Now that we’ve got upgrade installation videos for the Late ‘09 MacBook and iMacs, we are turning our attention to the other upgraded model – the Mac mini. While we’re hard at work on the upgrade videos for the new Server model, those of you with the standard mini aren’t being left out in the cold. In fact, the videos for your mini are ready to go!

As it turns out, the internals of the Late ‘09 mini are identical to those of the Early ‘09 model. That means the take-apart is exactly the same, too. So whether you want to put in a larger hard drive or bump up the RAM, the free video instructions can be found both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube channel.

Of course, if you decide after watching the process, you’d rather have this upgrade professionally done, we can help you out there, too. Our Installation Service offers swift turnaround and professional results, all at a reasonable price.

Even though your Mac mini isn’t one of Apple’s “flagship” products, it doesn’t mean it can’t be a heck of a workhorse. Maximize your mini’s performance with upgrades and a little help from OWC.

One of the biggest changes in Apple’s lineup last month was the addition of two more memory slots to the new iMacs, giving them a total of four. This gives the new iMacs the capability to handle up to 16GB of RAM. While adding more memory will always improve performance, 16GB really makes a difference.

Apple has generally made the iMac’s memory easy to upgrade, and this revision is no different. Some people, though, like to see it done first before diving in themselves. That’s why this week’s addition to our Instructional Series of videos is all about adding memory to your Late 2009 iMac! It doesn’t matter if you have a 21.5″ or 27″ model, or whether you have a Core 2 Duo, i5, or i7 processor, the process is the same for all of them and we show you how to do it.

As always, you can find this video (and all of our instructional videos) either in our Tech Center or on our YouTube channel.

Continuing on with our series of instructional videos, this week we take a look at another common upgrade for the 2009 MacBook—putting in a new hard drive. You can always use more storage space, so adding a new hard drive is something you may want to consider if you’re “feeling the pinch” of too little room.

Fortunately, unlike with the new iMacs, upgrading the hard drive on the new MacBooks is easy to do. All you need are the right materials and the knowledge of how to perform the upgrade.

First, you’ll need a compatible hard drive.

You’ll also want to have the appropriate tools – in this case, a #00 Phillips screwdriver and a Torx T6 screwdriver (both of which are available in the NewerTech 11-piece Toolkit).

If you plan on transferring the data from your old drive, you’ll need some way of accessing it, either via a docking device like the NewerTech Voyager Q or S2, an external drive enclosure, or a simple USB adapter, such as the NewerTech Universal Drive Adapter. Personally, I’d suggest the enclosure, as it lets you continue to use the old drive for other purposes.

The final thing you need is knowledge, and that brings us back to where we came in. Our latest instructional video will walk you step-by-step through the installation process, and you can find it both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Just last week, Apple released a bunch of new Macs. You know what that means; it’s time for more upgrade videos!

To start out this new batch of upgrade instructions, we’re going to show you how to upgrade the memory in the new MacBook.

If you’re a regular reader of the OWC Blog, you should know by now that—dollar for dollar—adding more memory to your system gives you the best performance boost for the investment. Combine that with Snow Leopard’s ability to utilize memory better than its predecessors, and you have very little reason for not putting as much RAM into your Mac as you can reasonably afford.

Fortunately, Apple made upgrading the memory in the new MacBooks incredibly easy to do. Just remove the bottom cover, replace the memory and then close it all up. In no time at all, you’ll be able to upgrade the stock 2GB of memory to 4GB or even 8GB!

Sounds simple enough, doesn’t it? See for yourself by checking out the video in our Tech Center or on our YouTube Channel.

All you hardware junkies out there who want to be in on the “new hardware take-apart” game, it’s time to rejoice. After a brief hiatus, we’ve got a new video in our Instructional Series for your viewing pleasure.

This time around, we’re taking a look at the brand-spankin’-new OWC Value Line 5.25″ Enclosure Kit for SATA Optical Drives. Whether you’re looking to roll your own external Blu-ray Disc recorder, make use of the SATA optical drive you removed from your Mac Pro in an attempt to cram as many hard drives into your Mac Pro as possible, or something else entirely, this enclosure is a great option at a great price.

Better still, it’s not just easy on your wallet; it’s easy to assemble, too. Don’t believe me? Check out the installation video, either in our Tech Center or on our YouTube Channel.

We’ve got a new Installation Video this week. This time around, we show you how to install a hard drive in the Newer Technology miniStack.

