MacBook Hard Drive Upgrade

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Drunken_King

Weaksauce
Joined
Jan 12, 2007
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Hello everyone. Like 2 days ago I bought a MacBook that has 2.1Ghz C2D CPU, 1GB RAM, and 120GB 5400RPM Hard Drive. Now I want to upgrade the memory, but first I am going to upgrade the hard drive. I was wondering what hard drives would be compatible with my macbook. For the hard drive I would prefer 7200RPM models rather than a 5400RPM
 
I believe any SATA, 2.5", 9.5 mm hard-drive will work. 7200 rpm will use more power though.
 
The new hdd shouldn't drain too much more power, maybe a few minutes or less, give or take.
 
Thank you for your help. Also which hard drives are better on laptops, Seagate, Fujitsu or WD.
 
Drunken_King said:
Thank you for your help. Also which hard drives are better on laptops, Seagate, Fujitsu or WD.
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I upgraded my Macbook Pro using a WD 250GB SATA II 5400 RPM drive. I'd suggest Fujitsu, Hitachi or WD. Do you really need 7200 RPM or just want it? I run CS3, multiple apps using spaces just fine. You are going to pay quite a bit more just for a little extra speed. I'd settle for the 5400 if I were you, I have not had any issues. Check dealnews.com they had a 250 GB 5400 RPM 2.5" drive for $54 shipped the other day ;)
 
Oh ok. Thank you. I will look into that. Will I see more improvement with a hard drive upgrade to 7200RPM or upgrading my memory from 1GB to 2GB or even 4GB?
 
Get the ram first. 1GB is ok but more is a lot better. Youll notice the upgrade a lot more than 5400 to 7200 hard drive upgrade.
 
Go find a good cheap (~$50) 4GB kit. I bought the OCZ kit from newegg and works perfectly with my MacBook.
 
Ok how much mem do you think is enough to run OS X Leopard smoothly? Should I go straight to 4GB?
 
Drunken_King said:
Ok how much mem do you think is enough to run OS X Leopard smoothly? Should I go straight to 4GB?
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I have 4 GB running on my MBP using Leopard. Having about 10 apps open and services running using spaces, I rarely hit over 2 GB. But get it definitely you never know when you are going to get it. Check your running processes through terminal using
ps aux

as root you can kill processes with the PID using:

kill -9 PID#

also check to see if any lingering scheduled tasks are running without your knowledge in the log section

tail -f /var/log/system.log

you can view the processes running and where from which could help determine if an app or process is running when it shouldnt be.
 
Go with the 4GB since it's not that much of a price jump but future-proofs you quite effectively. I am running 3GB in mine since it uses a chipset unable to recognize all 4GB.
 
Also add to the fact of you want to run Parallels, you can assign up to 2GB of that to the Windows VM.
 
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