Warranty and Hard Drive Self Upgrade

I am running a Hitachi 7K100 7200 rpm 100gb drive in my MacBook. The heat is no more noticible then with the stock 60gb drive. As for "fitting" in the computer, it is a perfect fit.

hth... Rich

http://manuals.info.apple.com/en/MacBook13inch_HardDriveDIY.pdf


Apple has a USER manual for upgrading the hard drive, I would assume that like RAM, it does NOT void the computers coverage but damage done by the item that was user-replaced will void it.

what are the physical specifcations?

how do i know if I'm getting the right kind of drive?

According the drive specs listed here - the Maxtor drive is a Serial ATA-150. Are all drives the same? Do I need to look for a certain form factor??? The last time I bought a hard drive I was looking for ide...

physical spec is 2.5" sata interface, not the 3.5" sata that is bigger and for desktop usage.

Just window shopping on a couple apple authorized re-seller, they mostly give clearer information about what parts compatible for what products.

Today (okay it is past midnight so yesterday - Tues May 30) I spoke with a person at the Apple store and they said yes you can do it yourself no problem.

We then got onto a discussion of should Apple the upgrade inside the Apple store. I wonder if Apple has this in mind.

SATA

Is there a website anyone could recommend with good technical information on SATA specifications? Is the physical characterisitic of the drive the only important factor when buying an SATA drive for a Macbook? Will the drive work as long as it fits? Is there a capacity limitation, or a certain specification that I have to watch for???

Can the SATA drives removed from these Macbooks be put into external drive enclosures and used as USB or Firewire drives?

Can the SATA drives removed from these Macbooks be put into external drive enclosures and used as USB or Firewire drives?

Yes, although you will need an enclosure that is SATA compatible. Most are not… yet.

yippee!

I just bought my Macbook with 2GHZ duocores and 2GB Ram...glad I didn't upgrade hard drive online. I just placed my order for the Hitachi 7200 rpm 100GB SATA drive.

Once the drive is in the fun begins...

Hello I'd like to tag a question onto the end of this thread please. I have a 12" iBook - specs from info =
Machine Name: iBook G4
Machine Model: PowerBook6,5
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (1.1)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.2 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 512 KB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.8.7f1

I would like to upgrade my hard drive either to
80GB Hitachi Hard Drive
2.5" 5400RPM 8MB Cache 9.5M

or

100GB Samsung
2.5 5400 Rpm 8MB Notebook Drive
3year Warranty

My questions are: are they compatible, will it be easy enough to do, and where do I find good instructions?!

Thanks you!
Debbie

Hi Debbie, welcome to our discussions. While your question would have been better asked in the iBook forums I will answer as best I can.

The drive you mention will be compatible with an iBook as long as they are Ultra ATA drives and not the SATA version that the MacBook/MacBook Pro models require. The specifications that you give match although to be certain you would need to provide more information.

Just to add to Ned's comments, Debbie, replacing the HD in an iBook, though possible, is a lot more difficult than replacing one in a MacBook. You can get some idea of just how much more difficult by taking a look at the guide at http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/83.0.0.html

The iBook needs extensive disassembly for HD replacement. Many people find it easier to simply use an additional portable external drive in a firewire case instead.

Cheers

Rod

whats the deal on the hard drive capacity straight out of the box. its supposed to be 80gb. its 74, that I can deal with, since the actual amount usually does vary anyway, but when it had 59gb available. does the OS take up 15 gig? or if I had formatted it and intalled OSX myself would I have more space?

I'd add that you should save any pdf instructions you found from apple at the time and print to pdf any webpages regarding this swap. Make sure you get the name of anyone you talk to on the phone. The issue is this:

User Replaceable DOES NOT mean User Upgradeable. The instructions state that you are installing a replacement drive. It doesn't talk about the caddy right? If it does then it's fine, but be careful about the definitions you see.

The iMac G5 User Installable parts instruction guide for hard drive replacement stated that removing any screws other than the (IIRC) gold ones would invalidate your warranty, or something to that effect. Meaning that the drive caddy wasn't supposed to be removed from the drive so any replacement would be an Apple vended drive. This seems close to the same situation.

A few calls to Apple representatives cleared that up, but just be aware that replace, upgrade, and install do not mean the same thing.

Apple is correct in what portions of the repair they invalidate. You may want to look at this info about warranties before proceeding (US)

http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/conline/pubs/buspubs/warranty.htm

If your optical drive scratches disks it can't really be blamed on your hard drive. That kind of thing is exactly why the Magnuson Moss Warranty Act was passed.

Good Luck,
-j

Hi shadow soldier. You'll find all "80 Gig" drives , whether fitted to Apples, IBMs or the clone from the backyard dealer down the road, or even straight out of the Western digital , Seagate, Maxtor or whatever store room, actually have about 74 Gigs of real space.

The problem occurs because of the way disk manufacturers calculate drive size.

Your computer OS measures "Gigs" on the basis of 1024 bytes = 1 kilobyte, 1024 kilobytes = 1 megabyte, 1024 megabytes = 1 gigabyte.

HD manufacturers , however, use a straight 1000 bytes = 1 kilobyte etc (following the normal coventions used in the metric system rather than the computer industry's general, but non metric, system).

In essence, an 80 Gig drive , using the HD manufacturers approach, will have 80,000,000,000 bytes capacity, which converts to around 74 Gig if you divide 80,000,0000 by ( 1024x1024x1024) .

The rest of your missing space is mostly taken up with things like GarageBand and iDVD templates and "loops" etc. Some more goes into the "trial" versions of iWork and MS Office. THen come the other applications and finally the OS itself (including langauge localisations for many places that you may not even have heard of!).

By getting rid of things you don't want or need you can free up quite a few gigs of space.

Cheers

Rod