A General Question about Linux on Mac

**Keaton_Brown** · February 27th, 2014

Hello to all!

I'm thinking about buying parts of a MacBook Pro from eBay and making myself a better Linux machine than my current laptop. The specific one I'm looking at will need a new keyboard and hard drive, but otherwise has no physical issues. The keyboards are cheap enough, so my only concern is I don't really want to shell out the dough for an Apple hard drive. I know OS X requires certain hardware to function, but if I'm not going to be running OS X on the laptop at all, do I need the special Apple hard drives, or could I just get any SATA drive that fits?

Thanks!

**gvirtue2** · February 28th, 2014

I have replaced dozens of hard drives on all sorts of Macintosh computers ranging from a Macintosh IIfx to my current 2011 13" MBP. Not once has any Apple operating system given me grief over my choice of hard drive brand.

Your mileage may very but unless they have changed something very recently they are pretty brand agnostic when it comes to storage media.

Grant

**jorgeblasio** · March 1st, 2014

There's no such thing as a "special Apple Hard Drive", all Macs use standard SATA hard drives.

**tgalati4** · March 1st, 2014

There are specifications that Apple recommends for replacements. Many newer drives will meet those performance specifications. If you put in a slower drive, you might encounter issues. Mac hardware tends to be high performance and not meeting specs can cause issues.

**gvirtue2** · March 9th, 2014

Except of course when they start with slow drives. My MBP for example has a 5400 RPM drive, and just enough screws to scare me away from replacing it. The computer is getting on in years now so I probably won't bother, but Apple does supply some pretty pokey drives sometimes. Ruins the whole experience, sadly.

**d4m1r** · March 11th, 2014

Harddrives are one of the pieces of hardware that OS X does not care about really. Any will run with it. But if you won't be running OS X anyway, you don't need to worry about any of this

**xicarusx** · March 13th, 2014

Any SATA drive that fits in the bezel will work. There is usually a thickness requirement when dealing with Apple.

Apple products don't have high specifications. Their hardware is not made from some special high performance components. Yes there are a few requirements to meet when replacing components, but nothing extreme. Any replaceable component can be replaced with better or equivalent by a 3rd part vendor part.