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.

Similar Messages

  • 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.

  • 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.
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    1a) What is a "raptor" drive?
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    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.

  • 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.
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    Your best off having at least 25% free space of any hard drive.
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  • 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.
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    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:
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  • 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?
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  • 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:
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    >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?
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    > I pull out all 7 drives on one side or the other and replace them with, say, 500 GB drives?
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    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.

  • I had to get my hard drive replaced from Apple, I lost all of my music obviously.  My question is, how can I get all my music off of my iPhone onto iTunes?  Since it's a new hard drive, the iPhone isn't recognizing this as it's home computer.

    I had to get my hard drive replaced from Apple, I lost all of my music obviously.  My question is, how can I get all my music off of my iPhone onto iTunes?  Since it's a new hard drive, the iPhone isn't recognizing this as it's home computer.

    You will need to use third-party software to transfer music from your phone to the iTunes Library. I recommend Phone to Mac - Pod to Mac | Macroplant.com.

  • Can I get a data recovery from Apple if my iMac was in the hard drive replacement programme and I wasn't notified about it?

    Basically my iMac just crashed and I searched on Google for replacing my hard drive and came across the iMac 1TB Seagate Hard Drive Replacement Program at http://www.apple.com/support/imac-harddrive/
    Which is that Apple is asking all 2009 - 2011 iMac users to return their iMac for a free hard drive replacement because it currently has a fault in it. After entering in my serial number, I see that my iMac is elegible for a replacement.
    I did register my iMac with Apple, but I didn't receive any email about this program and I lost all my recent data because of the faulty hard drive. I never had an issue before with the drive so this just happened out of the blue.
    Is it possible to get a free data recovery from Apple for this? I find that it was a lack of communication that I lost most of my data.

    I completely understand that it's my responsibility to back up my data but I have it set to every 2nd month, not on a weekly or daily basis to back up the data.
    Apple might not be in data recovery business but could they not acquire a third party to do this?
    This is what happened:
    It was on sleep overnight and when I tried waking it, it was lagging badly. So I shut it down and restarted it. I phoned into techincal support to find out whats wrong, but they were giving me advice to reset the params etc. But i think it made it worse because it didnt want to get passed the white start up screen.
    So I phoned back to ask if it's a usual issue with my version of iMac and the man replied that it isn't common and that I should run the disk utility to check the hard drives health.
    I installed Mountain Lion on a USB and started the disk utility. Then it highlighted in red that it's a hardware fault and cannot be repaired by the disk utility. Therefore the hard drive has a serious fault with it.
    That's when I Google'd for a replacement drive and came across the program. The techincal guy didn't even tell me about it or anything.
    If I knew about this sooner, I would have taken it in for a replacement.

  • Computer hard drive replaced what about syncing

    Had hard drive replaced.  What will happen when I try to sync my phone

    Try doing a search, this has been asked and answered about a billion times.
    Not trying to be a jerk, but it wouldn't kill you to help yourself a bit and search either.

  • Hard Drive Replacement Question(s)

    I have an HP Pavilion DV6 laptop. I have recently been getting multiple errors about hard drive failure. If I was to replace the Hard drive, would I need to reinstall windows 7? Also, if I was to replace the hard drive, would that solve the issue or would I still have problems? Any replies or advice would be greatly appreciated. Thank you.

    Hi
    Do a complete extensive & quick hard drive test from BIOS by tapping F2/F10 quickly after powering on.
    Wait for the results, write down 24-character failure ID.
    Back up all the personal data & try creating recovery disks if not yet done.
    Yes you'll have to restore or reinstall.
    If you have the recovery disks with you, just reinstall from it, Otherwise clean install Windows 7 from disks and enter the product key on the back of the laptop in the COA sticker.
    You can order recovery disks from HP if you're insert warranty.
    If the problem was with the hard drive and you got the error for it, the error would be surely gone after the replacement.
    You can get hard disk replaced from HP if covered under warranty.
    thanks
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  • HP Pavilion dv7t-4100 CTO Entertainment Notebook PC Hard Drive Replacement

    Hello,
    I have HP Pavilion dv7t-4100 CTO Entertainment Notebook PC and I had had hard drive issues from within warranty period. i.e. I purchase in 2010 and had a hard drive replaced in 2011 and again in 2012. Next time it failed in 2013 (almost 11 months apart on an average).
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    I have been using the HDD for sometime now but want to be prepared for the next round and I'm sure it'll be gone for good the next time.
    Current HDD is 640GB, 7200 RPM Hardrive (replaced in 2012). HP Part# 621046-001.
    When replacing, can I use ANY 640GB hard drive? Can I use a hard drive that is larger than 640 GB? Different RPM?
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    The recovery discs I had received with the replacement drive did not work correctly. I had to use the first set I had created right after I purchased the laptop. 
    Thank you.
    --Pratik Patel
    This question was solved.
    View Solution.

