Operation: Phoenix Revival Part 2: The Surgery
Yesterday I shared the first part of my adventure in opening up the innards of my beloved early 2008 Macbook Pro. Today the journey continues, with the extraction of my old stock 5400 RPM Hitachi hard drive.
As I mentioned in my previous blog post, I used ifixit’s very helpful step-by-step documentation to guide me through the process. (NOTE: OWC has an excellent video guide covering the hard drive installation process.)
Exploring the insides of the Macbook Pro was fascinating, to say the least. I’m pretty sure I spotted the Shire as my eyes traversed the landscape.
With the help of the spudger, I removed the SATA connector cable, which was affixed by an anti-static tape. That was easy.
Removing the adhesive that held the ribbon cable to the sleep light and drive’s IR sensor connector was a bit more challenging. Initially the OWC supplied spudger tool was helpful; but midway through, I switched to using a credit card to gently pry the ribbon cable from the surface of the hard drive.
Once the ribbon cable was freed from the hard drive, my next task was to remove the hard drive bracket, which was held together by (you guessed it) two tiny screws.
Taking out the old hard drive required a bit of fenagaling on my part. Care had to be taken to carefully remove the SATA connector from the drive. Once the SATA connector was disconnected, I used a combination of credit cards and my spudger tool to hoist the hard drive out of its nest.
With the old hard drive out, I breathed a sigh of relief. The worst was over.
Next, I removed the old mounting screws from the old hard drive and affixed them onto the OWC SSD. At this stage, I double-checked to make sure that the mounting screws were fully tightened into the SSD.
With little to no additional clearance inside the drive bay, I jockeyed between positioning the SSD back in, while concurrently making sure the SATA connector stayed attached. This was the most frustrating part of the whole procedure. It’s doable, but requires extra patience.
Finally, after much teeth gnashing, the OWC SSD was in!
Reassembly was surprisingly smooth and took me approximately 10 minutes. But, even as I threaded the last screw, I couldn’t help but second-guess my efforts. What if I messed up? What if my laptop dies? What if I can’t take the insanely fast speed? (Okay, maybe not that last question.)
It was time to find out whether or not my surgery was a success…
Next: The trials and travails of installing Lion on a freshly minted SSD. See you tomorrow.
–Krishna
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