Replacement hard drive for late 2008 Macbook Pro

I need to replace my drive in a late 2008 Macbook Pro 15". I can access the battery and what looks like the hard drive from the underside, if this helps. Would this be a good replacement choice?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136279
Finding exact specs for the drive has been tricky, or maybe I just need to have the physical size verified. What I know/have found is:
5400rpm       (would a 7200rpm improve performance, or am I limited by hardware?)
SATA II        (does this matter tese days?)
2.5" drive   (needs verification)
open drive? (do I need this or not?)
Any other options or advice? I'd like to spend a small amount since this is an older computer and won't be around a whole lot longer anyway. Thanks in advance!

The link you posted above is for a WD drive,....dont get it. WD drives (some) have SMS sensor coflicts with Mac, and the consumer grade western digital HD are the worst you can buy.
Same as used by Apple below, best option, cheapest price.
best likewise replacement 1TB 9.5mm Toshiba
http://www.ebay.com/itm/Toshiba-1TB-MQ01ABD100-HDKBB96A1A01-2-5-5400RPM-Laptop-N otebook-9-5mm-HDD-/171120091488?pt=US_Internal_Hard_Disk_Drives&hash=item27d78d 6 160
$68
Stockdizzle
I will need to clone the current drive before it fails; is there an article in this forum on that?
Easy, 3 clicks and sit back and let Superduper CLONE your HD.....about 40 mins average.
Superduper is free and most of the pros use it (or carbon copy cloner)
http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDuper/SuperDuperDescription.html
See instruction and get software there< very very easy to do

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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
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Welcome to Apple Support Communities
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http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1220
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Hey Bigtalex712!
I have an article here for you that can provide some troubleshooting steps for this issue:
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http://support.apple.com/kb/TS1248
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I am looking around to replace my 160 gig hard drive for something larger.
These are my choices:
Hitachi 500GB Travelstar SATA 7200 RPM
Hitachi Travelstar 5K500.B - 500GB 2.5" SATA 5400 RPM 8MB
Fujitsu MJA2500BH-G2 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB
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Message was edited by: Sean Coon

I would choose anything that Other World COmputing would recommend.
But before I swapped out to a 500GB drive, I would make sure I had redundant backup plans in place: both an external local drive, and offsite backup.
500GB is an awful lot of data to lose when the drive fails. And it WILL fail at some point.
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Message was edited by: wcngu1
Message was edited by: wcngu1

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Message was edited by: CaptainBump

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I work for a university and we have a legal apple vendor who we get to buy all our Apple products from.Can we (university) re-install macosx for a replacement hard drive once the hard drive gets replaced? How can we as the university IT department legally re-install macosx on a imac,macbook, macbookair etc. We would like to load customized macosx imaging software onto the mac machines(imac, macbook, etc ). The university has its own IT workshop and we would like our users to get their laptops back in the shortest turnaround time.

We're not "Apple Inc." here, just users like you.
So whatever we say is not an official statement, nor does it in any way, shape, or form represent the official or unofficial policies or opinions of Apple, Inc.
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Question #1. "NO!"
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Making students totally dependent upon "Mother Support" for every little thing about their personal digital devices is a grave disservice to both the students and the people who provide the support. Support-mothered students do become life-long digital dependents, instead of taking the required time to learn enough about the care and feeding of their digital "pets" to sustain them. Entreprenurial students may choose to become 'experts' and actually help each other with their devices, and even make money doing it. Some students may even be inspired/coerced to pursue a career in tech support!!!
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Message was edited by: kostby

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Bear008,
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Hi all,
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ALL HD WILL FAIL, so asking about A (single , one) HD is always the wrong question, its redundancy and more redundancy.
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Perfect 1TB for $68
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launch Disk Utility.
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Replacement hard drive for late 2008 Macbook Pro

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