But as you say, in your case it isn’t quite what you want as it will lose the data involved. Another is which has a free 5-day trial option. Run mac in windows. There are some software options that you can install on your Windows machine which may allow the HDD to be accessed. One of the most common is, which I think has a free version that will allow read-only access.

Thanks for all the replies and suggestions. I was sorely tempted to go for SSD on the advice given here but in considering the cost of an SSD then also needing to buy an external drive to store all my photos and videos due to the drive being smaller in size, I decided against it. I have now installed a WD Black 750GB drive to replace the 320GB drive.

There are many ways to clone a drive on Mac OS X, but none quite as simple and effective as Carbon Copy Cloner. It's our top pick for disk cloning utilities because it gets the job If that ever changes, we hope the price drops to something a bit more reasonable because we'd love to support the software.

I had taken a Time Machine backup using a USB storage drive from work, replace the hard drive, booted up the MacBook holding Command + R with the USB drive connected. I was then able to partition the new HDD and restore the Time Machine backup to the new drive. The MacBook is now working well, no HDD noise and it is working a little faster than before.

Thanks again. SSD is by far the best way to go. You can always use an external WD drive to boost your storage capacity.

I have a Samsung 840 Pro in mine and it is by far the best upgrade you can make for your Mac. You may find you need to install fan controller software if you are not fitting an Apple certified HDD or SSD. Your Mac monitors your HDD temperature through the HDD firmware, so if it can't detect this then it assumes the Drive is overheating and runs the fan on full speed to cool it down. The software overrides this and uses ambient sensors within the Mac to monitor the temperature These are freely available and work well. Thanks for the responses.

I think I may stay at 500GB and go for the WD Black rather than Blue which should improve performance a little. I understand that SSD would be great but I'd rather save the money & stay with SATA. The laptop is mainly used for web browsing and a little iMovie and iPhoto editing. Those 2 applications take forever to open (even with me doubling the RAM to 8GB last year) but not a big enough deal to drop the cash on an SSD. I think that is where the speed of the SSD would be most noticeable?

Will give Carbon Cloner a shot - does the free trial allow full use or do I have to buy the software? I do not know where you got this idea from. I've used both SSD and SSHD's in my Macbook pro and had no issues.

I DJ in very hot nightclubs with smoke fluid used all the time. The drive is a the front of the machine, and the fan is at the back and there is absolutely no way the fan has the ability to cool the drive down. Infact, the fan has the heatsink for the CPU as part of the design. The fan controller software will actually screw up the mac's control over the fan. SMART reports temperature on all drives these days. SSD would be much preferred, and breath new life into the MBP. CS23 wrote.what cloning software to use get OSX onto the new drive?No cloning.

Rather, fresh install the OS X version of choice on the drive when installed in the machine. After the install, reboot. Attach the old drive by the fastest connection possible (FW800 or USB2). Use Migration Assistant to draw all programs, data, and settings from the old drive.

Expect the transfer to take hours depending on transfer speed and total amount of data. I'll pile on with the SSD recommendations. Well worth it if you're planning to keep the MBP for another couple years. On Carbon Copy Cloner, yes the trial will allow you to do everything but the program is well worth the money. But on the storage size note, has anyone tried out the WD Black ² drives that combine a 120GB SSD and 1TB HD in the same 2.5 form factor for about the same price as a 250 GB Samsung 850 EVO?