Space

Last week, one of the nephews sent me a text message: "Just upgraded my MacBook to a 350 GB hard disk."

Now that got my attention. I love my MacBook, but the default 160 GB hard drive has always cramped my style a bit. Long ago, as space became a premium, I had to make some tough choices with regard to my massive media collection. Ultimately, I off-loaded several thousand digital photos and more than half my music collection to an external hard drive. 

Since then, I've been acquiring new photos, new music files, and new digital videos at an alarming pace ... and, despite my best efforts to shed all but the most recent and essential files, I found myself with less than 15 GB free.

So, following my nephew's advice, I started shopping for upgrades ... and was surprised to learn I could pick up a Western Digital Blue Scorpio 500 GB SATA drive for just over a hundred bucks from Amazon.com. While shopping, I also noticed how the prices of external drives have fallen ... and couldn't resist picking up a 1 TB Western Digital MyBook, to boot.

While waiting for the delivery truck, I downloaded a free copy of SuperDuper, the ultimate hard drive cloning tool for Macs. By the time my drives arrived, I was ready to plug in my external drive and create a bootable backup of my internal drive. (This took a couple of hours.) That done, I flipped my MacBook over, removed the battery bay, popped open the L-shaped bar that limits access to the memory slots and hard disk, pulled the 160 GB drive, and replaced it with my shiny new 500 GB Blue Scorpio.

Note: if you decide to do this process yourself, you'll need a couple of special tools, including an odd, tiny hexagonal screwdriver that we didn't have on hand (despite our having one of virtually every tiny tool you can imagine). Ultimately, instead of removing the hard drive's insulating cover with the prescribed hex screwdriver, we twisted the pins with needle-nose pliers. Sometimes, you have to improvise!

Seconds later, I booted up my Mac from the external, cloned 1 TB drive, ran Disk Utility to format my new 500 GB drive, ran SuperDuper again, and reversed the cloning process, copying all my files from the external drive back to the internal drive. This, once again, took a couple of hours -- but when the process was complete, I was delighted to power up my Mac and see almost 350 GB free on my primary drive. 

Since then, I've copied more than 8,000 digital photos and hundreds of music files back to my MacBook and still -- remarkably -- I've got just a little less than 300 GB of space available. I feel like a man who has moved from a tiny, cramped Midtown condo to an expansive, airy Buckhead McMansion!

This low-cost, simple, DIY upgrade adds a lot of bang for the buck. Why wait? Download these handy instructions (or watch this video!) order the 500 GB drive from Amazon.com, and convert your MacBook into a massive digital warehouse with what's gonna feel, at least for now, like virtually unlimited space. 

Hmmm. I wonder how long it'll be before they have 1 TB laptop drives...?

Comments

[Peyton]

I'm glad I could be some inspiration. I'm glad we could restore the natural order of our technological relationship.

For those who are going to do this process, the little screwdriver that Mark mentioned is a Torx 8 screwdriver. I had a heck of a time finding this, but I did finally find it in a local plumbing/hardware shop.

[Joanna Colbert]

I'm thinking about doing this Mark, but I need the handy instructions! The link is broken. Can you fix it? Thanks!

[Mark]

Thanks for letting me know. I fixed the link ... and added a video!