Macbook 2,1 -Hard Drive upgrade
Geniuses,
A friend has a Macbook 2,1 (2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (13-inch White) MB062LL/A) with a 120GB drive. He is out of space. In fact, I think he has 10 GB left. He asked me what to do and I suggested upgrading the hard drive. He's got his whole drive backed up through time machine and a snow leopard dvd available.
My question is what y'all recommend as an aftermarket drive to put in that laptop. He's not a heavy user, and the laptop works fine, he just needs loads more space.
A quick google turned up this: http://tinyurl.com/3l494zr which has two drives that are $85.00. 1) 640 GB 5400 RPM SATA-3.0Gb/s 8MB Apple Hard Drive\t 2) 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA-3.0Gb/s 16MB Apple Hard Drive.
That price seems reasonable to me, but I thought that perhaps someone on this board would have something to say about which reseller was the most reliable, things to think about, and prices, and maybe about how much storage vs drive speed considerations.
Any and all tips are helpful.
I also already saw that his laptop can have a max 2GB of RAM, which it has.
Thanks.
A friend has a Macbook 2,1 (2.16GHz Intel Core 2 Duo (13-inch White) MB062LL/A) with a 120GB drive. He is out of space. In fact, I think he has 10 GB left. He asked me what to do and I suggested upgrading the hard drive. He's got his whole drive backed up through time machine and a snow leopard dvd available.
My question is what y'all recommend as an aftermarket drive to put in that laptop. He's not a heavy user, and the laptop works fine, he just needs loads more space.
A quick google turned up this: http://tinyurl.com/3l494zr which has two drives that are $85.00. 1) 640 GB 5400 RPM SATA-3.0Gb/s 8MB Apple Hard Drive\t 2) 500 GB 7200 RPM SATA-3.0Gb/s 16MB Apple Hard Drive.
That price seems reasonable to me, but I thought that perhaps someone on this board would have something to say about which reseller was the most reliable, things to think about, and prices, and maybe about how much storage vs drive speed considerations.
Any and all tips are helpful.
I also already saw that his laptop can have a max 2GB of RAM, which it has.
Thanks.
Comments
My question is what y'all recommend as an aftermarket drive to put in that laptop. He's not a heavy user, and the laptop works fine, he just needs loads more space.
Newegg is a fairly big online seller so their prices will be more competitive. Western Digital and Seagate are well recognised brands for hard drives but you get good and bad models of any variety:
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136692
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822148374
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16822136314
I also already saw that his laptop can have a max 2GB of RAM, which it has.
People seem to have put more RAM in and found it does support some of it and it will improve performance:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/Memor...Apple_MacBook/
If he doesn't use more than 2GB though, it's not going to make a big difference. The 1GB + 2GB option is not a good idea as it can affect the speed of the integrated graphics.
Get a crucial SSD Hard Drive. Add 3GB of memory and you're good to go!
Hello everyone,
Sorry for hijacking the tread but I bet no one would now add anything about the OP...
I still have one of those prehistoric macbook2,1 and I already upgraded from the original 80GB HDD to a 500GB hybrid drive.
Now I'd like to upgrade to a 120GB SSD that I have around (OCZ ARC100) but apparently the drive is not recognized as an internal drive. The drives works fine on other machines (PC and Macs)...
I have no idea why this macbook cannot see this SSD? Even when booting holding down the tab key... The SSD won't show up. Any suggestion?
Best,
-a-
same problem using 120GB Crucial MX100 SSD
-a-
How are you trying to boot it up? If you have an external USB to SATA enclosure, you'd plug the drive in, format it as a GUID partition map in Disk Utility if it isn't already and you can close your internal drive over to it with an app like SuperDuper or Carbon Copy Cloner or install a clean OS using the App Store:
http://computers.tutsplus.com/tutorials/how-to-install-os-x-1010-yosemite-on-an-external-drive--cms-21330
Once you have a system on the drive, boot holding alt-key and it should show up as a bootable option. You can then install the drive internally.
I had a 2009 MBP and installed a new Crucial M500 SSD. Since there is no disk utility or boot firmware/software on the motherboard nor the SSD I found that I needed to put the installer onto a USB flash drive, boot from that USB, then format and partition as per Marvin's post.
Thank you for your answer.
Well, I cannot boot from USB on the macbook2,1 (only internal drive or CD/DVD). I read somewhere that actually I could boot from USB only with an OSX installer but I don't know if it is true (it doesn't seem realistic, but who knows).
This macbook only supports OSX up to 10.5.8 AFAIK (no yosemite here).
