Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with mac and harddrive

If I buy a 1TB hard drive with a SATA 3 Gb/s interface, will my computer be able to use it with it's 1.5 Gb/s SATA interface?

Ephilation — Mon, 28 Dec 2009 04:39:24 -0800

Laptop hard drive filter: I'm in the market for a new hard drive for my laptop, and I want to get the best one my computer can handle. My computer seems to have a 1.5 Gb/s SATA interface; will it be able to handle a 3 Gb/s SATA interface hard drive? A quick question for all you computer hardware junkies out there who'll know more about this kind of stuff than I do: the laptop I currently have is a few years old, and has a hard drive that is no longer large enough for my needs. I'd like to upgrade the hard drive, but I don't know which interface type to get so that the hard drive I buy works with my computer.

I've always had good experiences with Western Digital hard drives, so I've decided to buy one out of their Scorpio Blue line. When I looked at their website, I noticed that the site says that they offer these hard drives in a number of different capacities; the capacity that I'm interested in is the 1TB capacity. They also offer these hard drives in 3 different interface types: SATA 3 Gb/s, SATA 1.5 Gb/s, and PATA.

Now, I own a MacBook running OS X 10.5.8, and I'm somewhat computer literate, so I checked System Profiler to see what interface type my computer has. Under Hardware > Serial-ATA, it says that I've got something called a "Intel ICH8-M AHCI", which has a speed of 1.5 Gigabytes. So far so good.

However, on the Western Digital website, it seems that the hard drives they sell under the SATA 1.5 Gb/s interface only go up to 320 Gb. However, Western Digital does sell 1TB hard drives with the SATA 3 Gb/s interface. Thus, my question ultimately becomes: if I buy the 1TB hard drive with the SATA 3 Gb/s interface, will my computer be able to use it (even if it can only write and read to it at a speed of 1.5 Gb/s)?

Thanks in advance, guys and gals. Be sure to stay tuned for the follow-up question that's undoubtedly sure to follow, where I ask how to format/set up/install operating system on said hard drive.

I'll wipe my ass with a roll of Intel X-25 SSD drives!

melorama — Mon, 21 Dec 2009 05:48:04 -0800

I need semi-definitive opinions regarding the real-world lifespan of an Intel X-25M Solid State Drive running in a Macbook Pro. I just couldn't pass up a $214 Black Friday deal on an 80GB Intel X25-M (2nd generation) SSD, and am excited to install it into my "early-2008" Macbook Pro (pre-unibody) w/4GB of RAM. My plan is to replace the current system drive (a 500GB 7200RPM Seagate Momentus) with the SSD, and physically relocate the Seagate drive to the Superdrive bay, using the MCE OptiBay kit.

The original plan was to install just the base OS (Mac OS X 10.6.2) to the SSD, then relocate my home folder to the larger Seagate drive. But then I got to thinking I might actually want to have everything in my ~/Library and ~/Library/Application Support/ folders to live on the SSD instead. Because I am a neurotic multitasker (I generally have over 50+ tabs open in Firefox at any given moment, just as a general reference point), my logic tells me that I would see a performance benefit from having the ~/Library folder on the SSD, since all my running applications are constantly reading and writing to this folder. So my new plan is to just leave my homefolder on the SSD, and relocate my iTunes Library, videos, pictures, etc on the Seagate drive.

But as astute followers of SSD technology know, MLC-based SSDs will burn out faster the more often you write to them. I've done a lot of searching, and have found conflicting opinions on whether or not it's a good idea to leave oft-written to system files such as the OS page/swapfile on the SSD drive, because of the accelerated wear this would cause. Because of this, many Windows users simply disable the pagefile (despite recommendations from Microsoft to keep it enabled on an SSD), but this is not a viable option under OS X. Another concern with OS X and SSDs is Spotlight indexing, the disabling of which is simply not something I'm willing to do, given how useful Spotlight is.

