MCE Technologies has announced the 320GB MobileStor Performance hard drive upgrade solution for all MacBook Pro and MacBook systems. Along with a high-performance, 320GB 2.5” internal SATA hard drive, the 320GB MCE MobileStor Performance hard drive upgrade solution includes an external, portable enclosure which has both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces for use with the original 2.5” SATA hard drive facilitating easy data transfer, SuperDuper! cloning/backup software, all tools required for installation, and an illustrated installation manual. The 320GB MobileStor Performance hard drive upgrade solution is priced at US$349 and is available for immediate shipment.
“The 320GB MobileStor Performance total hard drive upgrade solution provides not only an unprecedented hard drive capacity for the MacBook Pro and MacBook, but also provides every single piece of equipment necessary to successfully complete the hard drive upgrade and transfer all information from the original drive to the new one. It also allows for the continued use of the original SATA hard drive for backing up or general portable external storage,” stated Arnold Ramirez, president of MCE, in the press release.
The MCE 320GB MobileStor PerformanceTM Hard Drive Upgrade Solution features a rotational speed of 5400RPM, a maximum sustained data transfer rate of over 75MB/sec and burst transfer rates of 150MB/sec. The drive also features Native Command Queing (NCQ) in which the drive automatically reorders commands in the most efficient way based on the location of data on its platters in order to retrieve that data with the least latency. S.M.A.R.T. status monitoring is also supported and can warn of possible or impending disk failure long before one actually occurs allowing the user to take early action to keep their data safe. The drive’s S.M.A.R.T. status can be verified using Apple’s Disk Utility or System Profiler program.
The included portable, external enclosure is bootable on all Intel Macs and is provided in order to facilitate easy data transfer to the new hard drive as well as to allow continued usage of the original drive for general data storage or backup. The enclosure provides both FireWire and USB 2.0 interfaces for easy data transfer from the original drive to the new one using the included SuperDuper! cloning/backup software. An illustrated installation manual and all tools for performing the upgrade are also included.
More info here.
ya know, when I fist started in the graphic art field over 11 years ago, I was working at a place DT Minneapolis at the time, and I had an external drive hooked up to it, the thing as the size of a bread box – no joke – and it was ONE GIG… Even before that, as I was going to school, I bought my own Mac, and bought an Apple labeled external HD, and the price was $850. While not as big as the bread box, it only held 750 MEGS!
How times change…
Buddy, 750mgs? you must be a young pup. I bought a 200mg drive in 1993 that was HUGE for the time, and expensive too. I forget, but about $700 or so. I also had a 4ppm GCC PLPII laser printer that was as big as a house, noisy, and $800. And get this… it was a SCSI printer. The external drive was SCSI also.
Man, times have changed…
What a cool package. The tools to do it yourself and a way to keep using the old drive as well. At $349 this seems like a real winner.
I once knew a MEG, but found out she was really a Margaret…
WD’s 320GB drive is $199. I got it in December and upgraded my MacBook Pro pretty easily. I think I needed T5 or T6 Torq driver, but I already had that. Instructions are out there on the net. The upgrade went really smooth and I couldn’t be happier.
I’ve got the service manual that was leaked like a year ago onto the net with step by step instructions, but I’m nervous about opening my MBP up…. I think I’ll wait another year till the warranty runs out and then up it to what should be 500+ MB 2.5″ drives.
Thanks demenas.
I rather go with a reputable company like Western Digital anyway.
I got a pair of their enterprise level 10,000 RPM Raptors in a RAID 0 for a boot drive, absolutely wicked I/O. Been going strong now for over 5 years.
*knocks on wood*
SD owner in my opinion is a very strange person to boot. Someone I wouldn’t give a root password too if you know what I mean.
OK Steve and NeverFade..
I had a system that used four multi-headed hard drives, had to be stored in a refrigerated room, and stored 1.3 gigabytes of data…essentially 90 seconds of digital component video.
It was called the Quantel Harry. The first non-linear digital video editing system
My first Mac had… no hard drive, just a floppy (512k E Mac). I paid several hundred for a whopping 5 MB external drive that I thought I would never fill.
A few years later (1988) I bought a 60 meg hard drive for over $800… thought I would never fill it up.
Today, I have over 8 TB attached to my Mac Pro…. and need MORE…
things do change!