Holding ALT upon booting doesn't show the SSD drive (I thought all detected drive should be shown there, not only bootable drives). I formatted the SSD using disk utility on a different mac (1 partition, HFS+, GUID or MBR, both with the same result) but the drive doesn't appear upon booting with ALT pressed.
I am currently trying to install Win7pro x64 on the "blank" SSD. However, the win7 installer doesn't find any hard drive.
I may try to find an old leopard install DVD (or maybe an USB thumbdrive if it works) to see if the installer detects the SSD. I guess it won't...
In the end, I need to run Win7 on that machine, not OSX.
Thank you very much in advance for your help.
Best,
-a-
You can only boot from the drive if it has OS X on it. It doesn't have to be an installer but it has to have a bootable system on it of some kind.
Only bootable drives show up there.
You can clone your internal hybrid drive over to it. So you'd use something like Carbon Copy Cloner or Superduper, clone OS X over, then boot from it.
You should then install the SSD into the machine because Windows isn't good at booting externally. You can run Bootcamp to partition it with most of the space given to Windows and use either a Windows install disc or an external USB drive to install Windows.
You can only boot from the drive if it has OS X on it. It doesn't have to be an installer but it has to have a bootable system on it of some kind.
What I don't really get is why I can use the win7 DVD installer to install it on an internal HDD (I did that in the past) but why it cannot find the internal SSD
Thanks a lot for your help
Best,
-a-
Oh you just want to install directly from a Windows 7 DVD onto a blank SSD in the Mac. There's a guide here that describes what you already seem to have tried:
http://derekhat.com/install-vista-on-a-macbook-without-bootcamp/
If you put the hybrid drive back in and boot from it, I take it the SSDs must be mounting inside Windows 7 over USB in an enclosure? If so, another thing you can try is using a Windows cloner:
http://www.symantec.com/ghost-solution-suite/
That would just make an exact copy of your Windows hybrid onto the SSD. Then when you install the SSD internally, it should boot up just like the hybrid one.
You should be able to install directly onto the blank drive from the DVD but I'm sure Disk Utility doesn't partition the drive the same way Bootcamp does. If you format the SSD inside Windows 7, that would probably work. An enclosure like the following would let you format it if you didn't have one:
http://www.amazon.com/Sabrent-Tool-free-Enclosure-Optimized-EC-UASP/dp/B00OJ3UJ2S/
Thanks a lot for your help.
However, I am getting a little confused here so let me sum up the situation briefly:
1) I have a working MB2,1 with Win7pro SP1 installed on it (no OSX, no Bootcamp). The original install was made using the Win7pro SP1 install DVD.
2) I cloned the HDD onto a new SSD by attaching both of them to windows desktop machine and using a disk cloning software.
3) I put the cloned SSD into the MB2,1 but it cannot be seen/found at boot.
This tells me something is wrong either with the SSD or with the cloning procedure (my clone is not really a clone). Otherwise I don't understand why an SSD clone of my HDD wouldn't work. Some people on the web claim the sATA cable would be too "sensitive" for SSDs (and thus accept only HDDs) but this sounds a bit... ..., right?
Then I started doing some troubleshooting:
a) I thought, "OK let's see if I can install Windows from scratch on this SSD". When I boot on the Win7pro install DVD and try to install on the SSD, the installer cannot find any disk. Same result with a different SSD. Both times the SSD was formatted with a single partition and MBR partition table (I also tried GUID but it doesn't help).
NOTE: Your link on installing Vista without bootcamp depicts basically what I did, except my SSD is not detected by the Win7 installer for some mysterious reason...
b) I thought, "OK let's see if I can install OSX from scratch on this SSD". The machine only supports OSX up to 10.5.8 but I cannot find the Leopard DVD anymore (I may have to dig a little deeper in my archives). I have a 10.10 USB installer around. I can boot on in (holding ALT on startup) but then I get the folder-with-question-mark icon (system not found). ??? I thought I would at least get to an error message saying "this mac doesn't support Yosemite" and maybe the ability to use tools such as disk utility. I tested this Yosemite USB installer on a different mac and it works just fine.
Any advice?
Best,
-a-
The clone has to be more than just a direct copy, in the following video, there's an option in the clone software to make it bootable:
[VIDEO]
People have installed SSDs into 2006 Macbooks so it should be ok. It looks like they just support SATA 1 (1.5Gbps) but it should still work.
It won't boot Yosemite. Non-bootable drives show as the question mark.
Check what partition map the hard drive that works is using, use the same one and use a clone software that has an option to make the clone bootable. You might have to use an OS X system to setup the partition map in a way that the Mac recognizes it. Bootcamp only came out in April 2006 and it did a few hacks to get Windows to work like BIOS emulation. I'm surprised Windows 7 boots up on the 2006 Macbook.
