Question about hard drive, need help lol.

Hey I'm kinda new to the MacBook world and have a stupid question. I am getting a late 2009 MacBook unibody (white polycarbonate, model MacBook 6.1... I believe) I am switching the original 250gb 5400 rpm hard drive out for a Seagate Momentus XT 750gb 7400 rpm hybrid hard drive. I want to keep everything on the original hard drive and just pop the new hard drive and start fresh with Snow Leopard. I'm going to purchase the SL cd from apple but I do not have the original grey start up cd that came with it (my girlfriends little sister lost it). Do I need to call apple for that cd in order to start fresh on my new hard drive or is everything I need on the SL cd?
Also how do I go about wiping the whole computer when I put the hard drive in and use SL? I want to essentially have a completely clean laptop with a new hard drive.
Thanks for your help in advance.

The SL disc you get from Apple will do everything you need. When you nstall the new hard drive there will be nothing to wipe, the drive is the only piece of that Mac hat stores anything so you don't need to worry about that. Post back and let me know how that hybrid drive works out....I'm interested.

Similar Messages

Very basic questions about hard drives

I'm upgrading from vintage Beige G3, so much of the jargon about internal drives is new to me.
My MacPro will come with an OEM 160 GB drive. I will use this for my primary boot drive -- OS and Apps. All my data, photo files etc. will be kept on my second/third drives. I do not plan any sort of RAID setup. Windows is going nowhere near my Mac.
For the extra drives --
1) SATA? SATA II? What's the difference and is it critical?
1a) What is a "raptor" drive?
2) Does size matter (we're talking about GBs here, guys...)
3) Reliability is more important to me than speed or noise. We're a long long way from any technical help or even UPS.
4) Do new drives need to be formatted before using them internally?
5) If I partition one of the extra drives so I can keep a clean, backup OS boot partition, I need to format it as GUID, correct? Or does that just apply to external firewire boot drives? Does it matter which partition will be the boot partition?
6) I've read discussions about firmware requirements for some drives. What's that all about?
I was leaning toward MaxLine Pro 500 GB drives, but have been reading (reading too much, perhaps?) and now have all the above questions/concerns. (Whatever happened to the good ol' days of "buy an IDE drive, insert, play"?)
Thanks for your patience with these questions. I need to get it right the first time because of our remoteness!

1. SATA 1 interface speed rated at 1.5 Gb/s; SATA II interface speed rated at 3.0 Gb/s.
2. Drive ratings/performance is determined by many factors. You can best find out about individual drive performance by visiting http://www.storagereview.com/ to see their benchmark results on various drives. You will also find some helpful comparisons at http://www.barefeats.com/.
3. As for drive specs see previous answer. Generally speaking within any manufacturer's category of drive models for a given size the fastest drive will be the most expensive. Manufacturer specs usually do not provide any idea about drive performance in real world situations. Only benchmark comparisons are really useful, and even those can be confusing.
4. Yes, you can boot an Intel Mac from an APM partitioned drive. You simply cannot install OS X from the installer disc because it will refuse to install on a drive that has not been GUID partitioned.
5. Some older Seagate 750 GB models were not working properly when installed in a RAID configuration on Mac Pro computers. Seagate provided a firmware update to fix the problem for those who already owned the affected drives.
I don't know where you got the idea that Intel Macs were "picky about such things." Nor that installing drives in a beige G3 was a no-brainer. The old beige G3 required a lot of mechanical effort to mount a new drive internally. You not only had to connect all the various cables, but if you had two drives on the same ribbon cable each drive had to be jumpered properly - one as MASTER and one as SLAVE. Some older ATA hard drives had two different jumper settings for a MASTER - MASTER solo and MASTER w/SLAVE. Some beige G3 models wouldn't even boot OS X unless it was installed on a MASTER drive. And, you could not install OS X on a large drive except by partitioning the drive with an 8 GB partition for OS X that had to be the first partition on the drive. RAIDs may work or not depending on if you ran OS 9 or OS X. At least to me that wasn't the "good old days" unless you were comparing installing ATA drives to dealing with SCSI. I would say that in your particular case you were lucky, and you never tried putting two drives on the same ribbon cable. Oh, and I forgot about the size limiting jumper on most ATA large drives to limit capacity to 32 GBs because that's all that was supported by FAT32. Oh, yes, and the beige G3's disk controller did not support drives larger than 128 GBs.

