Have you upgraded your Macbook HDD? What brand? Are you pleased?

[reubs]

I'm about to pull the trigger on an HDD upgrade, and I'm actually a bit hesitant about making the wrong decision. I can't find a SATA drive at any of the stores around where we live, so the purchase will be made online.

Just by past experience I'm leaning towards Seagate, but I've noticed that the WD 2.5" SATA drive at 160 GB has been on sale at around $80. (http://www.circuitcity.com/ssm/West...76764/catOid/-12973/rpem/ccd/productDetail.do)

Another one I've seen is a 2.5" Seagate "Hybrid", but it claims it only works with Vista. Might be a little too new to try out.

Anyway, I'm running an original, 1.83 GHz Macbook w/ 2 gigs of RAM, and I'll be upgrading to Leopard in a few weeks to run bootcamp for work. So, it's time for a new HDD, and I don't want to botch this decision.

Any advice or warnings would be greatly appreciated.

BTW, I'm thinking 120 GB-160 GB will be ample. No less than 120 GB, though.

 

[GfulDedFan]

That's a good price on that WD......

When you get it, here's some great instructions for the operation: How to Upgrade Your MacBook's Hard Drive. You can use the free/trial version of SuperDuper! instead of buying the full version.

Good luck...it really is sort of easy. -GDF

 

[krye]

OWC. (macsales.com) I got a 160G drive for about $100. It works awesome and no problems.

Here's a post on how easy it was to install drive and use the free Carbon Copy Cloner to duplicate my drive:

http://web.mac.com/ryemac3/RyeMAC3/Welcome/Entries/2007/11/1_MacBook_Updates.html

 

[myuserid08]

Upgrading is very simple, but be warned some drives especially the seagates seem to park their heads every 20-30 seconds, this can be very annoying.
It seems to happen more with Leopard, so it may be ok with tiger.

The WD hard drive you mentioned has shockguard which parks the heads, so if you like a silent drive I wouldn't recommend it.

 

[reubs]

Thanks for the replies. I'm not worried about the installation. I'm more concerned with the actual drive that I pick up. I've already upgraded RAM on the MB, so I'm familiar with all of that.

I would prefer something on the quieter side with lower battery consumption. Whether I can get a 5400 RPM with a 160 GB capacity I don't know.

I'll check out some of the links, too.

 

[logana]

I have swapped out 4 MacBook Seagate drives with 120GB WD's - no issues at all - all the drives are much less noisy than the original and likely to last longer than the Seagate's too.