Time for a New Drive
My Core 2 Duo MacBook Pro has had several scary incidents of late. There's been no concrete verdict on the issue, but each time I describe the symptoms to smart friends, they all say it sounds like a bad hard drive. After the latest little scare that yielded no concrete hints but had the same smell to it, I took a hint and picked up a 320GB replacement drive and cracked open my MacBook Pro.
Why buy a new drive rather than going in for AppleCare? Well, since the problem is sporadic, it would be hard to tickle it for the Genius at the bar. I’m sure it’d be a case of taking the car to the mechanic and the mechanic shrugs. Second, the current drive is a 160GB and I picked up a 320GB for just over $100. The extra capacity will be well worth it.
Cracking open a laptop is always fun, and the Core 2 Duo version of the MacBook Pro is no different. It’s actually a bit nicer to crack open and dig around in than the first generation MacBook Pro.
The only thing that was a bit wonky about changing the drive out was the IR sensor cable that was glued to the top of the OEM drive. I had to carefully leverage that bit off before slipping the old drive out and the new drive in.
Other than that little detail, the replacement process was cake—at least for someone that’s comfortable dealing with the innards of a computer. Once everything was back together, it was time for re-installation and copying my data over. For that, a nifty Thermaltake BlacX SATA to USB dock 
Normally in this situation, I’d just duplicate the old hard drive back to the new one. However, since the problems I was having felt like disk issues, I reinstalled the system fresh—including pulling down well over half a gig of software updates—and just copied my personal data back into place.
15 Comments
Um, you realize you've just nuked your AppleCare contract, right? Changing hard drives is specifically against the Ts&Cs.
Not that I'm saying you shouldn't, but I hope you were aware of that before you made the decision to do it.
But good luck with it. Short of adding additional RAM, a new HDD and fresh OS install can make an old friend seem new again.
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I always find that doing that "copy personal info over" routine results in some funky stuff. it never fails, something is always amiss with the procedure. Last time for me it was the loss of a program that I used sporadically, that had made it through 3 different machine upgrades but would no longer open as it felt it was "unregistered" (it was OEM on a Mac many years back, so what gives?)
Ah, how I miss Omni Outliner.... :-D
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It certainly isn't for those with weak stomachs ;). But I have to admit I enjoyed opening my PowerBook and changing the HD and DVD. Thanks for sharing about that HD device. That is great and a great buy.
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Actually, I have read the AppleCare T&Cs. IANAL, so I'm not going to elaborate much, but I am comfortable with my actions within the limitations stated.
In my experience, what AppleCare can and will do is immediately blame replacement parts for any problem reported. This is why the old hard drive will live in the cabinet ready for reinstallation if needed. I keep old RAM around as well for this reason as replacement RAM is quickly blamed for problems as well.
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Howdy, James...
While you're at it, you might want to yank out the SuperDrive and drop in another hard drive there. Got this idea from Vincent Laforet's blog about his prep to shoot the Olympics:
http://vincentlaforet.wordpress.com/2008/08/07/preparing-for-the-biggest-organized-event-of-them-all-the-olympics/
Double the drive space in your machine, or use one as a redundant internal backup.
Chuck
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Indeed, I've seriously considered doing the extra drive bay expansion after seeing an article about it on MacWorld and Vincent's descriptions. Not enough time to do it now thanks to an upcoming trip, but maybe soon. It'd be really nice to have another 320GB at my disposal.
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Swapping your drive does not nuke your Apple Care warranty. They just won't cover any damage you might inflict. I had to replace failing hard disks twice, which I did manually, and then my screen failed so I sent the thing in and Apple Care didn't give me any trouble about the fact that my machine started out with an 80 GB drive but now had a 160 GB drive. I didn't damage anything by doing the swaps myself, so they were happy to fix the screen under warranty. Just be upfront with them and you're good.
At any rate, yes — laptop hard drives, being total garbage thanks to the pressures of competition driving down prices (and hence quality), can be expected to fail early and possibly repeatedly over the life of the hardware.
Where laptops are concerned, when there's a problem, it's nearly always the hard disk at fault.
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James, have you noticed a difference in noise levels between the new and old drives? I've thought about replacing the 100 GB hard drive (7200 RPM) in my MacBook Pro, but I've read a couple testimonies saying the replacement drives are noisier. I'm guessing it depends on the drive.
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just wondering which 320GB drive setttled on?
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James,
I came across this post and another one you wrote concerning backups for digital photography. http://blogs.oreilly.com/lightroom/2008/08/a-backup-disk-solution.html
I am going to pick up the external SATA docking station, as I believe that will be a great addition to the backup solution that I have going. I just had another drive go out and although I was backed up, it is always a wakeup call to the fragility of the hardware and the importance of the data. In any case, I wondered if there were any environmental concerns with the safe deposit box method you alluded to. I wasn't sure if there were any temperature, humidity or electro-magnetic concerns you had to ask about when you found a facility for storage. I have been considering this for a while since we have multiple copies, but not at multiple locations. My wife's photography has really started taking off in the last few years and the volume of data with it such that it is not time or media effective to backup to even dual layer DVD and even now, blu-ray does not provide the volume I really need.
So, all that for a few questions.
Any issues to be concerned with or ask when getting a safe deposit box?
How may disk copies do you keep in circulation?
What do you transport and transfer the disks in from place to place or for location storage.
thanks in advance for your time on these questions, I appreciate your input.
thanks,
tom
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It does indeed depend on the drive. I replaced the stock Seagate with a Western Digital and it's a bit more noticeable. I would have gotten another Seagate (that's my usual brand), but they were out of stock at the store.
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Just to follow up on the point about AppleCare. This specific laptop had it's motherboard die. AppleCare swapped out the motherboard without a fuss.
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Bob, I've had problems with bundled software going unregistered before as well. I'd already bought a license for OmniOutliner before that tho, for some other reason, so navigated successfully around it. I wonder, however, if Omni would be kind if you pinged them?
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Tom,
There certainly _could_ be issues with the safe deposit box. For example, it's hard to know if somebody is storing a huge magnet in an adjoining box. However, that's probably unlikely so I've not spent too much time worrying about it. After all, most of what people would store are documents, diamonds, gold coins, and the like. As to the rest of the environmental factors, safe deposit boxes tend to be cool environments, so they should be fine on that front—as fine as any environment that the disks are specified to work in.
There _is_ a factor with letting hard drives sit idle for too long. I've run into a few reports of people noting that they can't spin up some drives that haven't been run in a few years. I'm currently deal this issue (as well as the possible damage of any environmental issues) with a rotation of drives in and out. One backup drive at home, another backup drive in the safe deposit box that gets swapped out. The theory is that this tells me immediately when a backup drive fails. I've been considering going to a three backup drive solution, but haven't implemented it yet. Maybe soon.
As far as transport, I just toss them into an anti static bag and then walk them over in my backpack. Nothing fancy.
Hope that helps!
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James,
excellent, thanks for the info. I just ordered the disk docking port from tigerdirect along with some 1.5TB drives. I'll probably sleep easier having an offsite copy of the data. I never imagined this would turn into a data management effort. My wife just got a D700 as well and we absolutely love it and so I have been enjoying some of your photography posts. hope to write again soon.
thanks again.
tom
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