My MBP harddrive failed - best way to replace it?

I was thinking this is my chance to get a SSD. Can you recommend one? It doesn't have to be too big, as I store all my movies and music in an external. (is there a short way to write external hard drive? does EHDD work?)

I heard that SSD is more stable and doens't fail as well as HDD do from online sources but someone I know has been saying otherwise.

Could anyone recommend a good youtube video or screenshot tutorial (screenshot is better) for replacing the harddrive? I heard you need a cable too. Not sure how to get one.

I was also thinking while at it, I should upgrade the RAM to 8GB, where should I buy these RAM?

But the only thing that worries me is that it might slightly be not worth it to revive this laptop because my MBP hinge is slightly broken and is wobbly at a certain angle and can't be upright and has to be slightly leaning back.

However I actually want as big a space as possible so that I can carry movies and stuff with me easily with the laptop itself but I guess that would be possible if I bought a separate 1TB EHD that connects to the computer with out needing to plug also in to the outlet.

This is the 1TB internal I'm thinking of:
Newegg.com - SAMSUNG Spinpoint M8 HN-M101MBB 1TB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive

And an 80GB SSD I'm thinking of: Newegg.com - Intel 320 Series SSDSA2BW080G301 2.5" 80GB SATA II MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) - Internal SSD


At any rate how do you handle the fact that Mac and Windows can't use the same EHD? I have to buy a separate new EHD for each computer and can't watch a movie that I can on one computer? That's just really bizarre.

 

1 macs and windows easily can use the same external drives format it exFAT
2 pretty much any 2.5" SSD works. what version of OSX are you using?
3. you dont need a cable as long as your using a standard 2.5" SATA ssd

Is it worth resurecting this unit ... depends on how old it is and which model. broken hinge does concern me some

 

This is the computer I have: 15'' MacBook Pro, 2.66 GHz, 4GB RAM, 320 GB HD (early 2010)

How do you format it exFAT? Is it easy?

 

very easy.

 

Ok, which one do you think I should buy? The 1TB HDD or 80GB SSD?

 

If I want to be able to run Windows on SSD too, I guess I should buy the 80 GB SSD instead of 40 GB SSD? But then the SSD that is recommended for MacBook Pro on the macrumor forum is on the expensive side, it being $140 for the 80GB, while some cheaper ones are $80 for 60GB, which I think is enough.

 

I think 80GB is the bare minimum necessary for the two operating systems plus a reasonable set of applications. Even then, you'll probably be shuffling files between your home folder and your external drive quite a bit and it could be a hassle not worth the upgrade. Right now you can get a 120GB OCZ Vertex 3 for $100 after rebate on Newegg. That's about the minimum I'd recommend.

 

@dmk2, thank you! Does this work well on MBP? Over at the Macrumors forums people were suggesting the intel brands:

 

I would say that go to 250 gb, as my SSD has become full with 120 with limited number of files on the disk. You have to remember that you can really use around 90 gb, as Apple recommends 30 gb for the page file and you don't want your computer to crash with no virtual disk. A windows 7 installation in parallels alone is around 40 gigs give and take (office, firefox included).

 

OCZ use Sandforce controllers which are very fast but had reliability problems when they first hit the market. OCZ got a bit of a bad reputation from their Vertex 2 drives, but the Vertex 3 drives seem to be much better. The reports of drives being DOA or failing prematurely diminished to the point where I was comfortable buying two Vertex 3 drives for my other computers. They're inexpensive, very fast, and I've had no problems so far (knock wood).

OWC use the same Sandforce designs as OCZ but they're more expensive since they sell in much smaller numbers. OWC basically sell commodity hardware at marked up prices because they cater to the Mac market.

Intel are often recommended because they have a great reliability record and a long warranty, but they do cost more. Price/performance isn't the best, but Intel are a safe bet.

Mac OS X creates and manages page files dynamically and you should never end up with 30 GB in page files unless you have a rogue process leaking massive amounts of memory. Take a look at the contents of /var/vm and see what you're currently using. This is mine:

Code:

$ ls -al /var/vm
total 8912896
drwxr-xr-x   6 root  wheel         204 15 May 07:26 .
drwxr-xr-x  27 root  wheel         918 31 May  2011 ..
-rw------T   1 root  wheel  4294967296 15 May 06:39 sleepimage
-rw-------   1 root  wheel    67108864  3 May 20:16 swapfile0
-rw-------   1 root  wheel    67108864 15 May 08:17 swapfile1
-rw-------   1 root  wheel   134217728 15 May 08:17 swapfile2

 

Newegg.com - Computer Hardware, Hard Drives, SSD, crucial m4

What about this SSD?

