Western Digital Scorpio Black: 320GB, 7200 RPM, 2.5" Internal HDD

The Good: Faster, more capacity, allegedly less energy usage than Hitachi 160GB 5400RPM. It loads Snow Leopard significantly faster than the previous disk. The yellow piece of plastic at the lower-right of the disk is essentially a parking spot for the read/write head. It prevents scratching of the disk and maintains the integrity of the head and arm by storing the head off to the side while not in use.


The Not-so-Good: Sounds like another fan. Vibration under the right palm rest. It may be considered annoying, but will become less noticeable over time.

     This drive was installed in an Early 2008, 13" White MacBook 2.4GHz with 4GB RAM. It was easy to insert and remove, but the silver cover must be transferred from the old HDD to the new one. It may be difficult to find a proper bit for the screws, but careful improvisation of needle-nosed pliers may be considered. 
     After replacing the disk, the old hard drive (Hitachi) must be used to boot the system externally (through USB or FireWire 400) using an external enclosure. Upon restart, the Erase feature of Disk Utility can be used to format the WD as an OS X Journaled. Then unplug the Hitachi, reboot again, insert the OS X Install Disk, and use a Time Machine backup disk for a System Restore. This will take nearly 3 hours to transfer 147GB through FireWire 400.