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upgrading a late 2008 unibody macbook pro. 750 HD and 8gb ram? Help.

I have a late 2008 unibody macbook pro (2.4, 2gb and 250hd). I'm looking to upgrade. I'm looking at the Hitachi Travelstar 750gb/7200 HD and am reading that 8gb of RAM would work even though the limit suggest 4gb. i'd love any advice or thoughts!

MacBook Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), late 2008. 2.4, 2gb and 250gb HD.

Posted on Jun 27, 2011 7:23 PM

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Posted on Jun 27, 2011 8:15 PM

The 15" 2008 Late can handle 8GB of RAM (Actual) 4GB (Apple)


The 17" 2008 Late can handle 6GB of RAM (Actual) 4GB (Apple)



Switching internal boot drive



Use a external Firewire Disk Utility HFS+ Journaled formatted drive (equal or larger than your new drive) and Carbon Copy Clone your present boot drive to the external.Repair permissions on both. Hold option and boot from the clone.


http://www.bombich.com/


Switch your hard drives, option boot from the clone and follow thesteps above again to reverse clone onto the new drive.


Piece of fringing cake, and your drive gets optimized in theprocess.


Use the free OnyX to clean your system, optimize and maintenance,run all the cleaning and maintenance and reboot.


http://www.titanium.free.fr/



iFixit has instructions, OtherWorld computing has internal drives and tools.


Crucial.com has your exact RAM specs.


Have at it. 😀 Use the external drive as a backup clone.



(no comp for site/product mention)

15 replies
Question marked as Best reply

Jun 27, 2011 8:15 PM in response to brettryantalley

The 15" 2008 Late can handle 8GB of RAM (Actual) 4GB (Apple)


The 17" 2008 Late can handle 6GB of RAM (Actual) 4GB (Apple)



Switching internal boot drive



Use a external Firewire Disk Utility HFS+ Journaled formatted drive (equal or larger than your new drive) and Carbon Copy Clone your present boot drive to the external.Repair permissions on both. Hold option and boot from the clone.


http://www.bombich.com/


Switch your hard drives, option boot from the clone and follow thesteps above again to reverse clone onto the new drive.


Piece of fringing cake, and your drive gets optimized in theprocess.


Use the free OnyX to clean your system, optimize and maintenance,run all the cleaning and maintenance and reboot.


http://www.titanium.free.fr/



iFixit has instructions, OtherWorld computing has internal drives and tools.


Crucial.com has your exact RAM specs.


Have at it. 😀 Use the external drive as a backup clone.



(no comp for site/product mention)

Jun 27, 2011 9:45 PM in response to brettryantalley

brettryantalley wrote:


also, i have a 3.5" usb external HD. i was thinking i could just pop that HD out and plug the 2.5" in so that i could clone my existing HD. am i wrong?


Is it a drive enclosure? If so and the connections work then try it.


The thing is you don't want to take any chances with your clone, actually having a couple of clones as a backup is best, just in case the first clone gets hosed along with your computer.

Dec 26, 2012 11:28 PM in response to mikejentes

Boy, you reached back in time to find this thread!


Do you have a late 2008 15" MBP? If so, then you can upgrade to 8GB of 204-pin PC3-8500 (1066 MHz) DDR3 SO-DIMM RAM.


As ds store suggested, go to the Crucial website and use the System Scanner tab to download a small app that will give you the upgrade options for your model.


Good luck,


Clinton

Dec 27, 2012 1:39 AM in response to brettryantalley

I have that same model. It takes 8GB of ram and runs great, no hiccups at all. I had taken the original 250 5400 and put in a 500 7200 with no problem. Just make sure you have the right screw driver when you do the job, otherwise you can strip the screws. Learned that the hard way. Of course your model should have an express slot on it which actually is a great feature allowing to use a card and run in eSata. Mine still works great, the 8GB of ram makes a big difference.

upgrading a late 2008 unibody macbook pro. 750 HD and 8gb ram? Help.

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