We all love the miniStack. Its small form factor, support for large SATA hard drives, built-in USB and FireWire powered hubs and all the most popular connections make it an affordable, easy-to-integrate storage solution. I should know; I have a pair of them at home connected to my AirPort Extreme as AirDisks.

Of course, not everybody needs a whole new storage solution; sometimes you just need to drop an existing 3.5” hard drive into a new enclosure.

Fortunately, you can still get all the features of the miniStack while using your own drive. All you need is a miniStack 0GB kit, your own SATA hard drive and this new video, and you’ll be up and running in no time.

Check out the new video, either in our Tech Center or at our YouTube Channel and see how easy it actually is to install, and stay tuned… we’ve got a fun new video in the works that we think you’ll enjoy; we know we’re enjoying putting it together.

Yowza! It’s been one heck of a week around here, as we all get ready for the release of Snow Leopard. I’d go into details, but it’s much more fun to leave it hanging at that in order to build suspense. :-D

To distract you, I’ll remind you of the fact that it has been a couple of weeks since we’ve introduced a new Instructional Video. Well, I’m glad to say that we’re back on schedule with our videos, and have a new one for you this week.

This time around, we’ll show you how to install a pair of 3.5” SATA hard drives in an OWC Mercury Elite-AL Pro RAID Enclosure. Whether you’re using the Triple or Quad interface model, this video shows you how easy it is to drop a pair of drives inside.

Following these instructions, you’ll have a nice, fast RAID 0 going in no time.

As always, you can find this video (along with all our other instructional videos) both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Another week has gone by, which means we’ve got another installation video for you.

This week’s “cinematic experience” guide details installing a SATA hard drive into the OWC Mercury Elite Pro Classic enclosure. This single-drive enclosure has a traditional assembly procedure in the form of screws, but also has an “align and slide” procedure which once you see it done, makes perfect sense.

It should be noted that while the enclosure shown in the video is for SATA drives, the only real difference, installation-wise, between the SATA model shown in the video and the older, IDE/ATA enclosures, is the internal connector type.

If you have an existing Mercury Elite Pro Classic solution that you’d like to put a larger hard drive in or you wish to DIY with a new “Add Your Own Drive” Kit, you can find the video in our Tech Center as well as on our YouTube Channel.

By popular request, we’re taking a short break from the “Mac Upgrade” series of instructional videos and moving on to our own products. That’s right, over the next few weeks or so, we’ll be showing you how to install/replace the hard drive(s) in all our SATA-based enclosures.

This week, we’re starting out with our most popular enclosure: The Mercury Elite-AL.

Keep in mind that this video is for the most recent iteration of this enclosure; instructions for the enclosure design sold prior to December 2008 will be in a separate video, to be released near the end of the series.

As always, you can find our instructional videos both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

It’s Friday, and that means we’ve got another Instructional video for you! As you might expect, this week we’re installing a new hard drive in a the mid-2009 revision of the 15” MacBook Pro.

Upgrading the hard drive in your MacBook Pro not only allows you to store more files, but  it also can improve performance if you’re upgrading from a 5400 RPM drive to a 7200 RPM drive.

As usual, you can find the new video both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

Next week, by popular demand, we’ll be starting a series on installing drives in our external enclosures. While it’s common knowledge that our enclosures are made of high-quality components and materials, we also believe that “quality” also includes giving you complete, easy-to-follow instructions on how to assemble and use them.

Stay tuned; as each one becomes available, we’ll announce them here.

It’s the end of another week, and you know what that means: another OWC Instructional Video!

This time around we show you how to upgrade the Memory in the mid-2009 15” MacBook Pro.

These MacBook Pros can take up to 8GB of memory, doubling the maximum capacity of the previous model. This is a big boost for those using memory-hungry applications, like many graphics and audio suites, on your MacBook Pros.

They’re not the only ones that can benefit, though. Snow Leopard (with its 64-bit architecture and advanced resource management) looming on the horizon, larger amounts of memory will be more efficiently handled, increasing the overall performance of your system.

Get ahead of the game and upgrade your memory today. OWC has everything you need, from the correct memory for these models to our step-by-step installation videos, which can be found in our Tech Center and on our YouTube channel.

It’s a little later than expected, but the latest Instructional Video is ready to go! This time around, we’re showing you how to replace the hard drive in the new 13” MacBook Pro.

I can hear you saying, “Why on earth would I need to upgrade the hard drive? I just got it.” This may be true, but the benefit is twofold. First, as the old axiom goes, you can never have too large a hard drive; no matter how large it is, it will fill up eventually.