So the question is, just how quickly will an SSD (specifically the X25) "burn out" if I keep my Mac's swapfiles, ~/Library/* files, Mail.app mailboxes on it, with Spotlight enabled? I also run Crashplan online backup, which does realtime block-level, encrypted incremental backups of my drives up to the cloud.

Additionally, will the lack of TRIM support in OS X cause a significant slowdown in overall performance (i.e. near spinning-platter speeds) if I run my SSD in this manner?

I don't really expect this 80GB X25 SSD to be a long-term thing. I fully expect the sizes of SSDs to significantly increase in the next 12-18 months, at inversely lower prices, at which point I will almost certainly feel no remorse in buying a new SSD, regardless of the level of wear on my current X25. But if my X25 burns out in 6-10 months, that won't be worth it, either.

What say you, Mac SSD-heads?

Seagate Hard drive Mac

yegga — Tue, 24 Nov 2009 09:10:15 -0800

How to get a Seagate FreeAgent Desk external hard drive to work with my Mac? I have this model: Link.

The drive came without any installation disks. Apparently compatible only with Windows.

How do I get this working with Mac OSX? Help!

USB SATA HD WTF FTW?

Admiral Haddock — Fri, 20 Nov 2009 05:58:09 -0800

Is my external HD enclosure killing drives? Or is it bad luck? I use a Mac.

I have this external enclosure for 2.5" drives. I put a new drive in there last year, but didn't use it until some months later (after loaning it to a friend). Drive was dead, and Disk Utility and Disk Warrior couldn't fix it. It was an extents error, and Disk Warrior alternatingly gave these errors: 2351, -36 and 2166, 2351.

My GF needed an external drive for Time Machine, and so we dropped in a new drive. Same errors, same lack of success with Disk Utility and Disk Warrior.

In each case, there has been no data on the drive, so I'm happy to pave them down to the lowest bits and bytes. A new drive is being sent by the retailer, but I don't want to kill it with the enclosure if it is at fault.

Is this an issue with the enclosure, or is this just bad luck with two different drives (by different makers)?

Tell me what internal hard drive to buy for my MacPro.

Joleta — Sat, 17 Oct 2009 20:17:34 -0800

Tell me what internal hard drive to buy for my Mac Pro. I'd like to add a 1TB internal hard drive to my fairly new Mac Pro. I plan to use this drive for Time Machine backups. There are about a gazillion choices for internal 3.5" SATA drives. I just want to know which brand and/or model to buy. I'm interested in reliability first, price second. Personal experiences, please.

backup --> iPod

Jaltcoh — Thu, 15 Oct 2009 19:00:25 -0800

Trying to get my music library from my external hard drive back onto my iPod while maintaining my sanity. (Apologies in advance for the lengthy/convoluted question.) I recently started having problems with my iPod and realized I should make sure to have a perfect, up-to-date backup. I started by turning on the iPod's hidden files. If you're familiar with these hidden files, you know that they have randomly generated names like "VCKT.m4a," "BBLC.m4a," etc. (no apparent indication of which songs these are), and they're in folders called "F00," "F01," etc. (Mine go up to F49 since I have over 7,000 songs.) I copied all of these files to my external hard drive. At the time this seemed like a really smart, thorough way to do it.

Then I went to the Apple Store and got my iPod fixed, which involved them restoring my iPod. So now I need to recreate my music library in my iPod using the external hard drive.

I thought this would be pretty simple: plug in the iPod and external hard drive to my Macbook at the same time, then drag and drop all the folders -- F00 through F49 -- from the external hard drive to the iPod, right? Well, I did this, and the cryptically named files do appear in the iPod when you look at the iPod's contents in the desktop. But if you try to use the iPod as a normal music-playing device, it doesn't work -- there are no songs that show up for you to listen to (whether you're looking at it in iTunes or disconnected from the computer).

