So, after years and years of advice and instruction on maintaining hard drive redundancy, and the benefits of upgrading from time to time, I finally am following my own advice and upgrading my venerable Macbook Pro.  After a screamingly good deal came out for laptop disk drives locally, I went out and snagged a 750GB 7200 RPM hard drive from MicroCenter and brought it home.  I also picked up a copy of Mac OS X.6 since my previous upgrade came through a friends DVD who was no longer living in the area.  All told, I am in for a little over $100 – not too shabby!  However, as they say, the Devil’s in the Details!

I’ve changed out lots of hard drives in my time…after all, it’s no secret that I am a working IT professional – that’s my day job.  I’ve been doing that for about 10 years now, so hardware upgrades are pretty routine for me by this point – and I’ve got lots of tools to do it with too…everything from magnets, to phillips heads, to flat heads, to Torx bits for unique screws, and even a pair of nylon pliers.  But all of this based on a Windows background.  I’d never done much with Macs.  The mentality I’ve always had though is that hardware is hardware, right?  I did check out a few tutorial videos on YouTube and all the tools sounded like ones I own, so I jumped right in and off I went – until I got inside the Mac and was presented with two teeny tiny screws that required a Torx bit T6.  I went to my trusty toolbelt and saw my Torx bits went from T30 all the way down to T4 – awesome!  Until I noticed that one slot was missing – and sure enough, it was the dreaded T6!

A trip to Wal-Mart yielded no dice (it was getting late), so this morning off to Lowe’s I went.  I did find the T6 bit – but it was in a package of other bits and a nut driver – for $20:

Suffice to say, I was a bit (if you’ll pardon the expression), a bit torqued to be missing what was likely a 50 cent bit and having to spend nearly $20 to reassemble the Mac.  However, the eternal optimist, I put the positive spin on it – this is a nice kit I bought and the rest will probably go to Good Will since they are showing their age a bit.  Finally, of course, the educational moment for me:  I finally got my Torx in Order!

So, with the Mac now flying on a 7200rpm drive with plenty of storage, my weekend will likely be spent performing a fresh install of all my favorite apps.  Which ones do you think will go on there first?  I’ll give you a hint – the company name starts with A and ends with dobe!  The takeaway from all this – make sure you have your Torx in order – it is definitely a good motto to add to your motto book!  Have a great weekend everyone – just because I wont be shooting doesn’t mean you can’t so be safe, be smart, and…(wait for it)…

Happy Shooting!

I bet you are asking, “Ok, Ace, where you gonna add a second drive?”

Well, here’s an easy way to add a second drive to your laptop in 10 easy steps:

1.  Buy a USB drive (I got mine at Best Buy – they price matched Newegg which was in and of itself a jaw-dropper but I digress)… but the point here is that addtional storage is cheap!  Less than $80 bucks for 320 GB

2.  Buy a strip of two-way Velcro tape.  I happen to have some from other projects, but at most it’s $5

3.  Before messing with the physical setup, plug the drive in and configure as desired.  For mine I re-formatted to a Mac partition (journaled), then created folders for my music library and my working photo library on the Mac.

4.  I then moved all the data over for the above folders from the pre-existing OS drive.

5.  Position new USB drive on back-side of laptop monitor to see where it best fits according to your USB layout – I happened to like mine on the left, as shown:

6.  Wrap USB (or Firewire) nice and snug – I used another velcro strip to keep it tightly wrapped.

7.  Cut one or two pieces of two-way Velcro, and place one in the middle, and the other one near the top or bottom.  (I started with one and added the second):

8.  Peel the backing and affix to the USB drive.  With the other side still stuck, peel the backing off the second two sets and affix to the back of the monitor.

9.  Plug mini-USB (or Firewire) and USB ends of cable back in. (I’d already done it to ensure the slack of the cable was how I liked it, but you can do this afterward too if that makes things easier for you…)

10.  Open monitor top, and voila – you have a laptop with two drives!

For the record, I saw someone once with a setup like this, so it’s not completely an original idea.  The onyl difference was that he had two of these bad boys connected – a Dymo label printer had identified each as a Time Machine drive and a Files drive.  For the cost/size/weight and portability, it’s really not a bad idea.  When they fill up, just buy a new drive and port the data over, or even just archive and store in a tupperware shoebox if you prefer.

So, there’s a neat little idea for you this Monday.  Happy shooting and we’ll see you back here again tomorrow.