[HElpppp!!!!] Macbook Hard Drive Update! AHHHHH!!!!

[Marloon]

Hi there,

i have a early 2006 macbook. I want to upgrade the hard drive on my laptop because 60GB of space is no longer suitable for me anymore.

I am looking at this model of the hard drive; Seagate Momentus G-FORCE 320GB 2.5IN SATA 7200RPM 16MB Notebook Hard Drive OEM 5YR MFR Warranty Model number: ST9320421ASG

What i wanted to know was if this hard drive is compatible with my late 2006 macbook. Thank you very much for your time.

P.S. i heard something about the older macbooks taking only SATA 150 due to their chipset. thanks!

P.P.S. is it worth it to get the G-force model or not? thank YOUUU!!!

[Tony-S]

As long as it's a SATA interface, 2.5" ff and 9.5mm high, it ought to work just fine. It'll just work at 1.5 mb/sec max.

[Marloon]

Oh it will run at a slower speed? so does getting a 7200rpm drive still even matter?

[Tony-S]

Compared to your 60 gb drive, it'll be lots faster. But then again, so would a 320 gb 5400 rpm drive. Is there a reason you're not looking at 500 gb drives?

[Marloon]

i have a $100 limit, and i found a 7200rpm 320GB drive at NCIX.

i just want to be able to bring my LR with me everywhere i go... Lately, all of my photos and music has been sitting at home in an external hard drive. having a 320GB hard drive will definitely be fun.

i've been xslimming every application, deleting and cleaning up my stuff. SIGH. LOL i am sick of it! HAHAH

[Tony-S]

Seagate's and Samsung's 500 gb drives are $100 with free shipping from NewEgg. Both are nice drives, especially if you shoot a lot of RAW.

[Marloon]

do you think i would benefit from a 500gb 5400 or a 320gb 7200 on my macbook?

[Marloon]

oh and do you think G force is worth the money?

[Tony-S]

do you think i would benefit from a 500gb 5400 or a 320gb 7200 on my macbook?

Well, that's a personal preference. I'm more into size than speed. (You know the story about the young bull and the old bull?) I put a 320 gig drive in my MBP but that's because the 500 gb drives weren't available yet, otherwise I would have. With a 7200 rpm drive you'll get faster boot times and better random access (e.g., 3D games), while a 5400 drive works just as well for sustained activities (e.g., video playback, etc.).

oh and do you think G force is worth the money?

I don't know - I don't have any experience with that.

[Marloon]

well boot times as in, booting up software? would my software performance be better, thats what i was thinking when i think of 7200rpm drives.

well i dont ever play games on my mac, and the only thing i do is edit photos in LR and CS4, and edit movies in premier CS4. thats pretty much it. I also play about 50gb of music in itunes, surf the net and do my word and ppt documents. thats pretty much it?

so which should it be 7200rpm 320? or 5400rpm 500gb. i know its a personal choice, but based on what i use it for, which side would you be for.

Thanks for answering my questions. You are definitely a huge help!

BTW. I'm ready to purchase either drives. haha.. i am tempted to click on the paypal button on both drives. HAHA

[Tony-S]

well boot times as in, booting up software? would my software performance be better, thats what i was thinking when i think of 7200rpm drives.

The 320/7200 will be a bit faster than a new 500/5400 for such activities, but compared to your current drive the 500 will be substantially faster as well. In addition to the faster rotational speed, the 320 only has two platters; the 500s have three platters, thus more work for the motor. (WD's new 500 drive has only two platters, but it more expensive than the Seagate or Samsung).

well i dont ever play games on my mac, and the only thing i do is edit photos in LR and CS4, and edit movies in premier CS4. thats pretty much it. I also play about 50gb of music in itunes, surf the net and do my word and ppt documents. thats pretty much it?

I think you ought to go with a 500 gb drive.

[Marloon]

THANK YOU THANK YOU THANK YOU!

Let me round up my software list and purchase that hDD! THANKS AGAIN!!!!!

[Marloon]

i'll grab the samsung 500gb. its 125 on newegg.ca.

[Tony-S]

I think you'll be happy. You also know about Carbon Copy Cloner?

[Marloon]

i have no idea what carbon copy cloner is.

Is there a way to back up ALL of my stuff on an external hard drive so i dont have to redo all of my settings on my mac (like... mail accounts, adium accounts). And stuff like that?

Is that possible?

[Tony-S]

Yes, Carbon Copy Cloner is what you want. Free and literally clones your drive. Once you clone it to the external, replace your internal and run CCC again, this time from the external to the new internal. You'll have an exact copy of your 60 gb hard drive, except their will be lots more available space.

