I bought a new hard drive for my MacBook because I was running low on space. Actually, I had around only 16GB left. Taking picture at the rate I’m taking them now would eat that space in few months and the upgrade was inevitable. But what pushed me to make a purchase was the fact that I needed space when I was converting a DVD from NTSC to PAL for my parents. I ended up using a remote share for the 45GB DV stream file – slow and inconvenient. So I bought WD 320GB 7200 rpm drive.
The big question was how to transfer the data to the new drive. There are two options: use the installation DVD and restore from Time Machine backup or clone the disk using either Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper! My Time Machine backup did not have the entire disk content backed up and I would have to create a new backup. Since my TM disk is small it would take some time. I ended up cloning the drive.
I restarted the system and avoided starting any programs, opened only Carbon Copy Cloner and copied the internal drive to the new drive connected to USB port (in external enclosure I bought for the old drive). It took few hours (I don’t know exactly how long because I left it running and left the house for 5 hours). After that, I opened the laptop, placed the new drive inside. The system booted without any problems.
The nice side effect of the whole exercise is that the system is much much snappier than before. It might be due to having a faster drive with more cache, but I think the fragmentation of the old drive made the system sluggish. They say that Mac’s don’t need to be defragmented, but I think that when the space is scare the system cannot save files in contiguous segments anymore – I have to research that.
One thing about my MacBook made me think: why does it take so long for the laptop to go to sleep. When I close the lid the laptop goes into the sleep mode but it takes some time before the power light starts pulsating. My wife’s older iBook G4 sleeps immediately after the lid is closed. I want an immediate sleep on my MacBook!
After researching I found out that Apple secretly enabled hibernation on newer laptop models which means the entire memory content is written to disk before the laptop enters the sleep mode. Hibernation is good because in case of power loss the laptop can still wake up from sleep. This, however, happens very rarely to me and I don’t need hibernation. It also uses disk space. I have 4GB of RAM so the same amount will be used on disk.
I found a great utility that helps to disable hibernation: SmartSleep. Better yet, it uses sleep until the battery level drops to a preset value and then enables hibernation. The best of the two worlds. I immediately installed it and it works as designed. It even recovers the space used by the hibernation file – the whole 4GB I can use for something else.
I got the new keyboard from Powerbook Medic. Replacement took half an hour after yesterday’s practice with opening the laptop. The trackpad works again!
Yesterday evening my MacBook’s trackpad started to behave strangely stalling every so often and displaying a dropdown boxes. Banging it with fingers helped for few seconds and it stalled again. Reboots did not help (I did not expect that but had to try). External mouse worked fine, but who wants to sit on the couch with a laptop and a mouse? The trackpad broke! Kaput. And the best part is that I’m gonna have to pay for the repair, because my warranty expired 4 months ago.
I decided to repair it myself (I’ve replaced keyboard and a fan in my Thinkpad before, so Apple should be no different). I started looking for a shop that sells Apple parts. The first hit was Powerbook Medic – they sell Apple parts, new and used, and provide detailed manuals with step-by-step replacement procedures. Their manuals tell you what screws have to be removed and how to open the laptop – the last thing I wanted is to remove all the screws. There are also multiple YouTube videos on the topic. Apple itself does not sell parts; at least I could not find any pointer on their website.
I could not wait. I opened my MacBook carefully placing away every screw on previously prepared piece of paper with a drawing of the screw placement. I advise doing the same because event screws next to each other have different lengths. The keyboard came off and I checked for loose connections – that was my first guess. But I was wrong. I guess the trackpad is really broken. I put all back together and decided to replace the keyboard. I ordered a new keyboard from the Powerbook Medic site. I could get a used one from eBay for $30 but it would break earlier. It’s gonna arrive tomorrow (update coming up).
One good side of the whole thing is that the cracks on the keyboard’s edges will be gone!