And this caddy? http://www.amazon.com/2nd-Caddy-Apple-Macbook-Optical/dp/B005FIFM46

Is it possible to fit 1TB in this caddy for my MBP 2010? (someone told me that MBP 2010 can only hold up to 500Gb)

 

1. the M4 is a fantastic SSD, definitely would recommend one of them.
however one thing to note you mac I believe only has a SATA300 controller so I so the max speed you can get on any SSD is about ~270MB/s

2. the caddy will work for the 1TB so long as the 1TB is a standard 2.5inch disk. The caddy is only an adapter, the SATA controller decides what will work and what will not, and I've never heard of a company bothering to add a restriction like that.

I have the same model as you. and I have a 90GB Agility 2 and it works great, but I definitely wouldn't recommend smaller. I'd look into a ~120GB+.

 

1. If it only gets to about 270 is that slower than the MBA?
2. Thanks
3. Which one is better, agility 2 or m4?
4. Does HDD not fail if you have enough ram so that it doesn't get hot when you have lots of apps running?

 

1. not sure but I don' think the MBA would be noticeable faster.
3. M4 slaughters the Agility 2, I bought it a while ago... there was no M4 back then
4. from my experiences HD's are that bad... I find they died more from bumps than from heat. if you have 4GB of ram or more I'd say your ok.

 

I don't know which one to buy, the $125 or $85? 128 or 64 GB?

 

I once had an Intel 320 80GB SSD and even with proper maintenance, performance degraded over time. Until the technology can be made better, I would suggest saving yourself a few dollars and getting a traditional hard drive. I recently replaced the 750GB Toshiba 5400 RPM drive that came in my MacBook Pro with a 1TB Western Digital Scorpio Blue and don't notice any difference in the performance aside from the increased capacity. Also, I saw that you said capacity isn't really a big deal for you. What you may want to do in an order to save even more is just get a lower capacity 7200 RPM drive and use that instead. Maybe a 160GB.

 

I found the Momentus XT to be the best compromise between speed and capacity on a MBP, especially if running more than one OS. That's what I would recommend since, based on the OP's questions and post history, he doesn't appear to be the most technologically inclined. Replacing the SuperDrive in a MBP isn't exceptionally difficult, but it's not a project I'd take on unless I were 100% confident in what I were doing.

 

I still have an intel G1 80GB that I don't maintain at all and it's been in use 3 years and still very fast... don't know about the 320... but I'd never go back to HD... way to slow... I'd go with a ~120GB ish SSD personally.

 

The Crucial M4 is an excellent drive. Just upgraded from a 160GB Intel 320 SSD to the 256 GB Crucial M4, and what a difference it makes!

However, OP, like others have said, your 2010 MBP is limited to SATA II, meaning 3 Gbps speeds. My 2011 MBP has SATA III, 6 Mbps, so I was able to see the difference between a 3 Gbps and a 6 Gbps drive.

Regardless of speed differences, the Crucial M4 is a solid drive, and the prices are coming down significantly to less than a dollar per gig. I paid $210 for my 256GB drive.

Also, definitely upgrade to 8GB. Look for GSkill, Crucial, Corsair, those are good brands that will work great in your MBP. Newegg has the best prices (or Microcenter, if you live near one, but I still prefer NE).

 

Thank you. I think I'll buy the 128GB.

For the RAMs, I typed in 'Crucial 8 GB ram' and got a big list all around the same price, should I just randomly pick one?

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...sNodeId=1&Description=Crucial+ram+8gb&x=0&y=0

 

I agree. I have an Intel X25 that does show some performance loss in benchmarks, but it's still way faster than any HDD. Once you get used to the responsiveness of an SSD it's hard to go back.

 

I would have gotten a Momentous XT, however, as far as I know, there's no 1TB model available at this time. Until then, it's 1TB Scorpio Blue for me.

 

Can I recover the data of failed hard drive by myself? It's think it's $50 to pay someone to do it to move the data in the failed drive to an external drive.

 

I noticed that there was this one, 128GB for $125: Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD)
and then there is another one for $135 that includes the Transfer kit: Newegg.com - Crucial M4 CT128M4SSD2CCA 2.5" 128GB SATA III MLC Internal Solid State Drive (SSD) with Transfer Kit

Do I need the transfer kit? Is that for transferring data from the failed hard drive?

