Macbook Pro Hard Drive Upgrade

[sf1]

Just wondering if anyone has done a hard drive upgrade from the 160 GB 5400 RPM hard drive to something like the 320 GB or 500 GB 7200 RPM hard drive. Was there any noticable increases in speed, especially using large files in Aperture?

Just looking to see if its worth it or not. My hard drive is getting full and I feel the best option would be to upgrade. A local company will do it so I don't have to worry much.

Thanks

[disorder]

from the research i have done (sorry i don't have any links to give you), people have noticed nice performance increases with the 7200 RPM drive.

[Soda Ant]

I upgraded my 17" MBP last week to a 320GB 7200 RPM drive and I see noticeable improvements in Aperture and Photoshop CS4 performance.

The upgrade itself is straightforward and anyone except the truly fumble-fingered can do it themselves. There are plenty of web sites with descriptions and videos of the procedure.

[MaxxuM]

I saw a notable decrease in load times over the original drive mainly in Aperture (loading images & thumbnails) and starting apps. It's probably the best upgrade for a laptop next to increasing memory. Highly recommended.

[sf1]

Thanks very much everyone....it will be upgraded soon.

[shazza]

Here's a post I made in another forum when I changed out my drive about 6 months ago. It's been working great, and is one of the best upgrades I've done:

__________________________________________________ _________________

I Swapped out the 160GB HD with a Western Digital 320GB (5400 RPM) HD (about $140 from Newegg). Thought I'd share the process, in case anyone else is thinking about it. It really isn't that hard, even though the pictures on the net look daunting.

Googled and found several guides. Mine actually came apart with a few less screw removals than included in the guides, and it took less than half an hour to swap out the drives.

Here's a pic of the "open" book:

http://i4.photobucket.com/albums/y124/shazzasmd/Macbookopen.jpg

The hard drive is in front on the left (as you look at the picture). It's a 2.5" SATA drive ... very cute ;)


Before I removed the internal HD, I had backed it up to a 320 GB Western Digital External Passport Drive (~ $140). I used Carbon Copy Cloner to make a bootable copy. It took about 3 hours last night to complete this part.

After I had the new drive in, I then did a "reverse-Clone," using the external drive to clone the new internal Hard Drive. All went well ... this part took less time, about 2 hours to write 120GB.

While I was at it, I upped my memory to 4 GB, getting 2 x 2GB of Corsair RAM from Newegg for about $120 (the $80 RAM kits probably work just as well).

So, now my trusty MacBook Pro has double the storage space, and is a bit snappier with it's extra RAM and faster HD.

[FZ1]

I upgraded a while ago to a Seagate Momentus 7200RPM drive and I didn't really notice a big difference. If I was to do it again now, I would install an SSD instead.

[sf1]

I upgraded a while ago to a Seagate Momentus 7200RPM drive and I didn't really notice a big difference. If I was to do it again now, I would install an SSD instead.

To small (128 GIG) and too expensive.

[YP5 Toronto]

I upgraded a while ago to a Seagate Momentus 7200RPM drive and I didn't really notice a big difference. If I was to do it again now, I would install an SSD instead.


Finished an install on my friends Mac Book Pro, OCZ SSD 60GB Vertex, newest firmware.

Not even a comparison to hard drives of any speed. For him, size was not an issue as photos and value data are store externally (external raid 1 setup). I was amazed at the difference in load times, snappy-ness, loading of pictures, etc...and I am not really a mac user.

It is on my list of things to do for my notebook, but more importantly on my desktop. Plans for 3 60GBs raid 0.

[mutau052]

I use macservice.com and have had awesome results.

[sf1]

I use macservice.com and have had awesome results.

Thanks, but it seems to only accept USA addresses.

I found a local MAC shop that can do the upgrade for the same price and time frame.