I’ve been doing a lot of photography with my Canon 5D Mark II 21MP camera, and each image taken in RAW format is about 25MB! So, needless to say, I’ve been using up a whole lot of hard drive space. Even though I upgraded my MacBook Pro to a 500GB drive a month ago, it’s only got less than 100GB left on it. So, I went looking for MORE!

Well, it turns out that Seagate is making a 640GB drive which will actually fit in a standard laptop. While there are a couple of other 2.5″ drives that are larger, they are also thicker and won’t work in most notebooks. So, the Seagate was what I wanted! Only problem – they aren’t selling it yet!

Doah! Well, no matter. Because I found out that I could buy a Seagate FreeAgent Go 640 GB USB 2.0 Portable External Hard Drive from Amazon.com, and being the warranty voiding freak that I am, I had no problem with trying to rip the drive out of this case to stick in my laptop (the video of me doing just that is below). Here’s the Seagate PDF on the FreeAgent Go for more info.

Well, guess what. It worked! And now I’m posting this article from the world’s first laptop computer with a 640GB hard drive! Of course, that happens to be my 17″ MacBook Pro. Oh, and if you read along I’ll show you how you can do it too!
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Twitter Comments

	RobertVinet This is my kind of hack: "The World's First 640GB Notebook" http://onemansblog.com/640gb (via @johnpoz)
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	prettylink RT @johnpoz: Introducing the World's First 640GB Notebook (It's a MacBook Pro)! http://onemansblog.com/640gb
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	robocco woohoo: RT @johnpoz:Introducing the World 19s First 640GB Notebook (It 19s MY MacBook Pro)! - http://onemansblog.com/640gb
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	johnpoz Introducing the World 19s First 640GB Notebook (It 19s MY MacBook Pro)! - http://onemansblog.com/640gb
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I recently purchased the Thermaltake BlacX eSATA Hard Drive USB Docking Station from Amazon so that I could use an external hard drive for backups and /or disk recovery needs.

This particular device is capable of either USB connectivity or eSATA, meaning that it can be hooked to your PC at the same speed as an internal drive, making for radically increased performance!

Well, all I have to say is that the BlaX docking station works like a charm, and its good looking too! So if you are in need of a USB hard drive docking station, i highly recommend that you go pick one up. Amazon’s currently got them for $29.99 after rebate, so you’re not going to do any better than that. Enjoy!

Six months ago I published a guide to the complete disassembly of the Creative Zen Vision W personal media player. At the end of that post I theorized as to how one could upgrade the hard drive when larger ones came available.

Well now, thanks to the generosity of Aaron Vronko and RapidRepair.com for supplying a 100GB drive; and Dan, one of my loyal readers, for playing guinea pig using my previous post to repair his Zen, I now have the largest drive in any Zen W in the world – and the theory is now a reality!

Here is how it was done.
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After my previous review of the Zen Vision W I had a reader Ask the Man the following question:

Hi,

I just got myself a Zen W last X-mas. I think it’s fantastic as well. I bought the 30gb instead of the 60gb thinking I could probably upgrade the hard drive to a higher capacity eventually.

Do you think it’s possible or know what kind of hard disk format they have in those machines?

Thanks One Man!

No, thank YOU for the question! As far as the answer is concerned, there’s only one way to find out… crack that puppy open!
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