Upgrading Macbook HDD and RAM

[ananya.dragon]

hey guys...
i have the 2008-09 aluminum uni macbook(NOT THE PRO) which has a 250gig hd with 2gb ram.

im thinking of upgrading it to 4/6gb of RAM and the biggest HDD possible

what would you guys recomend? i will be buying parts in India so as far as i know only the most common and big brand name parts are sold here.

I was looking at the seagate momentus XT(hybrid) but many ppl on the apple forums say it works patchily.

 

[Emulex]

i'd just sell it and get a macbook air with ssd already in it. and 4gb of ram.

just sayin' - new warranty and all

 

[sxr7171]

Ha Ha. I would too. The Air is great.

 

[ananya.dragon]

however awesome the air looks i need a machine which CAN run Ccs3/4 w/50+tabs which i havent seen the air do.. plus the little matter of the air not being out in india...

so can someone help me here? which HDD, which company, which model

which RAM, which company and anything else i should know...

 

[iluvdeal]

I upgraded the ram and hdd in my 2008 white macbook, it doesn't use any Mac specific parts so you should be able to pickup any laptop ram and hdd.

As far as how to do the upgrade, I recommend using the software program SuperDuper as it makes restoring your OS to the new hard drive a breeze. You can read how to do it here: http://www.macinstruct.com/node/130

 

[Emulex]

no really the air can do it. i have cs5 it fricken flies. i use photoshop for image preview and its so friggen fast its not funny.

if you need to upgrade ram - make sure your mobo supports 8gb and 64-bit (even old macbook air rev.b uses 64-bit kernel).

drives - they are sketch - until 10.7 they will not support trim - and alot of drives freak out with the aggressive power management the macbook uses.

run top and see if you are swapping ; i think osx left out vmstat,iostat which are very very helpful in pinpointing your contention.

iostat 2
vmstat 2
(as root)

you can watch as you do things.

Also buy coolbook controller - the macbooks regulate big time - they overheat too fast and the cpu cuts the mhz in 1/2 and shuts down a core - all of them, even mac mini . This is why my old rev.b 1.6ghz with coolbook undervolted can outlast a brand new 2ghz macbook air - the other will overheat and clock down first in a straight up battle and you know how easy it is to pivot the air vents to your crotch/pillow.

also - SSD suck more power down- sad but true. the inertia power to keep a drive spinning but idle is less than an ssd being on. SSD are off or on; not off/spin up/idle/reading/writing/spin down head lock; so in many cases you will reduce battery life esp with a big honking cheap ssd since you have to power it all on or off.

you are in india you can get anything over there

 

[ananya.dragon]

thanks emulex
and even though its all made in india, it does NOT mean its sold here.. the i7980x is being sold for $1200-3500 and SSDs are very rare... and besides corsair, seagate, WD and iomega no brands are being sold for HDD... in the us ive seen 20-30 random HDD brands being sold...
my mac supports a max of 6gb of ram so is it worth the jump from 4 to 6 gb?

 

[sxr7171]

It's all made in China, not India. But if you can't get your hands on an Air (BTW, you can get 4GB RAM if that's an issue), then the upgrade is easy as pie. Just open the screws on the bottom and the drive is right there on the corner. The RAM is right there too.

I put an Intel 80GB into a Macbook Pro and a Vertex 2 into a Mac Mini 2010. They both work just fine. The Air of course has a Toshiba SSD. I'm pretty sure they power optimized that thing as best as is possible. The battery life on the Air is unreal.

 

[Emulex]

i thought us asians all looked the same anyways