Upgrading Hard Drive need help with making it work.

I have just begun copying my HD to a 120GB 2.5" SATA drive.
I'm using Super Duper to copy it, and I understand it will be a bootable disk.
Once it has completed copying, is there anything I need to do to make it the startup disk ?
Do I make it the startup disk before I swap the hard drive out from within System Preferences ?
Also, it is currently called Disk 2 - Will that become the name of my HD (currently obviously called Macintosh HD)
If it is, can I then change the name ?
Any help would be greatly appreciated
Thanks

SuperDuper will make it a bootable disk if that's the backup option you selected. Look at the SD feedback information. It tells you what it will do and will then show the steps checking off each one as they are completed.
All you will need to do is remove the old drive and install the new one. It should be ready to go if you did everything correctly. This includes partitioning the new drive using the GUID partition scheme, setting the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and then Erasing the drive using the Zero Data option.
Be sure to test the cloned drive before installing by booting the computer with it while it's in the external case.
You can rename the drive anything you want.
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BIOS doesnt recognize SATA connected Hard Drive- need help flashing bios from bootable USB

hi
I have an envy laptop running InsydeH20 bios rev f14.
the bios doesn't recognize the internally connected hdd/ssd.
I have heard that with insyde bios', sometimes you have to unlock 'secret capabilities' to recognize hardware incl internal hdd.
but I am just trying to reflash my bios.
the problem is that I cant get into windows because it doesn't recognize my hard drive and windows doesn't allow insallation to usb connected drives.
I downloaded the patch from hp.com for my product and it actually has an option for making a bootable USB for use on the actual system, and I did this. the instructions are to just restart my computer with the bootable usb. I have tried Legacy support on and off, neither updates bios.
I highly doubt it has anything to do with the physical sata connector.
basically I need to flash my bios from bootable usb. I have done some research about making a bootable dos usb etc etc but I don't know what program to even run and how..
this is a link to my product:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?cc=ca&dlc=en&lc=en&os=4132&product=5400031&sw_lang=
Pleeeeeaaseee someone help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
Thanks!!

hi
I need to flash the bios of my system. the bios is not recognizing hardware and cannot boot into windows to run the bios flash for windows.
on my other comp I ran the bios update patch and chose ' install to bootable usb ' so that I could use it on my system.
cannot run on my laptop. tried booting from the media. tried allowing 'legacy' compatibility.
im running insydeH2O rev f14 right now.
here is a link to my system:
http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/product?cc=ca&dlc=en&lc=en&os=4132&product=5400031&sw_lang=
thanks to anyone who can help!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

Partitioning a 1TB hard drive - need help!

i would like to partition a 1 terabyte external usb hard drive into the following partitions
1 partition to hold a bootable snow leopard installation (so i can reinstall via usb, install bootcamp, add stuff, etc)
1 partition to hold a tiger installation (for my ageing g5 imac)
1 (largest + what remains of the 1TB) partition formatted in ntfs to put the rest of my multimedia/documents to be read by a pc (running XP or windows 7), ps3 + xbox 360.
would appreciate some help here as i have no clue where to begin.
i am running snow leopard on a macbook. thanks!

The program you're going to need is called Disk Utility - it's under Utilities in the Applications folder in Finder.
There's a Partition tab in the utility, which is where you'll start. You'll see your external disc, which you can carve up into various pieces. It's all pretty self-explanatory from there on.

New hard drive need help

I have the dv4 and the hard drive crashed a while back. Just got a new hard drive for it and installed it and I get a blackscreen with a blinking cursor. I've read some other posts and am currently running the hard drive test through the f10 page. I have a windows 7 disk in the disk drive.wouldn't it load up automatically?
This question was solved.
View Solution.

