Since a while I have a very early MacBook Pro. Overall I got used to it, love it as much as I did the PowerBook. Funny how you get used to everything. I am sure it still gets how etc etc. Back then I got it with the biggest drive that was possible: 120GB. Of course that one has been above 95% full for the last year or so. Finally I got around to put a 250GB drive in the machine and, surprisingly, it even worked. I did probably not to these things in the smartest way, but in the end it worked:
I got a 250 GB drive from Amazon that let’s you end up with 232 GB formatted capacity in real bytes. The Western Digital WD2500BEVS Scorpio 250 GB 2.5-inch SATA Hard Drive is 129$ right now.
I got a Macally B-S250U USB 2.0 2.5-Inch SATA Hard Drive Enclosure for 25$. Putting the drive into the enclosure was easier than I thought. Funny enough the enclosure needs a 2 USB connections to work. One for data the other one for power. Even more strange is that with just one cable the LED will light up and the drive will click repeatedly. I was convinced that the drive was DOA at that point.
So then I used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the contents of my internal drive to the newer bigger one. It took more than a minute to copy all the Adobe Acrobat crap. I really need to delete that. Adobe Acrobat is ‘near-malware’. Anyway. I let the copy finish over night.
There are lots of screws to get into the MacBook Pro. The internet seems to agree ont he fact that the MacBook Pro is much easier to get into than the PowerBook. I found the instructions at iFixit to be very helpful. The Torx T6 screw driver you need for 2 screws in the case and 4 on the drive I found at Sears. 2.49. They sell a set of 3 little screwdrivers for 10 dollars. Or you pay 7 buying them individually.
Gettting the upper part keyboard part off was a bit tricky. A little bit of careful jiggling around did the trick.
I also went ahead and disconnected the power light. It sit’s on top of the harddrive. I don’t need to see a room illuminated by my sleeping laptop while I am trying to sleep as well.
Still amazed that it did work.