Hi guys!

My 13 inch macbook from november last year only has a 80Gig harddrive inside. As im running out of space ive thought of the following:

1. Buy a new harddrive, biggest possible possibly 160GB or 250GB.
2. Get Leopard.
3. Take out "old" 80GB tiger drive and store somewhere safe (for warranty and all).
4. Put in my new large drive and boot from disc and install Leopard on it.

This way I wont touch my original Tiger harddrive so if something goes wrong with my macbook I can always hand it in to get it fixed. May sound psycho but Ide rather screw up my own new drive then my old original-got-from-apple drive :p

I went to the macstore 2day and they told me that this isnt possible because a new harddrive would not fit my macbook.
Sounded stupid to me so ive found this.
Apple DIY harddrive replacement:
http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/Mac...dDrive_DIY.pdf

Does anyone here has thoughts on this?

Can I replace my 80GB harddrive with a bigger one and will it fit?

Thanks for helping me out and sorry if all of this sounds stupid

No one? Bump

Yes, you can replace it with a bigger one.

The only thing you'll have to care about is the thickness of the new hard disk.

The maximum thickness the macbook can receive is 9.5mm

make sure your new drive is <= 160GB and is a notebook SATA drive.

I have done this myself, it was really really really easy, and when I say it's easy, it's easy! All I had to do was to remove the battery, unscrewed the RAM bay to get access to the hard drive bay to replace it. It took me about 10 mins to get my new HDD installed and running and it was the first time I ever replaced a notebook's HDD.

I recently bought a SATA USB2 enclosure to use my old hard drive as a time machine drive

Thanks for all the reply's

So Duyvan82 a 160GB drive most likely is less or 9.5mm thick like XianLi said. Ill make shure that it fits before I unwrap it though :p

Im not worried about screwing it open, the manual is very clear and indeed it looks terribly easy.

Just registered to reply here :

the Macbook can support whatever 2.5" SATA HD is available, currently the biggest is a 320Gig, these drives are fairly universal in size, there used to be size compatibly issues, but have been a non issue for years.

I run a Apple repair centre, I have upgraded quite a few Macbooks to 250Gig - they work quite well

the 9.5mm restriction is for the optical drive, the older ones used a 12mm chassis that wouldn't fit into the newer systems.

hope this helps.

The macbooks are user serviceable RAM, meaning its designed for the owner to be able to upgrade the RAM without voiding warranty - once you undo the 3 screws that hold the metal L bracket in place (these screws do not come off the L bracket) pull the bracket out and you reveal the 2 RAM slots and the HD, grab the plastic tab on the HD and pull straight out.
remove the bracket from the old HD, install onto the new HD, reinsert the HD, replace the L bracket (the tricky part - as the sealing padding may need to be squeezed in while trying to close to ensure a good fit.
replace battery and re-install OS, or clone from old HD

Nach0

I have replaced both the RAM (now 2GB) and hard drive (now 160GB) on my MacBook. It's 10 minutes tops for either one, maybe 15 minutes if you do them both together :-). The only possible wrinkle is that you need a Torx screwdriver (I don't recall which size), although I think I used a regular flathead jeweler's screwdriver of comparable size and it worked fine.

I replaced the original 80 GB harddrive from my MacBook Pro with this one:
Samsung SpinPoint HM250JI 250GB 5400RPM 8MB 2,5"

Runs with no problems at all!


Maybe a drive with 7200 RPM could cause thermal problems.


For my MacBook Pro I needed a Torx T7.

hi, here's a simple step by step tutorial on how to change harddrives in a macbook.

It's not that hard and only takes little of your time!

Good Luck!!

Computer Ticket: How to change a hard disk drive in a macbook (Tutorial)