in which a couple of MacBook Pros get bigger disks

A small task during last weekend was recovering the disk on a silver keyboard MacBook Pro. It had been to the Apple Store and the Genius there had said it was unrecoverable and that the machine was out of warranty.

I had a quick look and realised that the disk had also been reformatted (Erased) so we effectively had an empty machine.

But it was late so I abandoned thinking about it.

Then, the next day I was walking along an unfamiliar street and happened upon a Maplin's store.

"I wonder?" I thought.

They did. They sold inexpensive SATA laptop disks that would surely fit the MacBook.

That way, if I reloaded the software, at least the disk would be a larger capacity and 5 years newer.

This was the earlier generation MacBook with the so-called 'discrete' body. It still looks pretty elegant and without many unsightly screws holding the body together.

Except...there are a lot. Most are easy to remove, but there are also two Torq TR6 in the middle of the back of the chassis. These need a special screwdriver to get out. Or (not recommended) a lot of pressure with a phillips screwdriver.

Anyway, after carefully removing the keyboard I could get to the disk. Another four screws and it was out and the new one swapped in. Put it all back together again and reload Apple's Snow Leopard OS/X and iLife from the Family Edition DVDs.

And ta-da its back like a new (empty) machine - except the original had a 100Gb disk and it now has 500Gb.

I couldn't resist getting a second disk for my 17inch MacBook Pro, which only had 120Gb and now has 750Gb after using superduper to clone the original disk before I installed the replacement.