(*moving year old answer to proper place): If no bother, I am curious if you could peek around the disk's PCB and report back when you receive it back (of course after double-coping the retrieved data!).

me I am already feeling the need to replace my '08 Alu and I am already considering going the Linux way all the way and be done with this new ultra thin and shiny Dark Empire with the rest of iStuff to get out of the picture along my core Alu machine

however, the basic reason to buy an Apple machine is to NOT have to mess with its hardware/software that much particularly when you have to pay north of 1,857.87€

So each time you trip over the USB-C charging cable you pocket out good $$ for a new motherboard? Way to go, Apple!

Somebody should tell the Apple guys at the wheelhouse that an iLaptop is not an iPhone before it is too late and most of us have jumped the iShip before some new Jobs guy has emerged to save it after all the latest course these guys have set.

Thanks, saved time figuring out exactly how to do it - though you need a couple of more pictures in the guide. I had to deform the case a bit in order to clear over the fan otherwise it cannot slip over the fan - people be careful not to stress the fan assembly: you should slide the case without touching the fan.

In my case, the security screws *just* got unscrewed by a not-security screwdriver bit so I just replaced them with normal philips ones on reassembly.

:-) ... super simple isn't it? Just have in mind that over time, this can happen again in the future requiring another pass of hi-tech ... scraping

My late 2008 Macbook 5,1 2.4GHz also had the tiny ribbon plug besides the keyboard ribbon plug polpulated as well (keyboard backlight?) - I missed it blindly following the guide but it made its presence clear when I lifted up the PCB - lucky I was not moving hastily severing the tiny ribbon!

So I added a comment at step 15 as in the guide this tiny plug is clearly not populated in contrast to my Macbook.

Kudos to the author - this guide clearly helped me a lot saving me a lot of time and head scratching.

By the way, minimal thermal paste was found on both CPU and GPU (the original reason I dissasembled my old Macbook) and after I put enough of this thermal transfering stuff on them the Macbook started working much-much cooler after years of hot operation that I thought were due to heavier OSX versions - should have done it 4-5 years ago!

My ribbon cable plug socket #3 is semi-torn apart from a previous endeavor so I forced the ribbon in (locking action not strong enough any more to keep the ribbon from being pushed in) and I put sliced ESD foam pads above it and between the other overlapping ribbon cables and a thicker ESD foam pad on top of them all the cable ribbons in order to have permanent pressure applied by the front cover assembly to the #3 messed-up ribbon-plug connection. It seems to be holding up properly and everything works ok!