Upgraded Macbook Pro (early 08) HDD

Hey,

I finally got round to upgrading the hard drive in my early 2008 Macbook Pro. I bought the Western Digital Scorpio Black 320GB 7200RPM from OcUK and took it to my local authorised Apple service provider to fit. I didn't want to risk taking the keyboard plate apart myself. There's about 30 screws to mess with and some fairly sensitive wires.

Anyway, I brought it home and was a bit disappointed. I'm not seeing that much of a quickness in booting and the guy hasn't put it back together perfectly. To the left of the IR sensor is not 100% flush (i.e. a bit of a bump). It's only a mm or two but I don't think it was like that before.

Even worse the magnetic lock on the screen now requires you to really push down on it. Before I would only need to lightly get the monitor near the lock and the magnets would snap in to place. I'm gonna take it back tomorrow.

The good news is Finder does seem to be quicker and there hasn't been much of a difference in heat around the hard drive area. Battery life seems about the same too. I want to test VMWare with the new hard drive but I've got to reinstall my bootcamp of XP first.

I'll keep you updated!

Unfortunately when I replaced the HDD on my MBP I could never get the case flush again. I think it got bent when I was removing it.

I didn't really notice much difference going from 5,400rpm to 7,200rpm either, but there was a little boost in performance.

As far as I know you're only going to see a difference (outside of benchmarks) when dealing with large files.

Booting involves a lot of small files which explains why it is no quicker.

You confuse me slightly in as much as the Early 2008 MacBook Pros don't have a magnetic lock, typo?

I think he's referring to the little hooks that are magnetic and hold the lid down.