200 gigs of 7200 RPM goodness

When I bought my MacBook Pro, I didn't really think much about upgrading the hard drive. If anything, I assumed that it would be similar to upgrading the drive in my old Dell 9300, which was a pretty straightforward procedure.

Apparently it is pretty straightforward on the Macbook, but when you pay the premium for the "Pro", one unwelcome "bonus" you get is that it is really a pain in the butt to upgrade the drive. In fact, while Apple actually has a PDF document with instructions on upgrading the drive in a Macbook, the drive is not considered "user upgradable" on the MacBook Pro. There are a bunch of screws and delicate ribbon cables you have to deal with. Even for someone who has done their share of computer upgrades over the year (not to mention building a few computers from the ground up) the process can be a little intimidating at first glance.

After a long period of indecision, carefully shuffling files back and forth to external drives, and reviewing various install guides on the net, I finally decided to go for it. I settled on a 200G Hitachi drive. There was a 250G drive available, and I thought maybe I should get the largest drive I could (because I don't really want to do this again!), but I decided I would go with the 200G which would also allow me to move up from a 5400rpm drive to a 7200rpm drive. I ended up using this step-by-step guide to find my way along.

Aside from some nervous moments when one of the teeny, tiny screws from the side of the machine managed to jump off my desk and hide, the upgrade went pretty smoothly. I have a lot more free space. And man, I was not prepared for how much faster the system runs with the faster drive. It makes a huge difference, at least subjectively. I confess that I haven't actually run any benchmarks, but I'm convinced its quite a bit faster, especially at boot time!

Happy, happy, joy, joy!
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