How do I upgrade my hard drive?

I have an Early 2009 iMac 20" 2.66 Intel with a Hitachi HDT721032SLA380 320GB HardDrive. I'd like to upgrade to a 2 or 3 TB. I understand the process is a little more difficult than a tower computer (I've seen the youtube videos).
What I need to know - what size (physical size) hard drive will fit? Does it have to remain Hitachi brand in order to function properly? And finally whould the Genious Bar in the apple store be able to do the install - in case I get to lazy to attempt it - ?

Everything you would need (guide and full kit) can be found here:
http://www.ifixit.com/Device/iMac

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How thow to upgrade a hard drive in an mac mini 1.7

what hard drive does the mac mini take 1.7 model of feb 2006 and how to you upgrade the hard drive if you can? and also replace the optical DVD copy drive?
thanks
rich

To replace HD
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac_mini_06-08/
Google did not find anything about replacing the optical drive with a HD in your model Mini

How do i upgrade my hard drive and get it to boot in Mountain Lion?

I have a Late 2009 Macbook 6,1 and want to install a new, larger capacity hard drive. Currently I am running Mountain Lion and don't have any install disks, so the question is, what is the process to change out the drive and get the Mac to boot after the new drive is installed. Since it is a new drive it won't have a recovery partition or any operating system files. My plan is to migrate my data using my Time Machine backup, but I worry that when I try to boot after the new drive is installed, all I will be greeted with will be a flashing question mark. I'm really having a hard time finding a step-by-step set of instructions for someone attempting what I'm trying to do. I do have an external enclosure I could put the new drive into before I put it into the Mac. Would I try using something like Migration Assistant to transfer all of the files to the new drive and then just swap out drives afterward? Would the OS migrate as well, or would I still not have a bootable drive? Or is there some kind of minimal boot disk I could burn onto a CD or flash drive and then once the machine boots go with a restore from Time Machine Backup? I'm open to any ideas anyone may have on the least painful way to go about this process. Maybe use some (hopefully free) software of some sort to clone the current drive onto the new drive while it's still in the external enclosure? Any help or ideas would be greatly appreciated!

How to replace or upgrade a drive in a laptop
Step One: Repair the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Repair
When the recovery menu appears select Disk Utility. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported then click on the Repair Permissions button. When the process is completed, then quit DU and return to the main menu. Select Restart from the Apple menu.
Step Two: Remove the old drive and install the new drive. Place the old drive in an external USB enclosure. You can buy one at OWC who is also a good vendor for drives.
Step Three: Boot from the external drive. Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager appears. Select the icon for the external drive then click on the downward pointing arrow button.
Step Four: New Hard Drive Preparation
1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your new hard drive (this is the entry with the
      mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of
      the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive
      is failing or has failed and will need replacing. Otherwise, click on the
      Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from
      the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended
      (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to
      GUID then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and
      wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the
      drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main
      window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the
      Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to
      return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several
      hours depending upon the drive size.
Step Five: Clone the old drive to the new drive
Boot to the Recovery HD:
Restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the COMMAND and R keys until the menu screen appears. Alternatively, restart the computer and after the chime press and hold down the OPTION key until the boot manager screen appears. Select the Recovery HD and click on the downward pointing arrow button.
     1. Select Disk Utility from the main menu then press the Continue
         button.
     2. Select the destination volume from the left side list.
     3. Click on the Restore tab in the DU main window.
     4. Select the destination volume from the left side list and drag it
         to the Destination entry field.
     5. Select the source volume from the left side list and drag it to
         the Source entry field.
     6. Double-check you got it right, then click on the Restore button.
Destination means the external backup drive. Source means the internal startup drive.
Step Six: Open the Startup Disk preferences and select the new internal volume. Click on the Restart button. You should boot from the new drive. Eject the external drive and disconnect it from the computer.

How do i upgrade my hard drive on a hp/compaq nc6000 laptop

I have a HP/Compaq NC6000 laptop and the hard drive has failed, I have tried 60GB and an 80GB known good hard drive in the machine bit all it says is "Non system disk", how do I upgrade or do I have to put a 30GB HDD back into it

Hi:
You have to install an operating system on it.
Install the 80 GB HDD and boot into the BIOS. It should be showing up there.
If it is, you should be fine.
Without an operating system installed, that is the error you get.
If that disk has an operating system on it from another PC, there is a very good chance it won't boot up and again, you will get that error.
Paul

How can I upgrade my hard drive

I got my Retina Macbook Pro with a 120 GB hard drive. This will not suffice for me. I need to upgrade. How can I do this?