I again thought I was being smart by seeing what happens when I "open" one of the hidden files. Hey cool, a random song gets copied to iTunes! And it's a normal song -- not "VCKT.m4a" but something I can actually listen to, with a song title in English, etc. Of course, I can then drag and drop this song from iTunes into my iPod. At first I thought this would be the solution: just do the same thing for all the songs.

But there are a couple problems with that, and I'd really appreciate any help getting around them. As I said, I have over 7,000 songs, roughly 70 GB of music. My computer's hard drive has about 4 GB left. So if I were to just open all the hidden files from my iPod into iTunes at once, it'd be a disaster: at best, I'd quickly get a message telling me my computer's hard drive couldn't hold any more. (And I'd be afraid I wouldn't be so lucky -- the hard drive could get filled up and paralyzed. This happened to someone I know.)

So, should I just copy the hidden files one folder at a time? I could do that, but that would mean opening up the songs from "F00," waiting for them to get copied to iTunes, then waiting for them to get copied to the iPod, then deleting those songs from iTunes and emptying the trash, then moving on to "F01" ... and repeating that whole thing 50 times. I'd like to avoid that if I can.

So my questions are:

(1) Is there an easier way to do this? I'd love to be able to just get it started, then sit back and let the computer handle it.

(2) I already feel kind of silly for how much of a minor ordeal this has turned into as a result of my backup method that I (mistakenly?) thought was so clever. Could someone please assure me that there's a way to follow through with this that won't mess things up even further?

(In case it's relevant, my external hard drive holds about 500 GB, I have a 160 GB iPod, and I'm using Mac OS 10.4.11.)

Since when are harddrives actually the size advertised?

mathiu — Fri, 02 Oct 2009 04:07:07 -0800

Since when are harddrives actually the size advertised? I just bought a Western Digital 500 GB 2.5'' HD and I was surprised when it actually turned out to be 499.32 GB after the first initialization (on a mac). When has this changed? And what story/company was behind the adaption?

How do I rescue files from an internal drive when OS X won't boot?

wheat — Thu, 01 Oct 2009 22:26:26 -0800

OS X won't boot. Time Machine stopped working at noon. How can I nab some files before I reinstall Leopard? Due, I think, to my son playing with the power strip one too many times, my iMac will not boot. I can boot from the Leopard system disc, and I've run Disk Utility. It repaired problems, but it still won't boot.

I run Time Machine, so I'm willing to restore from that and/or reinstall Leopard. But I got a lot done today and would like to copy some PDFs I crated today. The last Time Machine backup was at noon. But I worked until five. I don't know why Time Machine stopped backing up.

When I use the "burn" option in Disk Utility, I can see the files I created, including the ones that are not in the most recent Time Machine backup. Is there a way to get them? This is my only Mac, so target disk mode isn't an option. What should I try?

2 Macs 1 HD

Aya — Sat, 04 Jul 2009 17:00:45 -0800

How can I connect 2 Macs to 1 HardDrive So I recently bought a new Macbook Pro and I would like to be able to have wireless access to the files in the external 200gbs usb hard drive connected to my old iMac G5.

Feed my iPhone

doift — Mon, 29 Jun 2009 11:48:32 -0800

A desktop, a laptop, an external hard drive, an iPhone, and me. How should I sync my iPhone? I've got a 16GB iPhone arriving tomorrow, my first one. Now I need to figure out what to do with it. Our household consists of an iMac that's primarily my husband's and a MacBook that's primarily mine. I'd prefer to manage music, apps, etc. on my laptop. However, the external hard drive that houses all our music is usually connected to the desktop, and it would be impractical to switch it back and forth between the two computers. With my old iPod, which after tomorrow will be my husband's iPod, I didn't have a problem just syncing it with the desktop, but apps and calendars and contacts complicate matters and I'd rather use my own machine.