[Electric Shepherd]

An HDD swap on the MacBook is very easy Marloon, I swapped out my 120Gb for a 250Gb drive earlier this year and it was a doddle to do (I'm not a full-on computer whizz either).

I used an app called Super Duper to clone my drive but it does exactly the same as Carbon Copy Cloner, either will do.

[Marloon]

Cool! Is there a possibility of doing the following:

-taking out my internal and putting it in an enclosure
-put in the internal 500gb drive and loading osx onto it
-plugging in the NEW external drive and cloning the disk back into my 500gb?

Would that be at all possible?

i dont really know how to back it up. I have an old external hard drive plugged into my computer but when i use CCC, it doesnt allow me to select my external hard drive as a backup disk.

[Tony-S]

Yes, you can do that, but I wouldn't recommend it. Here's what you should do (and why):

1. Put your new drive in the enclosure then use CCC to clone your internal to the new drive (about 1 hour for your 60 gb drive).
2. Leave the new drive connected in the enclosure and restart your Mac. As soon as the screen goes dark, press and hold the Option key until you see both your internal and new external drive. Use the arrow key to select the new drive in the external enclosure, then press return to start the boot process.
3. Once successfully booted, shut down the computer and swap the drives out. Reboot without having the old drive connected.

The advantage of this is that you verify that your cloning process worked before installing the drive.

[Marloon]

ALRIGHTTT thats cool... that seems easy and doable. I currently backing up my HD onto an external 3.5" drive. i might as well stop this right now.

That means i gotta get a new enclosure for my new 2.5" drive....

do i have to format the new 500gb? the reason why i ask this is because whenever i select a new target disk, my attached external hard drives cannot be selected; they are grey-ed out. and i only have "new disk image, choose disk image, and remote macintosh" as my options. "My book" (which is my hard drive) cannot be selected.

[Marloon]

that means i gotta pick up a torx8 screwdriver and a new external enclosure.

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32713&vpn=OT%2D3618A&manufacture=nGear%20Technologies%20Inc%2E

this would work right? Thanks aGAIN! you are aWEsome..

[Marloon]

i know i have a lot of questions, i am just really unsure about all this right now.

when i use CCC to copy my old internal to the new internal (just the way you do it), i dont copy it as a DMG right?

[Tony-S]

do i have to format the new 500gb?

Yes. When you connect the drive, launch Disk Utility (inside Applications/Utilities folder). Click on the drive (and not any partition that would show up underneath the drive name and also indented), then the Partition tab becomes available. Choose that and set to 1 partition, then click on the Option button to set GUID (otherwise it won't boot on an Intel Mac), then format the drive. Should only take a minute or so.

that means i gotta pick up a torx8 screwdriver and a new external enclosure.

http://ncix.com/products/index.php?sku=32713&vpn=OT%2D3618A&manufacture=nGear%20Technologies%20Inc%2E

this would work right? Thanks aGAIN! you are aWEsome..

Yes, that should work.

when i use CCC to copy my old internal to the new internal (just the way you do it), i dont copy it as a DMG right?

No, do not copy it as a DMG as that is not bootable. You just want to make a bootable clone of your drive.

[Marloon]

After i do all that stuff with disk utility, i can use CCC to copy my internal to the 500gb HD. the New drive should be selectable right?

and thanks for all of your help!!! you are awesome! do you happen to know anything about terminal? i just have a question...

[Tony-S]

Yes, the drive should be selectable.

I know enough to be dangerous with terminal...

[Marloon]

Thank you!!!!

i sent you a PM regarding terminal! you are more helpful than any other apple forums i've been on these days! THANKSSS!!!

[Marloon]

hey Tony-s

now i'm intrigued by your hackintosh. Do you have a quick spec list. and is it hard to build one? i've seen hackintosh builds up and down engadget and gizmodo. I've built computers before in the past, but never a hackintosh before. Was thinking of doing it, but i'm scared in terms of money going down the drain.

[Tony-S]

I followed this (http://www.macworld.com/article/133028/2008/04/building_mac_clone.html), except I went with an 8600GT and a 750 gb hard drive. The cost, including a retail copy of OS X Leopard was about $900, but I've added a couple of hard drives since then.

[Marloon]

That sounds really awesome!

i got help already in regards to the terminal thing. THanks for your help though. And thanks again for the info about my new hard drive. The drive has already shipped and it'll be coming within this week.

