halifax1

I currently have a MacBook with a 120GB HDD.

I have 31GB of free space right now.

I'm thinking about adding a new Boot Camp partition to my drive, and install Windows 7 Professional on it, but I'm not sure what my best route should be.

So I just make a small Windows 7 partition for Boot Camp, or should I clone my current drive to my 160GB External, and then put that External drive into my MacBook and use it as my Internal drive, and then create a 40GB Boot Camp partition, which will make my Internal Macintosh HD still 120GB, and it'll be like using the 120GB drive, only I'll have a 40GB partition just for Boot Camp instead of using the space out of the 120GB.

Does that make sense?

Do you guys think I should do that? I've never taken apart my MacBook, and I'm worried about replacing the drive, but I would like more space for both OS X and Windows 7.

__________________

sdla4ever

I suggest just putting down $130 for the 7200.4 500 GB drive! or there are $80 drives that are like 320 GB

and yours is a white macbook so its simple it will take you like 10 minutes

__________________

halifax1

I was thinking about that earlier, but I'm almost in debt and have very little money to spend on a new drive, and so the best I can at the time is to replace it with the 160GB drive.

Is there any fantastic guides on replacing the HDD on the MacBook 13"?

__________________

graphicsman

i dont think you can do this without running the parallel port for windows..

EDIT:
and also i think the HDD might be a different connection as is GPUs for either mac or windows. I know from past experience the card placement is an inch off. Before you do this, id check in on it more because i dont think its a simple plug and play

__________________

We Are Gr33n Machine

halifax1

What are you talking about..?

You can install Windows 7 perfectly fine with Boot Camp 3 with the drivers from the Snow Leopard disk.

__________________

sdla4ever

huh? if its bootcamp he should be aqble to just clone the whole drive to his new one.

But id suggest changing the HDD's then boot camp just to avoid issues.

ya ifixit.com

http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Repair/M...lacement/514/1

__________________

graphicsman

if i were you, i wouldnt tear it down, cause ive HEARD they are a pain and would just install it on the external drive and run the parallel port to it, that should work

__________________

We Are Gr33n Machine

graphicsman

ok, bootcamp must be what they use, ive just always used a software to enter into windows. hell i just do designs guys and use macs often, lol

__________________

We Are Gr33n Machine

halifax1

I have no idea what parallel port you're talking about.

Plus, you cannot install Windows via Boot Camp to an external drive.

My question was simply should I upgrade or not. I've already got my 120GB drive cloned with SuperDuper to my 160GB drive. They're the exact same drive, only larger in size. The 160GB drive came directly out of the same MacBook model as the one I'm using now.

Parallels is a Virtual Machine program, and it does work well, but Boot Camp is Apple's own version of running Windows on Mac hardware, and is 100% supported and is not a Virtual machine.

__________________

sdla4ever

bootcamp is built in a MAC OS X manages the partition to you and you can choose which OS you want to boot into. Simple yet runs amazing!

__________________