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Seeing my partner’s brand new MacBook Pro came with a spanking new 200GB harddisk I thought my measly 120GB disk was just not enough.

I found a nice Western Digital 320GB harddisk that was quite cheap, and set about taking my Macbook Pro apart. Note to self, not a good idea to start such projects on the coffee table when drunk. The procedure went fairly smoothly since I had my Torx screwdrivers handy.

With the old harddisk out and the new one in I started installing a new copy of Mac OS X. I had my trusty USB harddisk recovery tool handy so I was able to plug the old 120GB disk into the Mac’s USB port and use the Migration Assistant to copy over my profile to the new drive.

I just love the Migration Assistant, without it this job would have been a longer more painful process….

Anyhow, after two weeks of using the new drive I’ve had a minor catastrophe.

Coming home one afternoon I took out my bag and found Macbook to find it red hot. The machine had been running inside the bag and with no air circulation…. Yikes! I thought at first it might be something to do with the Sudden Motion Shock detection systems messing with the auto startup, but no it was the lid sensor.

I put the machine to sleep and held it up; pinching the closed lid made the machine start back up. Obviously the magnetic sensor that detects the position of the lid was slightly out of alignment. I’m sure an apple technician could re-align it, but instead I just changed the lidwake behaviour.

$ sudo pmset -a lidwake 0

Typing this command sets the computer to not automagically start up when I open the lid, instead it starts when I hit a key or touch the mouse.

It’s not a bug, it’s a feature.