I believe i snatched it for 125, i checked the price again for the hard drive and it went up to 187. PHEWWWW! LOL

[Marloon]

hey...

so i got my hard drive today... and i was so excited on installing it that when i used disk utility, i partitioned it as "untitled"... my question is.. is there a way i can rename the hard drive without repartitioning it?

ThankS!

[Tony-S]

You can click on any partition's name on the desktop and it should highlight so you can rename it.

[Marloon]

yeah i figured it out and i changed the name.

i am running through some trouble right now...

when i used CCC, there are errors in copying my hard drive. It stops copying when it meets certain files.

And so i tried to recopy it again using CCC (3 times) but before it finishes the laptop screen turns black and i cant get my screen back. Its not sleeping thats for sure.

Then i tried super duper. Same thing. But instead of getting a black screen, it just says there's an error when it meets the same file.

what should i do?

Technically if i am just cloning HDs wouldn't they have the same used space? what happened was, i cloned it using CCC, got an error, but i was able to boot my computer using the new HD (which is in an external). When i compared the HD used spaces the internal (original HD) had 44.9GB of used space and the external (new HD) had 44.72GB.

[BeritOlam]

Marloon,

I've never used CCC or SD. But many of my Mac buddies swear by SuperDrive! and have used it for a while now for cloning their hard drive. However, even a casual glance through the SD forums (http://www.shirt-pocket.com/forums/forumdisplay.php?f=6) will show you that cloning is far from a perfect science. People can and do encounter trouble(s). I've seen one guy lose everything because he thought he had everything.

I have a close friend that spent a whole entire weekend trying to trouble shoot this problem until he finally got it resolved. At which time I asked him, "Hey, wouldn't have been quicker just to save your essential files externally, do a fresh OSX install and then reinstall all of your software?" That's when I got a few :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: :mad: faces from him! ;)

I haven't kept up with things recently, but I remember reading this blog post (http://blog.plasticsfuture.org/2006/04/23/mac-backup-software-harmful/) 2 1/2 years ago. A lot can change in 2 1/2 years...and yet you can see that these guys testing Mac backup software options ran into a lot of problems. It's not always an exact science.

This is one of the reasons I've never relied on cloning. Maybe I would if I ran a business from my Mac and my whole $$$ life depended on it. When it works, it's great...but when it doesn't work, it is a major pain in the A$$!

Do you still have the install CD's of all your essential programs, in case you had to reinstall things?

I've told newbie, non-techy Mac converts to do the following:
***Get a free Mozy backup (https://mozy.com/?code=3TQE20) account, and back up all essential files (email, documents, spreadsheets, etc.)

This is what I've used since they added Mac capabilities about a year ago. It saved my butt about 6 months ago when my Macbook was stolen (grrrrrrh!!!!). I would have been screwed....except that that Mozy backed up all of my essential files on their server. And I simply downloaded a DMG file of everything, once I got my new Macbook up and running again.

Now, keep in mind the free account only gives you 2gigs worth of backup. So clearly it's not designed for professionals that need full HDD backups of their videos, pictures, or other 'secret' stashes!! ;) They do have a couple of paying options that would allow you to backup all 44gigs, though that would take you a LONG time....and might not be terribly efficient for you to do at this point.

It's not a thrifty system like cloning. However, it's a system that works every time. I don't know a single Mac user using Mozy that's had it fail on them. The incremental backups work great, and then I don't have to worry about it

[doubledragon]

so I'd like to know how the upgrade went, did you get a 500GB ?
I'm considering it with my macbook.

[Halliday]

I'm still learning my way around Macs, but do you have Time Machine on the old computer? You can make a TM backup on an external drive, put the new drive in, then migrate the TM backup onto the new drive.

That means you'll need a 3rd drive for TM, but that might be a good thing to have anyway.

Nevermind any of that if you are not running Leopard with Time Machine installed :)

[doubledragon]

I'm still learning my way around Macs, but do you have Time Machine on the old computer? You can make a TM backup on an external drive, put the new drive in, then migrate the TM backup onto the new drive.

That means you'll need a 3rd drive for TM, but that might be a good thing to have anyway.

Nevermind any of that if you are not running Leopard with Time Machine installed :)

well, i think most people prefer to use carbon copy cloner or SuperDuper to clone their drive. Then they swap them, put the old one in an enclosure, and use it as a backup drive.

[Tony-S]

Yeah, SD or CCC for migrating to a new drive for the same computer. Time Machine is better for migrating your stuff from one Mac to a different model Mac (or if you have a hard drive failure).