I remember when downloading anything
took forever but nowadays I can download
an entire season of a TV show in less
than an hour now but downloading is as
easy as it is I find that I drastically
underestimate the amount of hard drive
space I need in a computer and as a
result I find that I'm always needing to
upgrade my hard drive hi I'm MJ with
iFixit and today I'm going to show you
how to upgrade the hard drive in a 13
inch unibody MacBook Pro this video is a
great overview of the process but of
course as always you'll want to follow
the step-by-step instructions and the
repair guide on our site when you're
replacing your hard drive the version
that I'm working on is a mid 2011
version and while the process is really
similar in previous iterations I'd still
recommend following the repair guide for
your specific computer when you're doing
your repair that all being said I'm
going to get started by getting all of
my parts and tools together for this
repair you're going to need a plastic
spudger a phillips double zero
screwdriver and a t6 Torx driver both of
which I got from our 54 piece bit driver
kit and of course you're going to need a
replacement a hard drive or a hard drive
upgrade kit to get started I'm going to
go ahead and remove all of the Phillips
screws that are holding the lower case
in place and as soon as those screws
around the lower case should just pop
right off
okay so right away we can see the hard
drive in the bracket that's holding it
in place but before we touch that we're
going to go ahead and disconnect the
battery from the logic board the last
thing we want is residual electricity
just kind of floating around in here so
use your plastic spudger and kind of
gently pry up one side and then the
other like you're walking the connector
out of the socket
now the bath stone we can start on the
hard drive the screws in the hard drive
bracket are retaining screws so don't
bother trying to get them all the way
out once they loose enough the bracket
should just lift right out with the
bracket out the hard drive should lift
out pretty easily but it's still
connected via the hard drive cable so
we'll go ahead and disconnect that and
you might think that because it's free
we're all done but actually we've got to
transfer these for hard drive retaining
posts to our new hard drive and you can
remove them with your t6 Torx driver
all that's left for me to do is install
my new hard drive and reassemble my
computer if you have any questions about
getting the data from your old hard
drive to your new hard drive we made a
video for you that covers the process
and we will link to it right there
course you can find all of the parts and
tools for this and many other repairs at
ifixit.com and if you run into any
problems during your repairs there are
lots of solutions in the MacBook Pro
repair guide on our site if you're
watching this on youtube don't forget to
subscribe to our channel and follow us
on twitter at twitter.com/randymckown
thanks