Jaysen Marais

After my fourth month of constant hard-drive space scavenging (in both OS X and boot-camped Vista) I finally bit the bullet and initiated the oft-delayed drive upgrade. It also seemed like the least irritating time to do the similarly deferred Tiger-to-Leopard upgrade too (hitherto postponed due to space and enthusiasm scarcity).

At this point you really hope the rest of the upgrade guide is up to scratch

Everything went pretty smoothly (except for a last minute scramble to find a size 00 philips screwdriver). ExtremeTech’s Upgrade your macbook pro’s hard-drive came in very handy, with only a few deviations necessary to effect the switcheroo.

Here’s a quick list of the necessary bits and pieces I ended up using:

• Macbook Pro (Rev C, circa Jan ‘07)
• The upgrade guide loaded on the iPhone
• A new 2.5″ SATA drive (Western Digital 250Gb scorpio)
• a basic 2.5″ USB enclosure to enable ad-hoc pillaging of the old drive
• Tiger DVD
• Vista DVD
• Torx T-6 screw-driver
• size 00 and size 0 phillips screwdrivers
• 2 x WD passport 250Gb passport drives (one with Mac & PC app installers, the other for Time Machine)

Having the guide on the iPhone proved very handy, and luckily I had a size 0 phillips screwdriver to hand (the recommended size 00 didn’t seem right for the job). Now I’m cruising along nicely with fresh Tiger/Vista installs and throwing RAW files around without a care (hard-drive rationing is like solitary confinement, it warps the mind).