The second place you can see a benefit is if you put in a faster hard drive. The faster the hard drive is, the faster the system can access data it needs. The stock drives in the 13” MacBook Pro are 5400 RPM drives. According to our benchmark testing, upgrading to a 7200 RPM hard drive resulted in up to a 6% increase in performance in some tests, particularly the ones involving disk-intensive tasks.

Whatever the reason, our new video shows you how to perform this upgrade step-by-step. As always, you can find the videos both in our Tech Center and on our YouTube Channel.

We’ve got new hardware from Apple, and that can mean only one thing: new instructional videos!

This time around, we show you how to put more memory in your 13″ MacBook Pro. After all, these new releases can take up to 8GB. We’ve proven time and time again that more memory gives you better performance, so with OWC’s great memory prices, there’s no reason for you to stick with the 2GB that Apple sticks you with in the low-end model.

Upgrading the memory in MacBook Pro is incredibly simple to do. If you can use a screwdriver (preferably one from the Newer Technology 11-Piece Tool Kit), you have all the skills necessary to perform this upgrade.

Don’t believe me? Check out our how-to video, either in our Tech Center or on our YouTube Channel, and see how easy it is.

It’s almost as easy as pumping gas.

Its been a while, but we’ve got another video ready to go for you. This time around, we’re taking a look at one of our most common questions: how to remove the front bezel from a 5.25” optical drive.

Why would you need to do this? It turns out that on every tray-loading desktop Mac since the QuickSilver, the opening for the drive tray is extremely narrow. Installing a new drive right out of the box will result in the tray being unable to eject, due to this narrow opening. Fortunately, the solution for all these Mac models is the same. Removing the plastic bezel on the front of the drive narrows the front of the tray enough for it to fit though the opening.

The process is simple enough. Manually eject the drive tray. Push gently to detach the two tabs on the underside of the drive tray. Slide the bezel off. Close the tray. Sometimes, though, its easier to just see it being done, and so we have this latest video.

As usual, you can find the video both in our Tech Center, and on our YouTube channel.

There are very few certainties in life. Death and taxes are, of course, the most popular, but right up there is the fact that – barring mechanical failure – your hard drive is going to fill up.

With all the music, movies, files and other stuff we tend to collect on our Macs, it really is a matter of time before you start running out of space. While it is fairly simple to gain some more space by cleaning out some of the accumulated junk, sometimes its preferable just to upgrade to a larger hard drive instead.

OWC has instructional videos for replacing the hard drive in a large number of Macs. This week, we’ve added yet another one: The 17″ MacBook Pro (non-unibody). If you’ve been feeling the hard drive pinch, but haven’t yet made the leap, check out the video in our Tech Center or on our YouTube channel, and see how easy it is.

Now that we’ve covered the basic upgrades for the new 2009 Macs, its time to get back to showing you how to upgrade an older machine so you can still enjoy using an older Mac while it while you save up your pennies (or, as Microsoft would have you believe, sell a kidney or your first-born) for a new one.

This time around, we’re swapping out the optical drive in a pre-Unibody 17″ MacBook Pro. Over time, with a number of different machines, I’ve had quite a few stock optical drives fail on me, so knowing how to replace one is always a good skill to have.

As always, you can check out the new videos either in our Tech Center, or on our YouTube Channel.

A couple of weeks ago, we showed you how to add a PCIe card to the Early ‘09 Mac Pro. that’s cool and all, but what if all you need is a simple eSATA port? Sure, there’s some darn good PCIe cards out there that will provide eSATA connectivity, but what if you’re on a budget?

For half the cost of the least expensive eSATA PCIe card, you can use Newer Technology’s eSATA Extender Cable Adapter to re-route the spare optical drive’s SATA connection to the outside.

It’s a straightforward installation, and when you’re done, you can enjoy a high-speed connection to your favorite eSATA device. If you don’t have one, I’d suggest the new Mercury Elite-AL Pro Qx2. They’re pretty slick and will take advantage of that new eSATA port’s speed.

You can find the videos both on our Early ‘09 Mac Pro Installation Video page, as well as on our YouTube Channel. While you’re there, feel free to drop a line or leave a comment to let us know how we’re doing.

This week’s instructional video shows you how to add a second optical drive to the 2009 Mac Pro. It’s a real simple process, requiring only a small screwdriver and a paper clip.

This is a useful upgrade, especially if you do a lot of disc burning and/or duplication, or simply want to add Blu-Ray data storage and movie creation (sorry, still no playback support) to your Mac.

Check out how to perform this upgrade either at our YouTube channel or at the 2009 Mac Pro page in our newly-redesigned Video section!