plus points to it, like ALOT, and if the price tag wasn't so huge, I would have used it for my macbook already!
Lastly, I used a WD Black 750GB for my macbook upgrade. However, I'm gonna downgrade to a WD blue 1TB this weekend if the fan doesn't settle down over time Cause well, the fan noise is really an issue for me.
Peace out guys!
Edwin

High fan speed (but not 100%) following hard drive upgrade

Hi,
I recently upgraded the hard drive on my 2007 Mac Mini to a 320Gb Western Digital Scorpio Black. Since then, the computer's fan has been very annoying. The fan is not running at 100% all the time, but it ramps up very quickly when the computer is under the lightest of loads. Simply scrolling a webpage will send the fan speed up to around 4500 - 5000 rpm.
My first instinct was that the 7200 rpm drive was creating too much heat, but the temperatures are all fine with the hard drive around 30 - 35 degrees C and the CPU around 35 - 40 degrees C, at a fan speed of 1500 rpm. The temperatures drop down to the 20s when the fan ramps up.
The problem is as described in this article: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT3964
"The computer's fans run at high speed although the computer is not experiencing heavy usage and is properly ventilated."
I've followed the reset SMC procedure several times and yet the problem persists. Can anyone help me to solve this problem? Given the low hard drive temperatures and the fact that the fan is spinning up without disk activity, I'm hoping the drive isn't to blame. I'm getting fairly experienced at working inside the mini, having done three memory upgrades and two hard drive changes, but I would still like to avoid opening it and changing the disk again.
Thanks,
David.

Same thing happened to me. Upgraded HD and RAM, fan spins up at a mere scroll of a web page.
I checked the usual suspects -- vents, foam "T", physical placement, cables back in place.
Also, I went back to the original equipment and found it still "wound up" quickly.
Another data point -- when the fan is accelerating and when at speed, the air coming out of the vents is not very warm. Windows laptops I use discharge very warm air when the fans spin up. Could the calibration of the CPU temp guage be off?

My Mid 2009 Macbook pro (Just purchased) will not turn on after hard drive change and ram upgrade

So i purchased a mid 2009 Macbook Pro from a guy with 4 gb of ram and 250gb hard drive. It worked perfectly fine when i booted it with his hard drive and ram installed.
I spilled beer in my old computer (late 2009 15" 500gb hard drive and 8gb ram) but took the hard drive to get tested and it worked fine. i later found out it was from a 2010.
Like an idiot i assumed the pro i just purchased would be able to handle the same upgrades that were in my old computer so i threw in the 500gb hard drive (2010) and the 8gb of ram.
The thing booted up fine, just a bit slow which i chalked up to my hard drive sitting unplugged for a long time.
After about 3 minutes it crashed on me. Confused i replaced the 4gb of original ram back into it. (the 8gb ram was pny i bought from ebay so i thought it could be that) It decided not to turn on or show any lights on the front except for the battery meter.
After this i replaced the original hard drive and still NO LUCK!! im really mad because i am in desperate need of the information on my original 500gb hard drive and im afraid i have destroyed 2 computers and about $1K worth of cash out the window.
HELP please enlighten me on what i have done and if the situation can be fixed.

UPDATE: Problem solved with the old hard drive in it, Now the less pressing issue:
Will the computer run my 500gb hard drive with all my information on it? I need to forward a resume and it is on that hard drive.

How do I get out of kernel panic? kernel panic upon boot. I did that hard drive cleanup and reinstalled Lion. What about memory? Anyone think I need to upgrade my memory? I have 8gig.

