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    About to crack open my mac to upgrade

    Discussion in 'Apple and Mac OS X' started by navicalist, May 26, 2010.

  1. navicalist

    navicalist Notebook Geek

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    I bought mine in 2007, thinking I might give it a couple upgrades, since I'm going to be opening it up to clean out its insides and re-do the thermal paste.

    I need help upgrading the hard drive. This is my first time upgrading anything, and I need things made specific before proceeding.

    The manual says any 2.5 inch SATA would do. I see on newegg that there are 1.5gb/s, and 3.0gb/s variants. Does SATA mean it'll support either? And are there any limits to RPM?

    Ram is super expensive nowadays. Just when I was buying the notebook, 4 gb sets would cost $50, now it's double that. Anyway, it makes me want to buy a cheapass laptop around $400 just to take out the bigger hard drive and the ram.
     
    navicalist, May 26, 2010
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  2. sgogeta4

    sgogeta4 Notebook Nobel Laureate

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    Any SATA hard drive will be fine as long as it's 9.5mm in height. The bandwidth (150 or 300MBps - same as 1.5/3.0Gbps after overhead) doesn't matter since no HDD comes close to saturating even SATA/150. Also, the current maximum RPM in notebook drives is 7200RPM. Hard drives are really cheap and even with a memory upgrade, it would be better than salvaging parts from a cheap notebook.
     
    sgogeta4, May 26, 2010
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  3. dplxy

    dplxy Notebook Enthusiast

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    check out the WD VelociRaptor WD1500BLFS
    10k rpm on laptop =)
     
    dplxy, May 28, 2010
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  4. k9hydr4

    k9hydr4 Notebook Deity

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    ^^^
    For this kind of money, you're better off with SSD--

    Link
     
    k9hydr4, May 28, 2010
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  5. E30kid

    E30kid Notebook Deity

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    They only cost $180 on amazon. You'd get like 80GB from an SSD at the same price.
     
    E30kid, May 29, 2010
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  6. EviLCorsaiR

    EviLCorsaiR Asura

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    Wouldn't fit. It's 2.5", but it's also 15mm thick, much thicker than the standard 9mm and there will be VERY FEW laptops out there that will fit it. The MacBooks aren't one of them.
     
    EviLCorsaiR, May 29, 2010
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