© Aspen Mountain Photography & Lynn Marchant
After using PC’s for years, I purchased my first Mac in February 2008. The Mac is a 15″ MacBook Pro. I have enjoyed using a Mac and plan on staying with Macs. After time, my Mac’s hard drive was getting full. It still worked great, just needed more space, even after storing the large Raw photography files on external hard drives.
After some research, I found Apple does not do upgrades, MacDocs (and other companies do upgrades), parts for Macs are available online and locally, and if you have a warranty on your Mac, doing any upgrades will void the warranty.
The original hard drive was a 200 GB 5400 drive. The one I wanted to replace it with was a 500 GB 7200 hard drive. My cost of the hard drive was $69.00. Cost of having someone else do the installation and transfer of information was close to $300.00. I have upgraded many PC’s, so I decided to do the upgrade myself.
Information that was helpful on the web:
Link to a video showing how to take apart the lap top and install the new drive: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=K9r1UAVq9AU&NR=1
Restoring data with Time Machine: http://gizmodo.com/333319/the-secret-of-the-time-machine+assisted-hard-drive-swap
Apple has information on restoring a drive with a back up from a Time Capsule with Time Machine: http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1177
The tools needed, as mentioned on the video are: Torx T6, 00 Phillips screw driver, and a plastic or nylon pry tool. I bought my tools at Sears (I have always liked Craftsman tools). The “pry tool” I used was out of my kids plastic doctor set.
The upgrade went well. I now have a bigger, faster hard drive in my lap top. The only glitch in restoring the data was with my Aperture libraries. The previews came out blurry. In order to restore them to their sharp originals, I had to click on each photo individually to reconnect the file with the external hard drive. I have thousands of photos. This was going to take awhile.
I found there is an Aperture Library First Aid command to help fix files in Aperture. In order to open the Aperture Library First Aid help, hold down the command and option keys while opening Aperture. When Aperture opens you will see a dialog box giving three choices: Repair Permissions; Repair Database; and Rebuild Database. I used the “Repair Database” and it connected the external drive with my file previews on my lap top. They were all clear and sharp again!
The new drive is a Western Digital Scorpio 500 GB 7200 (Black). It had good reviews online. It has worked great the last three weeks it has been installed. Hope it makes it at least the three years the original lasted.
Next: Upgrade RAM.
Note: The lily pad and flower are from my back yard pond.
