MacBook Pro - Hard Disk Upgrade

Been holding off on this for a while, but finally got down to upgrading my MBP (non-unibody, ~2008 model) hard drive. 200GB is simply not enough when my iPhoto Library is > 20GB and iTunes alone takes up more than 90GB.

Checked out iFixit.com and followed their wonderful step-by-step guide there. Make sure you have a Torx T6 screwdriver. The MBP screws are quite small and fragile, so better to have fitting screwdrivers if not, the screws might get damaged.

Before I started, backed up my hard drive with Time Machine. Swapped out the hard disk for new one, and then re-installed Leopard with the recovery CDs. After that, restored from Time Machine backup, and all programs and data were nicely put back in.

The hardware swap was quite simple actually, the only issue for me was a data cable was quite firmly stuck with adhesive to the hard drive, so I had to slowly and carefully dislodge the cable using the blunt end of a knife. iFixit recommends a "spudger" which I couldn't be bothered to find. YMMV and make sure you don't damage the cable.

Prior to upgrade, was hovering around 20GB free space (which made me nervous like hell). After upgrade, and re-filling up my iTunes with some movies I'd moved off to a external HDD, sitting pretty with about 272GB free. :-)

Issues to look out for -

1. Have to update all Apple software a couple of rounds - my recovery CDs were Leopard 10.5.4 only, and iTunes was at 8.0 i think. Had to do Apple Software Update twice.

2. If you are re-installing Leopard for first time, the CD verification will take about an hour, before installation of Leopard, which itself took another hour.

3. Restoring from Time Machine took about 2 hours for roughly 150GB data and programs.

4. Mail.app will reindex your mail, but that took only a short while. MobileMe will re-sync everything - make sure you set MobileMe to overwrite your MBP rather than the other way around.

5. My StarHub Mobile Broadband USB stick had to be re-installed with manual settings which I guessed myself.

Other than the above issues, the whole upgrade went pretty well. Highly recommend the iFixit website for their detailed instructions.

I believed I may have avoided the above issues if I had cloned my hard drive using a program called "SuperDuper", which, from what I read, is recommended over restoring from Time Machine.

If you're thinking of upgrading your MBP hard drive, give it a go and let me know how it goes.

:)ac