    Hi Pratik Patel
    According to product manual:
    Your system supports SATA 9.5mm or 12.5mm , 2.5" HDDs
    supports upto 2 hard drives
    supports SSD too.
    Single hard drive configurations supported:
    250GB, 320GB, 500GB @7200RPM @9.5mm
    640GB @5400RPM @9.5mm
    750GB, 1TB @5400RPM @12.5mm
    160GB SSD
    If you want dual hard drive configurations, please click following link (user manual):
    http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c02666747.pdf
    But, there is not hard fast rules that only 5400rpm can be used instead of 7200rpm, which was used to replace your earlier hdd.
    hope this has helped you.
    thanks
    Visruth
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  • Imac hard drive replacement

    Incredibly my rarely used 2011 Imac Hard Drive is toast. I saw they have a replacement program but even though it is way too soon for a hard drive OF QUALITY to be going out so soon as mine - mine is not included in the replacement program. 
    Which I have a problem with - how odd it is that they had enough trouble with these computers/hard drives to do a replacement program but mine which did the same thing, expired way too soon isn't covered.  I've not had use of the computer for 4 months while I tried to fix the problem so it lasted a little over a year.
    Anyway I need to know what to do to try to replace it myself as i haven't the funds to take it to Apple for repair.   Plus, Apple Computers and me are history I will never buy another after spending over $1200 for a computer that's nothing more than a very large paperweight right now.
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    I may not be able to afford even that so more than likely this is going to be a very nice looking worthless computer going to the landfill.

    I Am leaning more toward Kappy's comments, based on your attitude and comments, but I will ask some questions and add some useful comments as I am in a somewhat charitable mood.
    Do you still have AppleCare on this iMac?
    From your rather blunt comments I assume no, but have to ask anyhow.
    This is why I recommend purchasing and registering for 3- year extended AppleCare.
    Because of the nature of the newer iMac designs, hardware failure seems more likely or commonplace occurrence. I believe it's more of a excessive heat related issue than anything else despite what Apple has qualified as "normal" operating temps for these iMac models.
    Check out the iFixit home site and search for iMac disassembly or tear/take down. Or search for iMac hard drive replacement on the site.
    Another option is for you to purchase an external FireWire 400/800 drive as your new boot drive.
    Running your iMac from a FW800 drive will be about as fast as running it from the iMac's Internal drive.
    If you can afford it get as large a drive as you can afford.
    And just for your info, while hard drives can last for years without issue they will go bad, eventually.
    Some drives crash and burn faster than others. Especiallly true of the notebook style drives that Apple installs into the newer design iMac. With hard drives, the question is not if they will fail, but when will they fail.
    If you had all of your data backed up to an extra, external drive or optical discs to begin with, you wouldn't be so upset about your internal drive dying as your data still would've been intact on another drive or discs in the first place.
    I Always advocate for having some sort of backup strategy for your important data in the event of hardware or hard drive storage failure.

  • Problems with S400 Hard Drive replacement

    Hello Lenovo!
    I'm new here so please bare with me.
    A little about me: I have been in IT support for over 25 years, both hardware and software side. 
    I recently purchased a Lenovo ideapad S400 Touch and I am enjoying it. The one issue I have with this computer is that the hard drive is not a solid state. I happen to have a spare solid state drive earmarked for this laptop so off I went to upgrade it.
    The plan was to simply replace the hard drive with the solid state and reimage the drive with a factory restore USB key.
    These are the issues I am encountering:
    1. Lenovo support recommends a windows recovery USB key which does not contain an image of the OS, it is only useful for recovering windows or installing a wim.
    2. One Key does not create a bootable backup, nor a wim file, it relies on a hidden special onekey hidden partition created by special software that lenovo does not offer (to my knowledge) and I have not find a workaround.
    It's just a hard drive replacement, any assistance would be much appriciated. 
    Thanks.
    Solved!
    Go to Solution.