Hi,
Try the following.
Remove the Windows 7 installation disc and shutdown the notebook.
Tap away at the esc key as you start the notebook to enter the Start-up Menu. Insert the Windows 7 installation disc. Select the Boot Options menu ( usually f9 ). Use the arrow keys to highlight the CD/DVD drive and hit enter - if prompted to 'Press any key to continue......', do so.
Regards,
DP-K
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Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

Upgrading hard drive, need help!

I found a good deal on a hard drive at best buy, but I'm not sure it's right... I can't a model number on any of the mac specialty sites. Could someone check out my link and tell me if it will work and if it won't what I need to be looking for in the specs? Thanks. (the more opinions the merrier!)
http://www.bestbuy.com/site/olspage.jsp?skuId=8354586&type=product&id=1176507039 848

I have just upgraded my iBook with the same hard drive.
The only issue, this happened when upgrading the hard drive on my iMac as well.
I have the MacOS 10.3 restore dvds for both computers. When you boot up from the DVD. Format the hard drive on Disk Utility. The Drive formats but isn't able to have the OS saved to it via installer. Leave your DVD loaded quit installer turn computer off. Turn on computer you can now save the OS to your hard drive.
Might be different with MacOs 10.4 restore DVDs

My girlfriend reformated her iPod as a Hard Drive, need help.

My girlfriend reformated her iPod as a Hard Drive by accedent when trying to format a Mac iPod for Windows. How does one make this iPod be reconized as an iPod again rather then as an external HD? The iPod in question is a iPod nano, 16 GB running iPod software 1.0.4

When the iPod is formatted by Apple's installer software and disk mode is enabled it will mount as a single FAT32 partition...you can store stuff on it given the remaining size left over from your music/photo files.
Sub-partitioning and playing file/formatting games on your own is unsupported and will have unknown behavior....you can try it and rerun the formatter if it gets scrwed up, but the iPod is music device first, not a generic drive that you're supposed to monkey with.
Tom

Replaced hard drive: need helping getting songs off ipod to itunes

I recently had to send my computer into apple for repair, needless to say they had to replace my hard drive so i lost all of my music. However it is still on my ipod, so i was wondering if there is a way to transfer it from my ipod to my computer

Connect your iPod to your computer. If it is set to update automatically you'll get a message that it is linked to a different library and asking if you want to link to this one and replace all your songs etc, press "Cancel". Pressing "Erase and Sync" will irretrievably remove all the songs from your iPod. When your iPod appears in the iTunes source list change the update setting to manual, that will let you use our iPod without the risk of accidentally erasing it. Check the "manually manage music and videos" box in Summary then press the Apply button. Also when using most of the utilities listed below your iPod needs to be enabled for disc use, changing to manual update will do this by default: Managing content manually on iPod
Once you are safely connected there are a few things you can do to restore your iTunes from the iPod.
The transfer of content from sources such as songs imported from CD is designed by default to be one way from iTunes to iPod. However there are a number of third party utilities that you can use to retrieve music files and playlists from your iPod. I use Senuti but have a look at the web pages and documentation for the others too, you'll find that they have varying degrees of functionality and some will transfer movies, videos, photos and games as well. This is just a small selection of what's available, you can read reviews and comparisons of some of them here:
Wired News - Rescue Your Stranded Tunes
Comparison of iPod managers
Senuti Mac Only
PodView Mac Only
PodWorks Mac Only
iPodDisk PPC Mac Only (experimental version available for Intel Macs)
TuneAid Mac only (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPodRip Mac & Windows
YamiPod Mac & Windows
Music Rescue Mac & Windows
iPodCopy Mac & Windows
iRepo Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
iPod Access Mac & Windows (iPhone and iPod Touch compatible)
If you have any iTunes Music Store purchases the transfer of purchased content from the iPod to authorised computers was introduced with iTunes 7. You'll find details in this article: Copying iTunes Store purchases from your iPod or iPhone to a computer
There's also a manual method of copying songs from your iPod to a Mac or PC. The procedure is a bit involved and won't recover playlists but if you're interested it's available on page 2 at this link: Copying Content from your iPod to your Computer - The Definitive Guide
Keep your iPod in manual mode until you have reloaded your iTunes and you are happy with your playlists etc then it will be safe to return it auto-sync. I would also advise that you get yourself an external hard drive and back your stuff up, relying on an iPod as your sole backup is not a good idea and external drives are comparatively inexpensive these days, you can get loads of storage for a reasonable outlay.