I'm sure there a few different ways to do this. The best strategy I've been able to come up with is to get a $30 16GB USB drive and point iTunes on my laptop to the USB drive, so apps and podcasts save there, and periodically swap out the music. That seems sort of clunky. I can access the iTunes library on the laptop over our wireless network, but that doesn't help with syncing, right?

What other options should I consider?

Quiet Please!

nam3d — Mon, 08 Jun 2009 14:32:33 -0800

MacFilter: Help me choose a quiet internal hard drive? I have an iMac (24-inch Early 2008) and would like to upgrade the internal hard drive to something a little quieter.

I currently have a 500GB hard drive of which I have only used 50GB of space so really I only need a hard drive with capacity of 100GB's or more.

Can someone please reccomend which hard drive I should purchase I'd rather not spend over £100 but all suggestions are welcome.

What do I need to look at when buying a new laptop?

reenum — Tue, 02 Jun 2009 09:28:05 -0800

I'm in the market for a new laptop. Should I get a PC or Mac? What specs are important for me to look at when making a decision? My Toshiba Satellite A65 seems to be on its last legs, so I think I'm getting a new laptop.

In researching, I've become confused as to which specs really matter when looking at a computer.

Here's what I would use it for:
- E-mail, IM, and Web
- Watching DVDs
- BitTorrent
- Word processing and spreadsheets
- Tracking my finances
- Some music creation (mostly breakbeats)

I've seen some places say that I need as much RAM as possible, others stress the importance of a large hard drive, yet others say I need the fastest processor.

Also, any recommendations as to brands that are more reliable than others?

Please help!

Hard Drive wipeout

mike_bling — Mon, 01 Jun 2009 17:57:06 -0800

Hard drive recovery: my external USB hard drive is mounting fine on both my mac and PC, however, all the files are showing up as garbage characters. It's also reporting that the drive is 95% full, when it definitely wasn't anywhere near that. I've already used Data Rescue II to get copies a few of my most important files, I'm just wondering if there is anything more I should try before I format the drive and start over. It seems like the index was corrupted, but there is nothing physically wrong with the drive.

How do I figure out what is taking up all the space on my wife's macbook?

Grither — Mon, 18 May 2009 10:04:50 -0800

How do I figure out what is taking up all the space on my wife's macbook? My wife is trying to get the latest update for her macbook, and an error message comes up saying she doesn't have enough disk space for it (it says she needs 3.1GB free, holy large update, mac!) And she has asked me to help her figure out what is filling up her hard drive. I am not a mac user, so I am flying blind here, but I did the following:
-emptied the trash
-cleared the cache on her browser
-restarted the mac

All of this freed up no more than 100MB of data, so I figured I would take a look through her hard drive to see what was taking up all the room. This is where I got completely lost, and couldn't figure out how to check how much space is being taken up by what folders, files, etc. I assume it is mostly used by pictures and mp3's, since that's what she uses her computer for most of the time. It is possible she has multiple copies of her MP3's and/or picture files? If so, how do I check this, and which ones are "safe" to delete? I have all of our important pictures and music stuff backed up to an external HD, so by "safe" I mean so she can still access them through her normal programs, without having two copies on her HD taking up space. I find it hard to believe she has already accumulated enough pictures and mp3's to eat up her entire 120GB harddrive.

PC won't recognize my HD.

reenum — Mon, 04 May 2009 07:14:21 -0800

My computer is having problems with recognizing capacity of hard drives or recognizing the drives at all. I have an old Dell desktop tower. It has a 1.8 Ghz processor and 384 MB of RAM. I use it mostly to store my music and surf the web, so it doesn't need to be top of the line. It has a 40GB drive, and a second hard drive my dad installed.

On Friday, I tried to replace the existing second HD with a 250GB drive. When I started up the unit after replacing drives, the computer wouldn't boot. It kept asking for a boot disk.

So, I swapped the original drive back in. As I was putting that drive back in, I noticed that it has a listed capacity of 120GB. However, when installed, the computer shows it as being a 40GB HD.

