My Problem

My hard drive stopped responding, I formatted, tried to install new OS but I could not boot my MacBook Pro. And also it had run out of space so it was time for a new hard drive.

My Fix

Ordered my new hybrid hard drive from ifixit, arrived within two days on international shipping and it took fairly little effort using the step by step guide from ifixit and the youtube video available for repair guides. Within 15 minutes, i was ready to reinstall my OS.

My Advice

Excellent resource for repairs. Keep up the good work.

My Problem

Apple no longer markets a 17" MacBook Pro. But I'm a video editor—I need as much screen real estate as I can get, on a burnin' fast portable platform that can handle 4K (UHD) video streams. AND my original Hard Drive was only 120GB. With Avid Media Composer and Adobe Creative Cloud apps installed—there was no room for the latest OSX version! My only hope was to upgrade: A 1TB SSD for the System and a 2 TB SSD for Project Files.

My Fix

Nervous at crackin' and hackin' the machine with which I make my living—especially because (competitor) OWC had told me what I was trying to do was impossible—I held my breath and dove into iFixit's procedure. iFixit's Essential Electronics Toolkit was superb: Nice assortment of magnetic tools tips, just the right effectors and widgets, and a nice professional case (for very little $$). Twenty-five minutes later, my old Mac woke up, scratched it's head for a moment—then took off like the proverbial bat out of Hades!

My Advice

If replacing the System drive with an upgraded device (e.g. SSD), use SuperDuper to clone. It's nearly impossible to get a clean disk image using Apple's (updated) onboard Disk Utility. And Carbon Copy cloner was, well, so crotchety to work with, I gave up.

Also: You may read/hear that a 6Gb/s SSD will not work in the optical drive bay of a 2011 MacBook Pro (8,1 - 8,2 - 8,3). Mine does. (Possibly your mileage may vary.)

I do not know if iFixit regards OWC as a competitor. I will only say that the OWC solution was more than 2X the price, and OWC's documentation was squirrelly on this particular upgrade.

My Problem

Slow Macbook for everything! Would start an app and walk away to wait until ready. Booting up was worse.

My Fix

Followed the steps with no problem - faster than I expected.

My Advice

Make sure you have the needed tools and set-up a system for holding the screws since they are different sizes. I used small bowls with masking tape labeled with Step # and screw size. Helped in putting back together.

My Problem

Need to replace old HDD with a fusion drive for better performance to run the Zoom Rooms video conferencing application.

My Fix

No problems at all. The guide was very concise and easy to follow.

My Advice

No additional advice besides what the guide gives. Just be sure to line up the threads of the hard drive with the holes in the antenna properly before you start reassembly.

My Problem

I use my Macbook Pro, early 2011 13", for research that requires me to have dropbox, excel, word and some other programs open all at once. It used to be fine but slow, but in the past few months it was unbearable. I'd have to open programs and then leave the room for 20 minutes, come back and they'd be done launching. Such a pain.

My Fix

I have literally never once opened a piece of computing machinery in my life. I was really worried I'd do something horrible, but seriously this was so easy. And now I have this cool toolkit in case I ever need to take apart anything with tiny screws again! It was really interesting to look inside my computer and finally get where all the parts connected. I had backed up with time machine on an external drive the night before, so that, and the few hours it took to restore my files on the new drive, took the longest. I'm really happy with how responsive it is and how quickly it boots up and launches programs now.

My Advice

On the reboot, I didn't realize I needed to format the new hard drive before I restored from my external hard drive. So that was a scary few minutes while I panicked and tried to look up the answer on my phone. I figured it out! Also if I had really been thinking, I would've upped the RAM too while I was in there. Last thing: I took the pills out of my daily pillbox and used that to put the screws in while I worked-- a tip from the comment section of the repair page. That worked like a charm.

My Problem

My laptop had become increasingly slow and bogged down over the years. I was considering replacing it to capitalize on the fancier new lappys with SSD drives in em, when my nephew gave me the idea to just replace the drive. After a bit of Googling around I found the iFixit video to do just this for my exact older model Mac laptop!

My Fix

The video made it seem very easy and I experienced the same when going along with it on my repair. I've gotta say that the repair kit itself was of MUCH higher quality than I anticipated! Very pleasantly surprised by that. :) All this coupled with the step by step video and picture walkthrough made it all so easy!

My Advice

Be sure to follow all the steps! iFixit makes it super simple with the video and step by step picture walkthroughs!