 

How failed is it? If it's so bad that it won't boot, it's possible it won't be mountable as an external drive and you may need special purpose software/tools to get anything off it. If it boots and mostly works, but gives you errors, then you can probably recover most of your data yourself. There are people who specialize in data recovery from dead drives, but they charge more than $50 and there are no guarantees you're going to recover anything.

The transfer kit looks like it's a SATA to USB cable and disk imaging software. The disk imaging software probably isn't helpful at this point. The SATA to USB cable might be useful if the old drive still sorta works and you're going to try recovering data yourself.

 

Thanks.

It kind of works in that it gives a error screen (white background and some letters on that, I forget what it said).

Also I found a little cheaper SSD ($90), which is $35 cheaper than the Crucial M4. Is this not as good as Crucial M4?
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produ...=skim525X832Xb7345f070c8a0c13d00c35175b4800bf

 

It uses a controller that is more prone to failure than the M4. Stick with the Crucial drive if you're adamant about going the SSD route.


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What would you recommend if I'm not adamant about SSD?

 

I already answered that on the previous page.

 

Is this better than the m4? OWC Mercury Electra 3G Solid State Drive (SSD) Solutions - High Performance, Reliability, and Endurance

I was searching "how to change ssd on MBP" and got some articles that recommends this one.

 

I need to get the screw drivers. It must be somewhere in the house but we either lost it while moving or something. But it would be not nice to find it after I buy another set of screw drivers for $20. Or could I get the one screw driver needed for MBP at Lowe's or something? what size(s) do I need?

 

Phillips #000 and torx T6.


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Ok They both come in kits I guess and cost $5.78 each for a total of about $12. Is this not bad a price?

 

This kit includes both and is only $8 from Amazon. Free shipping if you have Prime, otherwise find something else to bring the total up to $25.

Amazon.com: SKIL 009-156-SKL 22-Piece Precision Screwdriver Set: Home Improvement

 

ok, so now I got the m4 drive. I did not have a back up of the drive, although I probably don't really need the backup, although restoring it is 40 to 50 dollars, not bad.

But even if I did restore the backup into my external, how do I move it to the much smaller 128GB? I guess I just need to move some essential apps and documents and leave everything else in the external as a backup.

 

And also, how do I install the Lion on the SSD. I have thus far used Snow Leopard, but wondering if I should install the Lion because I heard that it's not as good as the SL, in that it doesn't have the Spaces feature.

 

I opened up my MBP 15inch. 2010. But I'm having trouble getting the HDD out. It's attached to a strip of black belt connecting to the Motherboard. How do I do this? Nevermind I got it. I'm watching this: http://www.everymac.com/systems/app...7-mid-2009-how-to-upgrade-hard-drive-ssd.html

 

I replaced the HDD with the m4 SSD but it doesn't seem to fit snuggly. It makes floppy sounds and moves side to side and especially a falling sound when I flip the MBP over. Is this something I did wrong?

Is this where I should just bear with the flopping sound or something should be fixed?

 

I'm guessing you didn't transfer the 4 screws/posts from the old HDD to the new one. They are necessary to hold the drive in its mounting brackets.

If you want to install Lion, you'll first have to install Snow Leopard, download Lion from the app store, and put it on a bootable DVD or USB stick. But I would stick with Snow Leopard for now and re-evaluate once Mountain Lion is out.

 

@dmk2

Thanks. I found 3 out of the 4 screws. Would that work?

 

3/4 is better than none. It might still move around a bit, so I would try to find the fourth or see if an Apple store rep will give you a spare.

 

I lost the installation CD for Snow Leopard, so I'm looking to torrent one. But they are all around 6~7 GB so it doesn't fit on a 4.7 GB CD that I have at home. Should I buy a pack of bigger CD? I heard that you can use a USB drive, but it's harder. Can you reuse the USB drive after it has been used to carry ISO of Snow Leopard? If it's possible to use the USB drive, then isn't it also possible to use external HDD?

How do I mount the ISO onto the USB Drive from a Windows 7 machine so that I can use it to revive the MBP?

 

I found a Mac OSX Installation disk 1 from 2008 lying around my house. It said press C to install while booting. So I did that and it was just blank white for a few minutes without anything happening, so I force shut down. Then I tried pressing option, and an icon of the installation disk 1 appeared which I pressed, upon which the screen just froze. So I force shut again, and this time I didn't press anything and a folder with question mark showed up. I can't get the CD out.

 

if its a disc from before the computer was even made, it most likely will not work simply because it doesn't have the proper drivers to even run a newer model.