I'd like to have more storage on my computer. So, is there a way for me to get this PC to recognize the full capacity of the 120GB HD or to boot up with the 250GB HD?

Disk Utility error: false alarm, or bad omen?

so_necessary — Sat, 02 May 2009 16:26:36 -0800

In OS X on my iMac, Disk Utility asserts that my main, internal hard drive is "about to fail" and has been asserting this for several months. But my computer is running just fine... should I worry? The S.M.A.R.T status is failed, and the various helpful sounding options, like First Aid or Verify, are all unclickably greyed out. Using Boot Camp and HD Tune under windows, I can see the "bad" attribute is:

ID (01) Raw Read Error Rate
Current: 11
Worst: 1
Threshold: 51
Data: 59669
Status: Failed

A different utility just names the fields slightly differently...

1, Raw Read Error Rate
Raw value: 59699
Status: FAIL
Value: 11
Worst: 1
Threshold: 51

All the ther attributes (things like "seek error rate" and "spin up time" and stuff) are normal.

But my computer is running just fine. I can't work out if this is just some freaky one-time error that happened to the hard drive once which it won't forget about, reflects an existing (if seemingly benign) state of affairs, or is a sign of impending doom. This error has been present for several months now, perhaps even from The Beginning - the iMac is only 6 - 8 months old. The Man From Apple suggested I format my entire drive but that sounds pretty tedious if I don't really need to do anything / insufficient if my hard drive is actually about to die from mechanical failure.

Obviously I'd love for you all to tell me how I can safely ignore this, and even how I might be able to disabuse Disk Utility of the notion that things are messed up. On the other hand, if you think there might be trouble ahead, then do snap me out of my complacency and I'll promise not to shoot the messenger.

My computer is having some difficulties.

Brachiosaurus — Thu, 02 Apr 2009 00:16:26 -0800

Is my iBook G4 dying? The most pressing problem is that, while working on it, without the power cord, the computer will abruptly turn off, with no warning. It can even be when the battery indicator on the top of the screen isn't even that low, maybe a quarter left. Afterwards I can just plug it in and turn it back on with no problems. This is happening more and more regularly.

The next biggest problem is that the front (closest to me) left corner gets super hot sometimes. I'm guessing that this is hard drive. I've backed up my data recently but I should probably again- maybe right after I'm done typing this.

Also, the wires within the power adapter may be starting to fray. It isn't too touchy but to keep the indicator light illuminated I have to keep it still. Also the box thingy that goes to the wall will get really, really hot while it's charging- but not if it's just plugged in. I don't know if it's always done this.

The only other problem is that four keys no longer work on the keyboard thanks to my cat spilling a martini on the computer about 2 years ago. I should have replaced it then because I can do it myself and I've heard that the replacement keyboard would only be about 50$. All of the letters still work (though I imagine that it would be funny if I had to avoid words with certain letters) and only one of the keys that I tend to use has been effected. I called Apple to ask them once but they said they don't sell just the keyboard.

So I'm looking at about 300 in replacement parts (outside of the hot hard drive problem, 'cause I don't know what that's about) and I'm thinking that even if I repair these and the thing lasts 8 months my utility per dollar wouldn't improve that much because I'm spending 20% of the cost to get another ~15% of life from it.

I choose 8 months because it would be awesome if I could get this thing to last until I finish school in Dec.

So it sounds like I should just replace it but I don't think I'd be able to swing that for another 2 or so months and I kind of need it (what I mean by need is that my roommate lets me use his spiffy iMac but having a laptop [and my own computer] improves my productivity).

So I guess my questions are, can this thing last 2-3 months without putting money into it? 8+ months without repairs? 8+ month with the repairs listed above? And how much would a new 100gb HD cost? Has anyone had this battery problem before? I know that none of you can predict the future but I just need some reasonable advice.