I just created a 10.5.6 USB installer. Boot on it -> Disk Utility cannot find the SSD drive...
I will read your post (above) carefully and reply ASAP.
Best,
-a-
People have installed SSDs into 2006 Macbooks so it should be ok. It looks like they just support SATA 1 (1.5Gbps) but it should still work.
It won't boot Yosemite. Non-bootable drives show as the question mark.
Check what partition map the hard drive that works is using, use the same one and use a clone software that has an option to make the clone bootable. You might have to use an OS X system to setup the partition map in a way that the Mac recognizes it. Bootcamp only came out in April 2006 and it did a few hacks to get Windows to work like BIOS emulation. I'm surprised Windows 7 boots up on the 2006 Macbook.
Well, The current HDD (Win7pro) has a MBR partition map. I had no problem installing Win7 on this macbook (on an HDD) since I have a "special" install DVD that is designed for macs (provided by my institution). I don't know the details about the difference with a "traditional" Win7pro install DVD but this doesn't really matter for my current issue.
Note: To clone my HDD onto the SSD I used this program that has an option to clone drives on Windows. Either block-level or not. I didn't chose block level.
http://www.easeus.com/backup-software/tb-free.html?ref=dc_channel
Current situation: The SSD is not detected in the MB2,1:
- not when containing a clone of the current working HDD
- not when booting from a Win7pro install DVD
- not When booting from a Leopard USB installer
There is no issue when using an HDD
-> ???
Do you have a USB enclosure to run the SSD from? If not, you can try formatting the drive as a format common to both Mac and Windows like MS-DOS on the Windows machine and see if it shows up in Disk Utility. If you open the command-line when booted from the 10.5.6 installer, try entering the following command and hit return:
diskutil list
and see if that lists the drive. You can also use:
df
system_profiler
The last one will show all hardware so you can see if the drive is being recognised at all.
It probably has the Apple drivers on it for the hardware that install after Windows has installed.
The forum for that says you have to use the Disk Clone option:
http://forum.easeus.com/viewtopic.php?t=35254
There's some instructions here to repair boot status for a clone:
http://www.makeuseof.com/answers/boot-windows-7-cloning-hard-drive-easeus/
Does the cloned SSD boot up the Windows machine you made the clone on?
When the SSD is placed into an USB enclosure both the OSX and the Windows installer can see it (the windows installer obviously won't let me install on it, though).
Best,
-a-
If you open the command-line when booted from the 10.5.6 installer, try entering the following command and hit return:
diskutil list
and see if that lists the drive.
From the terminal in 10.5.6 installer:
I get multiple drive found:
/dev/disk0: CD ROM (Windows installer)
/dev/disk1: The USB dongle (OSX installer)
/dev/disk2: untitled 467KB
/dev/disk3: untitled 467KB
/dev/disk4: untitled 95KB
/dev/disk5: untitled 95KB
no sign of my 128GB SSD
Could disk2 -> 5 be some kind of virtual disks created by the OSX installer? df says they correspond to /Volume, /private/var/tmp, /private/run and /Library/Preferences, respectively...
system_profiler doesn't list my SSD neither...
Best,
-a-
The fact it shows up with the enclosure and not at all internally points to a faulty SATA cable. Someone here had a similar problem:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/5871913
Someone there got it to work by switching the cable but someone else tried 3 cables without success. It doesn't make sense why a HDD would work ok if the cable was faulty but it must be the case for some people. For all the time messing around with spare parts, opening it up and switching cables out, it would probably be easier buying a newer model on eBay or something and selling the old one with the HDD in it.
Tx a lot.
I already read that tread actually. I don't understand that cable "sensitivity" thing neither...
The strange thing is that I got 3 of those macbooks2,1 and they all show the same issue at detecting SSDs (3 SSds tested, 2 Crucial MX100 and 1 OCZ ARC100)...
Could it be an SSD firmware issue? That would be common to both Crucial and OCZ?
Could it be the raining black cloud above of my head constantly following me? Who knows?
Best,
-a-
Someone here got a Crucial M4 to work ok in the Macbook:
[VIDEO]
It can't be the case that all those Macbooks have faulty cables and the cables have to be compatible with SSDs in general if people are managing to get them to work without replacing the cable.
Maybe it's not powering up particular drives properly. You could try doing an SMC reset if you haven't by unplugging, taking out the battery and holding the power button for a few seconds.
You could also try booting holding alt and then removing and plugging in the drive on the internal SATA and see if it will power up by plugging it in at that point.
There are adaptors to run SSDs off the optical drive bay but that'll prevent using the DVD drive for installers:
http://www.mcetech.com/optibay/