I’ve recently purchased a second hand unibody aluminium MacBook. Now the specificaion in terms of speed is very similar to my previous Black MacBook. Main differences is .2ghz speed increase and almost double memory speed increase. Other than that all the other differences are cosmetic and usability and its incredible how much better (even following a particularly good Black MacBook) this new one is. The LED screen colours are just incredible. I get a much brighter screen without loosing additional battery life. The back-light keyboard is surprisingly helpful in dark situations (after living without it for so long you forget that it’s even a feature that could be useful.) And let’s not forget the aluminium enclosure and multi-trackpad. It just makes using expose a million times easier, the body is stronger, lighter and so much more robust.

Even minimal things such as the displayPort. It just holds in an external display connection much better than the previously poor miniDVI connection which would come loose at frequent intervals. Oh and you don’t get that annoying sound from the superdrive when waking the Mac up from sleep. Silent wake. Lovely.

Best thing is that they go for anywhere between £600 and £700 on eBay which is over £250 cheaper than the current 13” MacBook Pro on the Apple website. So, if your thinking of upgrading your current polycarbonate MacBook for a faster machine, don’t go for another one, go for a second hand Alu MacBook from eBay or a MacBook Pro from Apple.

My MacBook is now officially the best that it can be. I have upgraded it’s pathetic 160gb HD to a mean 500GB drive. Okay its only a 5400rpm but i decided to go for storage over spin speed. I always wondered if buying a new internal drive was greedy or not. Should i just delete what i already or move it to a external. Do i really need all this data with me at all times? I decided my answer was no but it would be nice if it was!

So i bit the bullet and bought it. I must say. It was a bloody fantastic idea. I now have 250gb of free space with all my music, images, applications and iPod videos (3 seasons of House and 10 seasons of Friends) Oh and i also put Windows XP on via bootcamp for that ‘Just in case’ moment.

It couldn’t have been easier. So in pure geekyness fashion i will show you how to install a brand new hard drive into your polycarbonate MacBook.

The first thing that you want to do is backup all your data. I use TimeMachine so i had that backup for a start however i also chose to download SuperDuper! It’s free to download and basically all it does is make a disk image of your internal drive.

[Step 0]

(Yes my MacBook’s name is Peyton). Once you have saved the disk image to an external drive check that its there. If the prefix is ‘.sparebundle’ or something like that then rename it to a ‘.dmg’ file.

[Step 1]

Okay, so now for the fun part. Unplug everything from your MacBook and remove the battery. Oh and make sure you have the drive and screwdrivers to hand!

[Step 2]

Touch a metal object so that all the static electricity from your body has been transferred away from you to avoid damage to your system. On the inside of the battery compartment, unscrew the metal covering. Remember the screws are attached to the covering. There are only 3 screws to loosen. Once loosened, carefully remove the covering.

[Step 3]

(Look at image Step 3) On the right hand side of the picture are the 2 ram compartments and directly in front of you is the hard drive slot.

[Step 4]

All you have to do is pull the white tag that you can see. It will require a little force. It can be scary at first as the main worry is that the white tag will rip off but don’t worry about that. The tag is very secure to the drive so give it a gentle, yet forceful pull and the drive will come out nicely.

[Step 5]

This next bit is where i had trouble. The drive is attached to a caddy. This helps with the insertion and removal of the drive in the Macbook. The screws are very unusual as you can see in the picture. Make sure you have an assortment of screwdrivers to unscrew the caddy. If your like me and only own 1 small screwdriver (which was used right at the beginning) then use a pair of scissors. I made things very difficult for myself. If i ever wanted to upgrade again then it would be even more tricky for the main reason that i have ruined the grooves where the screwdriver is supposed to go. But what can you do ey. I made the best of what i had with me!

[Step 6]

Once the caddy has been removed from your drive, then attach it to the new drive! Make sure you put it on the right way! The metal covering goes underneath the complicated looking electronic part of the drive!

[Step 7]

Push the drive back into the MacBook making sure again that you put it in the right way.

[Step 8]

Re attach the metal covering and screw it back on securely. Return the battery and the main part is done! Congrats!

All that is left to do is to restore your system to the new drive which could not be easier. Re-plug the power cable and your external drive. Insert your Leopard installation CD and switch your MacBook on whilst holding the ‘C’ key. You may get a pop up that says you cannot install Leopard on this drive as its not formatted correctly. That can be sorted easily. Simply click on utilities at the top and then ‘Disk Utility’. Select your new internal drive from the left and then click on the erase tab. Erase the drive using Mac OS Extended (Journaled) and name your drive Macintosh HD.

Now your drive is ready for your disk image.

[Step 9]

Click on Restore at the top and under ‘source’ find your disk image stored on the external drive and under Destination drag your newly formatted partition to that area. Then click restore which is located in the bottom right.

Restoring does take a while and the estimated time remaining sucks. Mine jumped between 6 and 17 hours for the quarter of the progress bar. In total i would think the process took about 6 hours but i cant say for sure as i left the house for much longer than that.

And thats it! Now start up your Mac like you would any other day. It’s going to be identical to your previous drive. Enjoy the benefits of your new drive whether it be storage capacity, speed or just better quality.