Pick a Harddrive for my mac

alan — Wed, 11 Mar 2009 11:07:50 -0800

Can anyone help me pick a new hard drive for my first generation MacBook? I have a first generation Intel MacBook, the 1.83 GhZ white model. It has an 80GB hard drive. These are not enough gigabytes, I'd like more (250GB/500GB/1TB)

I'm comfortable cloning my existing drive and popping a new drive into my machine. What I'm not comfortable with is picking the replacement drive. My hardware knowledge is weak at best; there's a reason I buy Macs.

I currently have one of these in there. So

1. What drive do I want

2. More importantly, how do I do this myself? What specs are important to match and how can I make sure the drive is going to work with my Macbook.

Thanks in advance, oh wise IT metafilterites.

Is this iBook toast?

clockwork — Tue, 17 Feb 2009 13:55:16 -0800

The hard drive in my girlfriend's iBook (12" G4 late 2004) died, or at least that's what I think happened. I want to cover all my bases and I need a little advice on best practices. A few months ago it would make a gnarly clicking sound, but only intermittently. We backed up all her data, figuring that the hard drive was going to fail pretty soon, but the clicking went away and everything was fine until this week when it seemed like it was running a little hot and then went totally catatonic.

After it first died, Disk Utility (running from OSX install discs) couldn't even see the drive and Apple Hardware Test returned a variety of Mass Storage "2STF" errors. After it cooled down, Disk Utility was able to see the drive, but it didn't return any errors and it passed the first Hardware Test but failed every subsequent time I ran it. I have been able to boot from the drive when the computer is totally cold, but I've never left it running for very long. I'm a little puzzled by the symptoms. I would expect the hard drive to stop working altogether.

Did I miss any totally obvious fixes? or troubleshooting steps that might indicate something other than the hard drive?

She would rather spend $65 on a new hard drive than $1k for a new MacBook. And while I have a vested interest in taking the thing apart, I don't want let my impulse to fiddle about inside the thing color my thinking about the problem itself. Thanks.

Mac busted?

djgh — Sat, 31 Jan 2009 07:12:21 -0800

Is my Macbook's HD broken? Unable to boot, more details inside. I can't get my Macbook (black, OSX Tiger) to boot. I got the flashing question mark. Booted from the install disk, and Disk Utility and Startup Diak apps were unable to see my internal drive. Reset PRAM, following Apple's online troubleshooting guide, then went back to Disk Utility, which was still unable to see my drive. HD is making funny noises - am I right to assume that this is a hardware failure?

Other relevant info - I recently installed a new battery.

Mac OSX: Where has my hard drive space gone?

kdern — Wed, 24 Dec 2008 07:02:13 -0800

Mac OSX: Where has my hard drive space gone? I have a 250 GB hard drive, with a capacity of 232 GB. 207 GB is used, 25 GB is available.

The problem is, my folders only add up to 137 GB. Where is the other 70 GB?

I've already used Disk Inventory X and it shows the same data... what's going on?

Here's what I see when I view my hard drive contents:

Applications: 6 GB
Developer: 8 KB
Library: 10.69 GB
System: 3.59 GB
Users: 116.12 GB

UnDead Powerbook - Good or Evil?

blapst — Sun, 14 Sep 2008 13:12:18 -0800

Should I revive my Titanium Mac Powerbook? My laptop's hard drive just ate itself. The fine people at NYC's Tekserve can replace the hard drive for $250 or thereabouts. However, it's an old laptop, (I think it was the 2nd generation Titanium powerbook), now considered vintage, and so replacement parts are no longer made, and I was told that if I encounter any further problems with this machine, they likely cannot be fixed. Furthermore, the battery likes to fall out, so it usually needs to be plugged in to a wall.

I just got a new desktop recently, so there's a bit of a sting at the thought of buying a new laptop, too. But $250 seems like a lot for something that might not last long.

I would use the laptop mainly for word processing, internetting, and perhaps a little music sequencing (reason), either when I travel (which is at least once every month or two), or when the desktop is in use by my wife.

