up vote 2 down vote favorite
share [g+] share [fb]

I've recently had a macbook laptop fall into my possession. It belonged to a friend of mine, but she doesn't want it any more because it doesn't work. From what I understand, the hard drive stopped working in it; more particularly it emitted the distinctive hard drive "death rattle" sound and then the computer stopped being able to boot to mac OS X.

I have the laptop here with a dead hard drive in it. Would it be possible to go on newegg.com or somewhere of the sort and order a new laptop hard drive, say, a Western Digital Scorpio:

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136197

and install it in the laptop? And even if I did that, I don't have a mac OS X installation CD. Could I just load Windows 7 on it instead?

Thanks in advance for the help!

link|improve this question
feedback

2 Answers

up vote 1 down vote accepted

The short answer is yes, but it's not going to be exactly like installing on a PC.

Related question with more information here.

Some very important considerations there you should read before proceeding!

link|improve this answer
feedback
up vote -1 down vote

If the mackbook is Intel CPU based then yes.

link|improve this answer
1  
As he said, if your laptop is an Intel CPU based system, you should be able to: apple.com/macosx/compatibility – r0ca Jul 27 '10 at 17:26
2  
-1 - It's not straightforward as there are some very significant differences. I.e. no BIOS. – JNK Jul 27 '10 at 17:29
I apologize that you are so sensitive. I'm not criticizing all your posts AFAIK, but I'm not checking to see what all you post. Your short answer here made it sound like he could just run an install when in fact it is a lot more complicated. Yesterday you endorsed a product by copying and pasting marketing materials from their website without crediting the source, which I thought was misleading. No offense intended! – JNK Jul 27 '10 at 19:42
feedback

Your Answer

 
or
required, but never shown
discard

Not the answer you're looking for? Browse other questions tagged or ask your own question.