Question about Hard drive Space and Logic Pro

We just installed Logic Pro 7.2 (and Tiger) onto our Dual G4. We have nearly filled the bootup drive, with tonnes of space on our other hard drives (80GB and 100GB). With only ~4 GB left on the startup drive, will this cause problems with Logic Pro? We have more than the recommended RAM, but I was wondering if the hard drive space might be an issue, like with iDVD where you need ~8-10 GB free to burn a DVD.
I've been considering copying things over from my startup drive to my 80GB drive (which has tiger on it too)and making the 80 GB drive my new startup drive, but it's a bit of work and if I don't need to do it right away I don't want to bother. What is the recommended amount of free hard drive space and memory for Logic Pro to work well? I personally like to have ~10GB free for anything, but that might be tricky at this point. I want to know if I should go through with the hassle of moving things over or wait a bit and see how it goes. I've not ahd a chance to use the program yet, but I'd like to set it up and keep it working smoothly once I start to use it. Any advice or experience from anyone in this department?

Your best off having at least 25% free space of any hard drive.
With Logic, It is a good idea (though not necessary) to have your OS and apps on one HD, and your song files and samples (and other files) on another. I would also suggest that you get a hard drive with a speed of at least 7200rpms.

Question about hard drive space used

If I run OmniDiskSweeper to sweep my 15" G4 laptop hard drive, the total file size calculated is 31.3 GB. Likewise, if I clone the hard drive to an external drive using SuperDuper!, the total size used on the external drive is 31.3 GB.
However, if I "Get Info" on the laptop hard drive, the Used size listed is 41.9 GB. Likewise, 41.6 GB is listed as "used" in the OmniDiskSweeper Drive List window, as well as in another utility. I suspect that the 41.6 value is picked up from the Finder.
What could be the reason that Get Info lists the space used on the hard drive as 10 GB larger than the total size of the files?
1.5 GHZ PowerPC G4 Mac OS X (10.4.9)
Dual 2 GHz G5 Mac OS X (10.4.4)

Hmm, I think I have a possible answer. I had to download OmniDiskSweeper and open the help from its Help menu to get this answer.
It says in the help for OmniDiskSweeper:
"OmniDiskSweeper only displays files that you have access to from the user account you are logged into. Files in restricted folders are not available and their sizes are not included in the total file sizes you see."
So, if you have other user accounts, then those files won't necessarily be readable and hence not counted in OmniDiskSweeper. There may also be a few system files and folders that might be unreadable and hence not counted. That should be fine since you probably shouldn't be randomly deleting system files.
I've also noticed that OmniDiskSweeper shows slight variations of total sizes in its different windows, so it's not too precise. That probably comes from the dynamic nature of hard drive use by the computer, and OmniDiskSweeper trying not to use too many cpu cycles updating incessantly. Just guessing on that part though.
The 10GB is most likely other user accounts or something else not readable from your own account. The Finder lets you know of course, but OmniDiskSweeper only presents to you what you have permission to access. That doesn't necessarily mean you'll also have permission to delete those things.

Questions about Hard Drive Replacement

I am debating putting in a new Hard Drive 100GB. I am not very technical but have changed memory in my MacBook to 1GB. I am a bit nervous about doing this. I have read the Apple Doc on doing it and was wondering about the tab. How does the tab connect to the new drive? Is it all as easy as it looks? Just pop the old one out, put the new one in and reboot holding down the c key? Reformat the drive and then install osx? I was wondering how many people have already done it and their experiences with it? Thanks