So, do i spend the $250 to revive this heavy clunker or not?

Hard Drive Purgatory

LongDrive — Tue, 02 Sep 2008 01:16:01 -0800

The Last-External-Hard-Drive-I-Ever-Buy is stuck between heaven and hell. Can anyone please help me figure out how to rescue it? I have a USB 2.0 WD Mybook 500gb external HD (essential edition) that is causing me a great deal of grief that none of the earlier posts that came up on my search seem to address, both on askme and other support sites, so this is my last resort before emptying my savings on data recovery...

Up until last week, the drive has been connected via a d-link USB port which was externally powered. We had a power failure in my office causing the disk to be 'unproperly' ejected.

Since then, the drive mounts fine as mybook, but as soon as you try to do anything with it, all programs hang until you manually unplug it (and I have it straight into the usb now). And when I say all programs, I mean, Diskwarrior, Techtool, Onyx, Disk Utility, everything. Nothing can touch it.

Even terminal crashes when I try to run a diskutil list, stopping here:

/dev/disk2
#: TYPE NAME SIZE IDENTIFIER
0: Apple_partition_scheme *465.8 Gi disk2

I've tried repairing in terminal which gives me this:

Error encountered attempting to verify/repair disk2: Unrecognized filesystem (-9958)

As well as resetting PRAM, booting off the original CD's and trying things that way. Nothing seems to do the trick. Even Data Rescue II which I ran overnight just froze at the prescan stage the whole time.

All the steps above came out of my initial research, so I still consider myself an advanced novice in these matters, so if anyone in the hive can perhaps suggest some sort of Jedi move I can pull on this, or failing that, a recommendation for Data Recovery in the Melbourne area who can do some sort of evaluation, I would be most grateful.

Thanksyou!

Laptop Hard Drive Decision - which one is best for my needs?

nokry56 — Mon, 04 Aug 2008 15:50:01 -0800

Which HD would be a better (read: faster) drive for my soon to buy MBP? After Apple releases their new Mac Book Pros I will be purchasing a high-end 15" one. Will be purchasing 3rd party memory (4GB) and am thinking about buying a 3rd party hard drive to replace the 200GB that comes default. I'm torn between this more expensive 320GB 7200RPM drive, this slightly less expensive 320GB 7200RPM drive, or this 500GB 5400RPM drive.

I was reading online that the Seagate 500GB drive would actually be faster than a 7200RPM drive because of its platter size or something? Could anyone explain how this could be? Would the 500GB drive be faster than the other two drives I linked to?

I will be using the MBP for media storage, audio editing, and gaming, so want the largest drive possible that won't be a bottleneck for performance.

As a side question, how would I get the HD installed without voiding my warranty?

Help me keep my apps!

dondiego87 — Tue, 15 Jul 2008 10:26:45 -0800

Upgrading HDD in my MacBook. I'd like to preserve my apps and preferences while re-installing Tiger. I have a backup that would be bootable if not for the fact that it's sitting on a non-Firewire external HD. If I didn't want to re-install Tiger, I assume I could just boot from the Mac OS X Restore CD and restore from my USB backup. (If that's wrong, please let me know.)

BUT, since I do want to re-install the OS, how would I restore my applications and their preferences from the backup disk?

-- After re-installing Tiger, could I just drag and drop the contents of the backup disk onto my Macintosh HD? It seems like this might negate the benefits of re-installing the OS. I guess I could tell it to skip copying all duplicate items, and just write down all my preferences for the default apps whose preferences wouldn't get copied from the backup disk.

-- Is there some kind of preference-backup program available for Tiger that I could use for this?

-- Would all my app registrations be invalidated by this, requiring me to purchase them again or at least write a nice letter asking for another code? Or would they be preserved?

Thanks so much.

PS: Sorry, I feel like I've seen this question before but I can't seem to find it.