I get kernel paic upon boot. I did that hard drive cleanup and reinstalled Lion. What about memory? Anyone think I need to upgrade my memory? I have 8 G of upgraded RAM. (20 inch iMac core 2 duo)

If you're able to boot, launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ If you’re running Mac OS X 10.7 or later, open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the page that opens.
Select the most recent panic log under System Diagnostic Reports. Post the contents — the text, please, not a screenshot. For privacy’s sake, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header and body of the report, if it’s present (it may not be.) Please don't post "shutdownStall" or "hang" reports.
If you can't boot in the usual way, try a safe boot. The instructions provided by Apple are as follows:
Be sure your Mac is shut down.
Press the power button.
Immediately after you hear the startup tone, hold the Shift key. The Shift key should be held as soon as possible after the startup tone, but not before the tone.
Release the Shift key when you see the gray Apple icon and the progress indicator (looks like a spinning gear).
During startup, you’ll see a progress bar, and then the login screen, which appears even if you normally log in automatically. You must know your login password in order to log in. If you’ve forgotten the password, you will need to reset it before you begin.
Safe mode is slower than normal, and some things won’t work at all.
Note: If FileVault is enabled under Mac OS X 10.7 or later, you can’t boot in safe mode.

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I cannot install lightroom 5 until the upgrades from 4 are on the pc, (lightroom 3 installed off disc but 4 is a copy of the upgrade download I got when I bought it) These serial no's are legit and are registered under my account with adobe, but it still gives me the Big Red Cross when I put my serial no in! Please can someone help. I am at a loss. Thx Heidi

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I cannot install lightroom 5 until the upgrades from 4 are on the pc, (lightroom 3 installed off disc but 4 is a copy of the upgrade download I got when I bought it) These serial no's are legit and are registered under my account with adobe, but it still gives me the Big Red Cross when I put my serial no in! Please can someone help. I am at a loss. Thx Heidi

Plerase can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I

Please can someone tell me why I cannot reinstall my upgrade from lightroom 4 (lightroom 3 installed off disc with serial no) my hard drive crashed, and I am trying to get lightroom 3; 4 and 5 back on so that I can link my catalogues and continue work. I cannot install lightroom 5 until the upgrades from 4 are on the pc, (lightroom 3 installed off disc but 4 is a copy of the upgrade download I got when I bought it) These serial no's are legit and are registered under my account with adobe, but it still gives me the Big Red Cross when I put my serial no in! Please can someone help. I am at a loss. Thx Heidi

BrightBluephotograph wrote:
I cannot install lightroom 5 until the upgrades from 4 are on the pc,
You don't need to have Lightroom 3 and 4 installed on your computer to install Lightroom 5. Just install Lightroom 5 and input your serial number for 3 in the previous version box and your serial number for 5 in the upgrade box.

I have a powermac dual g5 2.0 that wont start up.When I plug it in I get the click from the power supply. When I hit the start button, the white led on the front panel lights up and stays lit. No whir sound from the hard drive or the fan. No lights on the

I have a powermac dual g5 2.0 that wont start up.When I plug it in I get the click from the power supply. When I hit the start button, the white led on the front panel lights up and stays lit. No whir sound from the hard drive or the fan. No lights on the motherboard

The click usually indicates a big problem, but...
How to reset the SMU/PMU on a Power Mac G5 (Late 2004) or Power Mac G5 (Late 2005) ...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1436
Earlier G3, G4, G5 models...
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1939
Might be time to replace the PRAM Battery, 4 years is close to their lifespan, far less if ever without AC power, & can cause strange startup problems...
See which one your G5 has...
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/CR2032/
http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Newer%20Technology/BAA36VPRAM/

Our brand new quad core imac will not start up. We hear a drive and fan noise but the screen remains black. Any suggestions?

The computer shut down on its own while we were gone and will not start up again. When we press the power button we hear drive and fan noises but no chime and the screen remains black. Any suggestions?

A pretty common thing for computers that have been shipped is a RAM chip becoming dislodged just enough to cause what you are describing. Try re-seating your RAM chips. Basically just pull them out and push them back in. Take a look at this article if you need some direction on this: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1423

I just had the seagate hard drive replaced and the fan is running loud

I just had the seagate hard drive replaced and the fan is running loud

Is your iMac a late 2009 or newer model? Did Apple do the replacement or someone else? There is a documented issue where Apple changed the hard drive heat sensor from outside the drive to inside. If you install a replacement hard drive in a late 2009 or newer iMac that's not an Apple-sourced drive, two things happen ... the fan runs like crazy and the Apple hardware test doesn't work properly.
You can read these OWCS blogs here and here on it.

Hard Drive upgrade? and fan noise.

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