On a MacBook, the HD swap is very simple. Because the drive is SATA, the connections are sturdier than former ATA drives and you don't have to worry about snapping off the connecting pins.
The white "tab" used to pull the drive is just a piece of thin plastic glued onto the tray. Not the most sturdy stuff, but it'll do it's job. When you pull, just pull straight out - don't twist or turn the tab! Same goes for inserting the new drive: push straight in so it stays aligned with the rubber mounting rails.
*If you want to save the data, the best way to install a new hard drive is to:
1. Buy the new drive AND an external firewire case (USB will also work)
2. Put the new drive in the external case
3. Use "Carbon Copy Cloner" to duplicate your existing drive to the external one
4. Physically swap the drives and OSX should boot from your newly installed drive as if nothing changed.
Once you upgrade to a 7200RPM, the following things will be noticeably faster:
System Startup
Opening of any application
Anything that requires lots of HD reading/writing.
The last category includes any video/sound editing, such as Garageband, iMovie and iDVD. Shuffling through your iPhoto collection should also be faster. You might not notice the difference though, since the MacBook is already pretty fast
I would definitely couple it with a ram upgrade as well. With a large amount of physical ram, the HD upgrade won't make as much of a difference.

CS3 on old hard drive need help to activate

My HP motherboard failed (manu defect) the hard drive is fine and has my adobe CS3 suite on it. I bought a new laptop and tethered the old hard drive to my new computer. I try to start the cs3 but a pop up says my computer lacks an adobe llinguistic code?? I moved and lost the serial on the case. How do I use my cs3 from the old hard drive?

You probably do not use it from the old hard drive vecause the program needs to be installed on whatever machine is trying to use it... even if you intentional;ly tried to install on a separate drive the program still needs to install some ellements on the main system drive.
If you check you Adobe account online you might find the serial number there if you registered the program. You can download CS3 applications thru the following link: Download CS3 products

Question about hard drive

My macbook pro recently suffered water damage but I was able to get the hard drive out and plug it into an enclosure. When I try to open a file it says "The folder ... can't be opened because you don't have permission to see its contents." Is there any way to put a password in or get around this?

Thanks, But if I'd like to delete this stuff from the old hard, how would I be able to make it so I can access these files?
Also, is there any way I'd be able to connect the hard drive from my old macbook to a PC?

Question about hard drives older xraid

We have an "older" XRaid stocked with 14 250 GB drives, connected to an xserve with fiber channel. Our premium Applecare agreement for the XRaid expired a few months ago. Prior to that, when a drive would fail, I would simply get a replacement from Apple, but I always kept a good spare drive in a drive module so that I could swap it in while waiting for the new module. I expect some drives to start failing as they get older, and buying drives in Apple drive modules is very expensive (over $600 for a 250 GB drive, if you can even find them). So my plan is to just buy bare drives and pop them into the existing drive modules when needed. My questions are:
Are these drives ATA's or SATA's?
What is the maximum drive size that each drive can be? Can I pull out all 7 drives on one side or the other and replace them with, say, 500 GB drives? (obviously I would have to re-init the array). Any help would be appreciated.

>Are these drives ATA's or SATA's?
The XServe RAID uses ATA 133 drives.
> What is the maximum drive size that each drive can be?
That depends on the firmware version. If you haven't updated the firmware since you got the machine, then 250GB is as big as you can go. If up update the firmware you can use 750GB drives (the largest drive currently available in the XServe RAID).
> I pull out all 7 drives on one side or the other and replace them with, say, 500 GB drives?
If you're not worried about warranty/support or the integrity of your data, sure. Lots of people have reported success doing this. Just be careful regarding the drives you get. Do NOT jump on the cheapest, nastiest drive you can find - there's a reason why that 750GB drive costs $99. All drives are NOT the same. You need to make sure you get server-rated drives. Most consumer/home drives are rated for something like 50,000 hours MBTF at 20% utilization (your home machine isn't always on, and is often idle even when it is on). By comparison, server drives have a much higher MTBF at a higher utilization (as much as 500,000 hours at 80% utilization).
If you don't care about drive failures then you can use the cheaper drives, just be prepared to deal with the failures.
Also, make sure you get identical make/model drives for al disks in the array. Mismatching drives in an array is going to cause a huge performance hit since the drives are not in sync.

Question about hard drive, need help lol.

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