K’s Weblog

What do you do when you get sick of choosing between whether you have easy access to either your 35 GB music collection or your 60 GB photo collection? Buy more storage.

I decided it was finally time to put a new larger hard drive in my Mac Book. The unit is nearly two years old and was still using its original 80 GB drive. I managed to find a good deal on a new 320 GB drive from my equipment provider of choice and set about to do my own bit of MacBook surgery.

This isn’t my first forray into a self-guided MacBook upgrade. About a year ago I doubled the RAM on my second-generation MacBook. Both of these upgrades proved quite straight forward.

The first task is to make sure that you have all the necessary gear. In this case you will need:

• 1 cluttered out-of-space MacBook
• 1 spanking new big hard drive
• 1 small Phillips screw driver
• 1 coin
• 1 very small hex screw driver - six-pointed star
• 1 Sheet of paper or cloth

Now that you have all the gear you need to make this happen, let’s get started.

Step 1: Turn the MacBook over so that the battery is facing up.  Place it on the paper or cloth to avoid scratching your baby.

Step 2: Place the coin in the battery release catch, and turn to release the battery

Step 3: Remove the battery and set it aside.

This is also a good opportunity to clean around the edge of the battery compartment, and the edge of the battery. Take care not to drop any debris into the battery compartment, or the “inner workings” of your macbook.

Step 4: Unscrew the ‘L’-shaped faceplate on the inside edge of the battery compartment. Remove it from the long side first, set it aside once it’s clear.

Step 5: Extract the tab from its position folded beneath the drive and pull gently to release the drive from the casing. Continue to pull until the drive is fully extracted and sitting in the battery cavity.

Step 6: Pull the drive out and remove the screws holding on the faceplate attached to the plastic tab. In my case I needed I needed to pick up a six-pointed star screw driver which I didn’t originally have. Thank goodness for extended hours at Wal-Mart.

Step 7: Transfer the plate to the new drive. Make sure to affix it so that the tab is placed away from the pins which will dock it with the computer.
==>

Step 8: Re-insert the new drive into the computer. Push gently to ensure that it’s correctly aligned with the computer, it won’t take much pressure to complete the connection. Tuck the tab back beneath the drive.

Step 9: Re-attach the ‘L’-shaped faceplate. Start with the short end near the hard drive and work it into place from left to right. You will need to tuck into place the two pads protecting the memory modules as you work across, I used my screw driver for this.

Step 10: Replace the battery and secure it with the coin.

Step 11: Reboot your system and enjoy the glorious new freedom of lots of new disk space.

At this point you have a couple of different options. If you put the old drive into an external FireWire enclosure, you can boot from it, and clone that disk onto the new drive. This will put everything on the new drive precisely where it was on the old one, with the exception of a ton of new space.

My preferred option is to opt for a clean re-install of the system. Despite what some Mac proponents will tell you, even OS X is prone to clutter and even performance problems after enough time. If you’ve got the time, a clean re-install will allow you to take everything you’ve learned up until now and use that knowledge to rebuild a better Mac install.

So if you’re feeling at all cramped, pick yourself up a new hard drive and try out this weekend DIY project.

Related Posts