You can exchange it if you just got it, which you must have.
Otherwise, consider an external 1TB HD for $70
In the case of a Macbook Air or Macbook Pro Retina with ‘limited’ storage on the SSD, this distinction becomes more important in that in an ever rapidly increasing file-size world, you keep vital large media files, pics, video, PDF collections, music off your SSD and archived on external storage, for sake of the necessary room for your system to have free space to operate, store future applications and general workspace. You should never be put in the position of considering “deleting things” on your macbook SSD in order to ‘make space’.
Professionals who create and import very large amounts of data have almost no change in the available space on their computers internal HD because they are constantly archiving data to arrays of external or networked HD.
Or in the case of the consumer this means you keep folders for large imported or created data and you ritually offload and archive this data for safekeeping, not only to safeguard the data in case your macbook has a HD crash, or gets stolen, but importantly in keeping the ‘breathing room’ open for your computer to operate, expand, create files, add applications, for your APPS to create temp files, and for general operation.

How do I upgrade my hard drive for my iMac

My 3TB fusion HD died yesterday. This is my very first MAC computer. it failed exactly 2 years and 4 months of use. Glad I got the 3 year Apple care. Now I am sour on fusion drive. Can I upgrade my iMac to a SSD? I will pay the up charge to get one.

You are covered by AppleCare and your HD will be replaced. Remember a Fusion drive is a combination SSD and rotating hard drive "fused" together by software. Any HD can fail at any time though so it's not a Fusion drive problem, it is a HD issue.
Regarding whether you can upgrade to an SSD only, Apple Stores do not perform upgrades on Fusion Drives to SSDs. If you would like this done you may have better luck by contacting an Apple Authorized Service Provider (AASP) in your area. You can begin finding one by clicking:
https://locate.apple.com/country

How do I upgrade my hard drive with Firmware - via Macbook Pro 13.3"

What is the best way to update firmware for a 400GB Samsung HM400LI 5400 rpm
hard drive?
The firmware file is a .exe file and since I am on my macbook pro I don't see
how I can do that.
Drew

Windows in Parallels and Windows under BootCamp are two totally different animals. When using BootCamp, you are booting directly into Windows. Windows has direct access to all hard ware. When you use Parallels, you are in a virtual Windows environment and all hardware access is done through OS X. However, having said that, I don't know how that SSD firmware updater works. There is a possibility that it may not like the way the EFI firmware talks to the drive. Most of those utilities are designed to work with machines that use a BIOS. It's probably best if you just confirm with the manufacturer if it will work or not.

How do i upgrade my hard drive on my 2009 macbook

I have a 2009 Macbook that has a 250GB hard drive that is full, I would like to upgrade it. Can someone tell me my options? Thanks

Any 2.5" notebook sized SSD or HDD. HDDs are now up to 1.5 GBs for notebooks. Visit OWC for options and prices. Hitachi has an excellent 1.5 GB HDD at a very good price point.

How do I upgrade the hard drive on an iMac G5 (iSight) 2.1 GHz?

The instructions for Do it Yourself hard drive replacement from Apple don't seem to apply to this computer, but to the previous two models. I have read elsewhere that my iMac is not user parts-replacement friendly. I tried to remove the back side of the case per the instructions given by Apple for the previous two models, but no go. The entire unit separates from the front bezel. Way beyond my capabilities or courage. Do I need to have Apple replace the hard drive?

Hi Dani
Select the correct DYI for your model from iMac Repair iFixit.
http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Browse/iMac
Dennis

How can I upgrade the hard drive in my MacBook Air early 2014 11"?

i have a macbook air with a 128gb ssd drive and want to install a larger drive. where can I buy the drive from and how do I install it?

At the present time there are no third party PCIe SSDs available. Until some are produced for sale, the only alternative is to purchase a MBA with larger storage.
Ciao.

How do I upgrade my hard drive to more disk space?

Is there a way to upgrade the HD size to say512GB from 128GB once purchased for the Macbook Air?

