I had finally ordered and received everything I needed to do a couple upgrades on the MacBook Pro that I had previously moved over to Linux, now it was just time to get in and do the work!
As a quick recap, these were the planned upgrades:
- Switching the 500 GB HDD to a 1 TB SSD
- Swapping out the RAM to move from 4 GB to 16 GB
- Doing a refresh on the thermal paste
- A general clean of the inside to remove any dust/debris with some compressed air
The general idea was, obviously, performance improvement. The switch from HDD to SSD would increase read & write speeds, the additional RAM would help when running more application/in high demand situations, and the thermal paste refresh/clean up would make for a better environment within the device itself.
Before opening the computer itself, I prepped the new 1 TB SSD. To do this, I used a USB enclosure that would allow it to function like an external drive. Once I had that in place, I used an application called Clonezilla that boots directly from the BIOS. Effectively, Clonezilla copied everything on my 500 GB HDD over to the 1 TB SSD. This was a smooth process, but it copies it exactly. This meant I had to play with a few things to get the additional unallocated 500 GB to be recognized. The solution was to delete the swap partition, merge the existing filing system with the additional 500GB, then recreate the swap partition that we had deleted. This was simple, but made for something that had to be fixed later.
With all that in order, it was time to open this thing up and start these upgrades. Electronics tool kit in one hand, fingers crossed in the other... I was going in. I'd looked into some videos ahead of time and had the following notes in my head.
- There are a lot of different sized screws involved here, I needed a way to keep them separate. I don't know why, but my mind jumped to using one of those pill organizers that you see elderly people with. Jokes were made at my expense after buying it, but it worked out just fine!
- The simplest change was the RAM, just pop open two tabs, and you can easily remove the existing sticks and put the 2 new ones in
- Swapping the HDD to a SSD was also easy, just required a bar to be taken out. It also was a bit more delicate as you needed to consider the ribbon connecting it all to the motherboard.
- The most complicated was by far the refresh of the thermal paste. It involved disconnecting everything from the motherboard. This had to be done as the thermal paste needed to be refreshed on the other side of it.
That plan quickly went off track. I popped a few things off the board, it felt fine. This wasn't my first time opening up a laptop... but then I got to one section where things didn't feel right. The video I was following saw things all pop off quite easily. For me? The spot felt a bit "spongy" and didn't want to come off the board. I didn't want to force it. I was absolutely not doing this portion of the project and risking damage. I decided to save the thermal paste refresh for another time and jump right to the SSD and RAM.
The SSD & RAM upgrades, as mentioned above, were easy. To keep it simple, just a mater of disconnecting old hardware and connecting in the new hardware.
Everything was in, back panel screwed back on... now the moment of truth. Will it recognize the new hardware? Did trying to disconnect that one area that I decided again break my whole computer? Time to fire up the laptop and see!
Everything was great! Except one thing - remember earlier when I mentioned that expanding the storage and recreating the swap drive caused me issues? Everything booted up just fine, but it would spend a minute and a half trying to find that swap drive. It couldn't. Why? The setup I copied from that 500 GB HDD had the swap in another location, not in the location where I had recreated it. The fix, once someone explained the concept in a way that clicked, was simple. I effectively just needed to grab the new location of the drive, and override some of the text in the boot logic to look at that location instead of the old one.
One thing in the plan that I did not do was blow the dust out of the fan/components inside the computer. I realized after the installation I didn't have anything like compressed air handy to blow it out. It opens up easy enough that I'll just tackle that some day soon.
About a day into things with the upgrades, the performance changes are drastic. It's day and night. Considering in the last month I've gone from a fancy paperweight to a fully functional, smooth sailing machine while putting less than $200.00 CAD into it... saying I'm happy woud be an understatement!
Comments
Post a Comment