A Bigger Drive



I wrote this up a while ago when I liberated a Western-Digital Passport HDD from its plastic enclosure and inserted it in my MacBook, this method could be used for any laptop that has a SATA drive, granted on the Windows side you’d have to reformat and do a fresh install and then install your applications, it still a very easy way to get a new bigger hard drive and also be able to use your old drive as an external or portable drive. The only reason I revisit this post is because I just upgraded the original 120GB drive from this post to a 320GB drive

The only negative part of this process is that you void the warranty on the drive that you liberate.

I’ve had many people claim that the drive inside the WD Passports is an inferior drive compared to the WD Scorpio laptop drives, but this is not the case. The same WD3200BEVT listed on the WD site is the exact same one that is inside the 320GB Passport.

(originally posted June 6th 2007 on cyclingplatypus.com)

Since the MacBook is really more of a desktop replacement for the mini I wanted to upgrade the hard drive from the stock 80GB drive to something a little more “robust” and as I was browsing around Mac Rumors I saw that a few people bought 120GB or 160GB Western-Digital Passport drives which happens to house a 2.5 inch SATA hard drive in it and just swapped them for the stock drive.

This a great solution because not only do you get a bigger drive but you also get a 2.5 inch SATA enclosure for your stock drive, so in actuality you are swapping your 80GB space for 240GB or you could use the old drive as a back-up like I am doing.

How did I do it? Glad you asked:

  • Plug in and reformat the Passport.
  • Fire up Carbon Copy Cloner and clone the stock drive.
  • Turn off and allow time to cool down.
  • Crack open the black plastic enclosure of the WD Passport (no screws, just plastic so you do actually get a little of that uncomfortable cracking sound).
  • Remove the battery.
  • Unscrew the little “L” door (or bracket) behind the battery.
  • Slide out the stock drive.
  • Unscrew drive.
  • Remove stock drive.
  • Insert new drive.
  • Re-screw drive.
  • Slide the new drive in.
  • Re-screw the “L” door.
  • Put the battery back in.

and

  • Boot up your Mac and viola…good to go.

Total time including cloning: 35 minutes…WOOHOO!!!