Inside Macbook Pro 17inch! Upgrading HDD howto!

[SirAlec]

Be warned.
You may end up making your Macbook an ideal candidate for our Classified Section as a parts donor.

This is a DIY, not that I recommend it to faint hearted.

Synopsis
After 1 and half hour of wonderful sunday morning driving a Scheid Road Roller I was back home changing the oil on the oldie 800 before lunch.
Exploits of which is documented here:
http://www.team-bhp.com/forum/test-d...ad-roller.html

After lunch nothing interesting was happening on TV and movie 'About Schmidt' that was downloaded the previous night was coming out to be hopeless. Hence decided to upgrade the 160 gb to 500gb which was lying around as surplus.

The Exciting Part
Opening it is pretty easy and straight forward. I found out to be much easier than opening up HPs or Acer. Some screws are very tiny and to be kept carefully in a tray. As finding such screws as replacement will be an ordeal. Also please note the ribbon cables and connectors has to be handled very carefully. Not that they are expensive but the problems being getting them from apple may take weeks or may be months. Usually they are reluctant to sell parts outside, as they recommend opening up apple by their so called trained authorized engineer! Bah!

Use of proper screwdriver and selecting the right bits is a must.

Images

The Bakra




First the battery comes off




Then the Ram Cover and subsequently RAM modules.


Then the keyboard connectors and its related screws. Be very careful with this. Apple has managed to route keyboard, track-pad and most important
power button and its led on a single tiny 14 pin cable. You may end up with a Macbook with no power button to start with.


Keep the keyboard, battery and connectors safely.




And not to forget the screws.


Old and new 2.5 inch sata.


Installed finally after 10 minutes.




Installed the newly acquired Snow Leopard. Walla!

PS: Stunts performed in this Article are by a Petrolhead Idiot who is a wanabe geek. Please do not try to imitate this at home
Thanks

[cooldude1988765]

Damn thats a lot of work to replace a hard drive. So much easier on sony, lenovo and hp. Just take out 2 screws on the outside unscrew the caddy put it on the new one and you are good to go.

[ashthedivx]

These sort of complication are done intentionally by manufacturers so as more and more people should get the work done by manufacturer only. i.e. NO DIYs

Nice effort SirAlec !!

[it_inspector]

Macbooks (all types) and Libretto U100 are my pet hate for replacing hdd`s. Atleast with Macbooks you can throw in just any hdd, with U100 even if you find the right HDD it might be incompatible just because of the firmware revision.

But god almight these all are awesome machines.

[Gurpartap Singh]

Originally Posted by cooldude1988765

Damn thats a lot of work to replace a hard drive. So much easier on sony, lenovo and hp. Just take out 2 screws on the outside unscrew the caddy put it on the new one and you are good to go.

It's just one screw in new MacBooks and MacBook Pros after you lift the battery cover.

[SirAlec]

Originally Posted by Gurpartap Singh

It's just one screw in new MacBooks and MacBook Pros after you lift the battery cover.

^^^^
Oh! is that so. I must be a real idiot to uselessly remove those 22 screws.

[Gurpartap Singh]

Originally Posted by SirAlec

^^^^
Oh! is that so. I must be a real idiot to uselessly remove those 22 screws.

I don't know. I guess you only cared to just quickly reply. You missed the word "new". The Unibody ones.

I have both MacBook Pro early 2008 and MacBook Unibody. And I know my machines.

Here's the video for that "single" screw in "new" MacBook/Pros:

YouTube - "Unibody" MacBook Pro 15" Hard Drive Installation

Of course it's not valid for the models before the unibody ones, where you have to unscrew several screws to get to the drive. That's why I haven't upgraded anything on my mbp yet.

Also, my single screw argument was just a clarification for cooldude1988765, because he had thought that macbook (or pros)' part replacement was a tough job.

EDIT:

Oh and in the latest gen (2009) MacBooks, it's reversed to 6 screws as in:

YouTube - Upgrading the Hard Drive in a 13" MacBook Pro (Mid-2009)

And in a guess, I'll say there'll be more screws in 15'' or 17''. But nevertheless, it's just a few screws on the back to reach the hdd.

[SirAlec]

^^^

Its just a saying. Its a five screw job.

[Maibaa]

Even I replaced the HDD on my 15 inch Macbook pro with a 320GB 7200 RPM WD hard disk and upgraded to 4GB RAM with Snow Leopard :-) My system is as good as new!