[SOLVED] 5400-7200 RPM Hard Drive Upgrade

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Tyler799

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Mar 12, 2013
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I have a Macbook Pro Mid 2010,

It has a 5400 RPM 250GB Hard drive, I wish to upgrade this to a new, slightly higher storage 7200 RPM Hard drive.
I already know they generate a bit more heat and wear and tear, but I don't mind if it allows for faster booting.

My question: How do I transfer EVERYTHING to that new hard drive?
Is there some place (Or Apple?) that will do it for me?
Does it matter if I have bootcamp and a partition on my drive?
If I can, how much will it cost?

Thanks for all of your help! :D
 
Solution
You really need an external hard drive so that you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your partitions from the hard drive and copy them back to the new drive. I guess that any competent computer shop could do this for you, but I've no idea what they would charge. You would have to get a quote first.

But I think you are going to be very disappointed about what you get for your money. The new hard disk isn't going to be that much faster than the old one and will reduce your battery lifetime. If you really want faster booting and general performance an SSD is the answer - and it will be kinder to your battery. It would probably be cheaper just to sell your current computer and buy a new one with an SSD than paying a shop to upgrade your...
You really need an external hard drive so that you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your partitions from the hard drive and copy them back to the new drive. I guess that any competent computer shop could do this for you, but I've no idea what they would charge. You would have to get a quote first.

But I think you are going to be very disappointed about what you get for your money. The new hard disk isn't going to be that much faster than the old one and will reduce your battery lifetime. If you really want faster booting and general performance an SSD is the answer - and it will be kinder to your battery. It would probably be cheaper just to sell your current computer and buy a new one with an SSD than paying a shop to upgrade your current one.
 
Solution
I agree with Ijack, you won't see much of an improvement with boot time going from a 5400 to a 7200 RPM drive. I too own a MacBook Pro and I replaced the 5400 with a 7200 and did not see much of an improvement in boot time. I am going to replace the HDD with an SSD soon. When I did switch the drives I used Time Machine to back up the data and then reinstalled the OS on boot (connects to the Internet and downloads it) and then used the Time Machine backup (on an external drive) to restore the files. I can't address the Boot Camp partition issue but Ijack's suggestion sounds like solid advice.
 
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