Upgraded to 1TB Hard Drive

Question

I just upgraded my MBP 17" i7 (mid-2010) from 500GB to 1TB. This process was about the easiest thing ever. Just in case anyone is trying it let me tell you the steps:
1. I purchased a 1TB SAMSUNG HM100UI. It is 12.5mm thick and fits perfectly in the hard drive compartment. It is 5400RPM, which seems to about the fastest 1TB out there. And it's not expensive, just google it. I got mine for less than $100.
2. You need an enclosure temporarily for the drive, if you want to do this fast and easy. I keep a SATA enclosure around for all kinds of purposes (whether to upgrade my TiVo or fix a bad hard drive). They aren't that expensive. When in the enclosure, format the drive and/or partition it. Takes a few seconds.
3. Download Carbon Copy Cloner (free, really free), and clone your internal hard drive to the external one. Depending on the amount of data, this takes a couple of hours. If you don't want to clone your drive, and start from fresh, you can just install the drive, then boot from your recovery disks, but I've read, and cannot confirm, that sometimes that doesn't work well, although it could be from people not formatting their disks first.
4. This is important, and I learned it here. Test your cloned drive first, or you'll be unscrewing a lot of stuff. Just startup while holding the option key, and you can choose the cloned drive. Mine worked first time out.
5. Read over the directions for accessing your hard drive in your MBP. It looks like there are slightly different instructions for each MBP. I accidentally looked at the 2009 17", which looked odd. I realized I needed mine, 2010.
6. Lots of small screws. Invest in some magnetized screwdrivers, or you'll be looking for one of the screws. You also need a Torx #6.
7. Remove old drive (eBay it, because someone might think your 320GB is infinitely better than their current 160). Put in new drive. Close up case. DONE.
Outside of the cloning process, this took me 10 minutes tops.
Oh, one thing about the Samsung drive. QUIET. If I weren't posting here, I'd swear it wasn't working it's so quiet.
I hope this helps someone.

Answer 1

Thanks for this post. I had one 1TB HD in my hand last night. I questioned the size, until I measured the battery and HD heights. I saw that there would be a 1mm space between the HD and battery height. Since the battery was taller, it would fit. Other than that, most HD swaps are very easy. Just wear sneakers if you have a run or carpet. Static electricity..... I don't know if this is possible, but I found out that Tiger can create DMG files that can build the image too. If not, just copy the folders and reinstall everything.
Also, if you don't sell the old one, turn it into a external HD. make sure you format it as a FAT so you can use it on both Windows and Mac. I have two, soon to make 3. New to Mac, 17 years building computers... Can never have enough hard drives. Wish i could load Snow on a computer I built!!!!