    Hi frosted,
    Welcome to Lenovo Community Forums!
    I believe these guide from neokenchi's post will help.
    These are migration options,
    Option 1:
    1. Insert the original HDD and create a recovery drive (you will need a 16GB flashdrive or higher)
    2. Remove the HDD and insert the SSD drive and boot from the recovery drive by pressing F12 to reset the preloaded OS (with softwares and drivers).
    Option 2:
    1. Use Aomei Partition Assistant Home Edition or EaseUS Disk Copy Home Edition to clone the HDD to the SSD. (Freeware)
    2. Use a migration tool like Paragon Migrate OS to SSD (requires a license)
    Best regards
    Solid Cruver
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    If you find a post helpful and it answers your question, please mark it as an "Accepted Solution"! This will help the rest of the Community with similar issues identify the verified solution and benefit from it.
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  • X120e hard drive replacement

    Well my X120e is ordered, obviously have a little bit to wait lol so I have been investigating the hard drive replacement I will likely get.
    Essentially I have narrowed it down to two choices:
    1. Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB 7200 RPM - $74.99
    http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136692
    2. Seagate Momentus XT hybrid drive 500GB 7200 RPM + 4GB SSD - $119.99
    http://www.newegg.ca/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822148591
    (Also considering the 320GB version of both of these, drops the price difference to $35.)
    The price isn't the end of the world but obviously I would only want to spend the cash on the seagate if it is actually worth it.  I have a few questions.
    1.  Is the SSD on the seagate actually quick, or is it more of a gimmick?  Will it give me speed improvements given that it is only running on a 3.0 GB/s connection rather than the 6.0 that most modern SSD's are running on?
    2.  I have heard that people are having issues with the seagate hybrids, anyone have any experience with this?
    3.  One of the most important things to me would be improving boot time, which of these drives is going to give me a noticeable improvement in that? If there is a difference at all.
    4.  General question about replacing the hard drive: Lenovo has optimized windows for improved boot time on their computers (thinkpad experience or something like that??), is there anyway to preserve this after replacing the hard drive?
    5.  Any general thoughts you have on the two drives above, or hard drive replacements in general!
    Thanks! Can't wait to get my thinkpad.

    Yeah, that's what I was hearing about the hybrid drive having some issues.  Though I don't have any first hand experience.
    The Hybrid Drives gain performance boost when the data is sitting in the SSD portion (such as when you restart an OS, the startup for the second and further times would be shorter cause by that time it's using the SSD portion of the hybrid drive).
    http://www.notebookreview.com/default.asp?newsID=5818&review=ssd+vs+hard+drive  Has both the WD Scorpio Black and Seagate Momentus XT in tests.
    Seems the Seagate Momentus outperforms the WD Scorpio Black consistently in multiple tests... Just that hybrid drive issue....  Something to ponder about.
    3.0 GB/s is SATA II while 6.0 GB/s is SATA III which just started coming out.  Supposedly the power saving features of laptops start getting in the way of 200+ MB/s SSD's performance, so SATA 3.0GB/s would be more than enough (since SATA III SSD are in the 500+ MB/s)
    According to the benchmark, Momentus XT has a faster boot time.
    If you make a Factory Recovery disc from the standard HDD that came in your Lenovo X120e, you can use that to install onto your new HDD to get the 'benefits' that Lenovo has added to the Windows 7 partition.  This will require a cd/dvd drive unless there's a way to put the recovery onto the USB.  You can only make one rescue and recovery disc, so the second partition which is to store the rescue and recovery data can be deleted and merged into your main partition after you finish installing the OS and setting it up.
    The thing I'm concerned with is how Windows 7 handles that SSD in the Seagate Hybrid... If it tries to defrag it, then that's a nono cause it will do unnecessary writing to the SSD that doesn't benefit the SSD at all.  Unsure if you'll need to do an 'upgrade' install on top of the lenovo OS rescue and recovery partition to have Windows 7 set up correctly for SSD usage.  You should look into any information about how windows 7 handles hybrid drives (since windows 7 turns off certain services if it recognizes SSD).
    G'luck!
    P.S. If the SSD portion of Seagate Hybrid acts like any other SSD and accepts TRIM command, you should probalby install the latest AMD SATA controller or revert to Microsoft AHCI controller for passing of TRIM command from Windows 7.
    For a compilation of most X120e issues:
    Compilation of Lenovo X120e issues and solutions

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