Apple actually provides pretty clear instructions on the process of physically changing out the hard drive in the MBP Manual on their website. The process of upgrading the hard drive in the new unibody MacBook Pros is so much easier than in the older Pros from 2006 with a lot less screws and hoops to jump through.

The software I use for backup is SuperDuper from Shirt Pocket, which does a great job. I use a great external Firewire 800 enclosure from Other World Computing with an old laptop drive inside, just for this type of situation. The first thing to do before attempting to do something like this is to do a full backup which will later be used to restore from and be up and running quickly. It is hard enough finding them in-stock, never mind a great deal.

There are no real deals out there right now since these drives are in such demand. I purchased the Intel SSDSA2MH160G2C1 X25M from, who had the best prices at the time. Maybe down the road when OCZ has some bigger drives, I may revisit them.

Intel has a 160G drive versus the OCZ 120G and when going from 500G on my MacBook Pro, I decided the extra 40G would be better than the slight advantage OCZ has from a technology standpoint. I think as far as technology goes the OCZ drives look like the best-bet right now against the Intel X25-M drives, the only real downside, the capacity. My research started with a couple articles from AnandTech, The SSD Anthology and The SSD Relapse: Understanding and Choosing the Best SSD. I decided to pursue a Solid-State Drive (SSD) as they are really fast compared to a traditional hard drive and with no moving parts, very cool. I upgraded my last MacBook Pro to a 7200 rpm drive not long after having it and noticed a great speed improvement but also a pretty significant amount of heat being transferred through the aluminum body when the drive was working over time. I think Apple ships their laptops with 5400 rpm drives because the average user would never know the difference and it helps keep the heat down and the laptop quiet. After many years of using a laptop on a daily basis I quickly came to realize that one of the biggest factors in laptop performance was a slow hard drive. I recently purchased a late model 2009 Apple MacBook Pro which came with a 500G 5400 RPM drive.

Solid state drive for macbook pro 2009