Apple do not do an official one
However it is possible, you can buy the memory and install it yourself but you would be voiding your warranty

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

No easy fix for a few reasons:
1) Bootcamp requires a hybrid MBR for the partition table. That is: both an MBR and a GPT partition table at the same time with the GPT one having all partitions and the MBR one having only the ones that are relevant, but at most 4 of them (including the protective partition and the Macintosh HD one). Which leads us to:
2) The MBR part of the hybrid partition table cannot work with 3TB hard drives. MBR is limited to 2TB.
I am working on a small EFI app that can boot Windows in EFI mode on a Mac and that would mean that you can go GPT only on your system. The progress of the app is slow due to the nature of EFI and for now requires that you do an unattended Windows install with slipstreamed graphics drivers, but we are adding VGA loading on top of EFI quite soon after the rest of the app stabilises. The status of the app is documented at:
Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no bios emulation)
Windows does actually successfully boot in EFI mode on most Macs (anything with a 64bit EFI should work), but does not have graphics support even if you load the driver due to the VGA pci registers not being set by the firmware. Furthermore, in Setup and Safe Mode, Windows uses VGA instead of GOP which is a failure by design since VGA is a BIOS standard and not really compatible without hacks with EFI. Other EFI implementations also add VGA compatibility at a high cost to the firmware complexity for the VGA cards available on the market that don't actually contain anything in their ROM except the VGA BIOS.
My recomendations:
1) Install on a second smaller hard-drive; or
2) Wait for the EFI app to come out officially and use that to boot Windows Vista SP1 x64 and Windows 7 x64 (RTM and SP1) in the native EFI mode.
3) Wait for Windows 8 which supports VGA-less booting acording to the AMD presentation at UEFI Plugfest.

How do I erase my hard drive? My initial operating system was Snow Leopard but I have upgraded to Mavericks OS. My Snow Leopard install disk ejects when I try and use it.

How do I erase my hard drive? My initial operating system was Snow Leopard but I have upgraded to Mavericks OS. My Snow Leopard install disk ejects when I try and use it.

Do a backup, preferable 2 separate ones on 2 drives. Boot to the Recovery Volume (command - R on a restart or hold down the option/alt key during a restart and select Recovery Volume). Run Disk Utility Verify/Repair and Repair Permissions until you get no errors. Reformat the drive using Disk Utility/Erase Mac OS Extended (Journaled), then click the Option button and select GUID. Then re-install the OS.
OS X Recovery
OS X Recovery (2)
When you reboot, use Setup Assistant to restore your data.

I have a rather old iMac 20" (mid 2007) and I want to upgrade the Hard drive. How do I change it? How do I transfer all my applications? May I just copy the old hd into the new one? Thanks.

I have a rather old iMac 20" (mid 2007) and I want to upgrade the Hard drive. How do I change it? How do I transfer all my applications? May I just copy the old hd into the new one? Thanks.

There are many online tutorials on how to change out the HD on a mid 2007 iMac. One of the originals is from 2007 and is Upgrade your iMac 20" or iMac 24" aluminum (mid 2007) to 1TB Hard Drive and 4 GB RAM - DIY Guide. As far as migrating your system Apple helps out with that in Setup Assistant which automatically starts when you turn on a new Mac for the first time. After you have installed the new HD you will have to format the new HD to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and then you will have to install OS X. The first time you turn it on Setup Assistant will start. Follow the directions and you will be fine. In order to restore your information you will need to backup what is on the current internal HD first. I'd recommend using Time Machine (Assuming you are using Leopard or later) AND also creating a bootable clone using either SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner.
Please complete your profile so at the very least we know what version of OS X your machine has installed.

Is there a 'how-to' anywhere about upgrading the hard drive?

Hi Guys,
I'd quite like to upgrade the hard drive in my 24 inch 3.06GHz iMac to 2TB. Is there a step-by-step 'how to' available anywhere or has anyone done it successfully?
I've done laptops on many occasions but the iMac has a difficult looking case to crack!
Thanks
Rich

Hi mate,
Haha, no I have no preconceptions about firewire! My iMac has a 400 and an 800. The 800 is connected to a Sony DV video deck and the 400 is connected to a RAID drive that is then daisy-chained to another external firewire and a Wiebetech bare hard drive device that I just swap out various hard drives to for clients.
I suppose I should really be looking at a tower, but I sold a G5 Quad to downsize to the smaller footprint iMac and have been happy with it's performance - but the new ones have more space and more RAM capability - it's just a shame they don't have the connectivity options of even this iMac.
Cheers
Rich

How do I upgrade my hard drive?

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