My first external was a 40 meg for $599, then I got a 100 meg for $700, my friends told me I was nuts, nobody needs a 100 meg drive! Then again, when I updated my Mac to 2.5 mb of RAM the school engineer that upgraded it for me asked why would anyone need 2.5 mb of RAM? This was all around 1990 or so. Yes, times have changed. Now if Apple would have only released new MBPs today, I guess we’ll be waiting until next Tuesday.
1985 – 512K “Fat” Mac (that was originally a 128K Mac). InfoWorld runs an ad for a 20 meg “kit” for $999. I ordered it, tore that box down and installed it. In consisted of pulling the CPU out of its socket and replacing it with a daughterboard that had a socket for the CPU and a SCSI connector. The drive sat in its own bay that was bolted to the cage that the analogue board sat in. It had two muffin fans and was wicked – a 512K Mac with an internal hard drive!! Now I have two 750GB drives RAIDED as a 1.5 in my “obsolete” G5 Tower. Runs the house, feeds the Apple TV and lets me do development at the same time. (And it easily can transfer 20 Megs in a second between drives). More than I ever dreamed of in terms of speed and storage and I have a 8x speed increase in the next generation of Mac Pros to look forward to.
Okay – you guys really blew my story away!
One more about our first printer, my brother and I had an Apple //e, and we played with PrintShop – but we couldn’t print anything. We bought our first printer an Epson which was DOT-MATRIX for $1,200. Of course, that was Mom and Dads money at the time, but wow! How expensive…
But, like I said, you guys topped my stories!
I do, however, love reminiscing and hearing stories of past technologies and what was paid for which technology at the time… seriously, kinda fun for me…
Is it just me or does this kit not do anything for me? The kit they offer I could buy piecemeal myself and it still doesn’t address the real issue with a MacBook Pro, the warranty is voided if you upgrade the hard drive. At least that is what I’ve heard, so correct me if I’m wrong. I’d love to be able to upgrade my Macbook Pro hard drive myself but I don’t want to void the warranty. Does anyone know about this?
Regarding the warranty, I can always put in the old hard drive back in. And if something like the screen dies, they have to honor the warranty regardless of what hard drive is in there. Remember there are laws regarding warranties that Apple can not override.
Note:
Super Duper is not yet fully compatible with Leopard. Hopefully, it will be soon.
Great, now the only thing left is for Apple to upgrade their own hard drives. zOMG, maybe next Tuesday!
Been waiting for a MBP upgrade since November.
I graduated from a cassette tape built into an Interact computer (16KB of RAM, 4698 bytes free after loading BASIC) to an Apple II+ with not one, but TWO floppy drives (140KB per 5-1/4″ disk). That was a big deal because you could copy files without needing to do the ‘floppy dance’ to copy, then write, then copy, then write…an so on.
The early HDDs that I remember were 5MB, fairly large, cost a bundle and weighed quite a few pounds. Now you can carry 800 times as much on a 4GB USB stick smaller than a pack of gum for $30 or so, and 3200 times as much if you want to shell out a couple of hundred for a 16GB version. That’s quite a change in 25 years.
Modern desktop computers make ‘supercomputers’ of early 90’s vintage look slow. We only dreamed of the photorealistic 3-D graphics that kids now take for granted.
It’s rather ironic that most of those uncounted quadrillions of additional clock cycles go to waste pushing screensavers and chugging through MS Office.
Amateurs!
1985, Mac 512K.
SuperMac Dataframe 10MB SCSI drive.
UCLA discount: $1300
Yep, enough storage for 3 iTunes songs for $1300.
That didn’t include the $500 addition to the Mac to put the SCSI port on the back.
Oh, the kids have it easy today…
SuperDuper! will be ready soon.
Very soon.
I too remember writing BASIC programs as a College Freshman on Apple ][, RS TRS-80 & Commodore PET computers to cassette tapes. God, that was a long time ago…
In the 1980’s I was running a GE 9800 CT Scanner run by a Data General Eclipse MiniComputer with a hard drive the size of a washing machine. Took a couple of minutes after power up to spin consistently enough to use. Don’t remember the capacity, but it was probably south of a GB. $1 million+ machine.
Things have changed.
http://www.atpm.com/9.09/hello.shtml
I’m waiting for the new Intel ‘Cloverfield’ chips.
Those puppies are monsters!
I remember using punch cards.
My first computer was a Sinclair ZX81 with 1k!!!!! I never did get the 16k RAM Pack.
I still have the ZX81 too.