Finally! 5400 RPM 2.5“ SATA drives over 200GB are available.
I found a good deal online for a Western Digital 250GB model and ordered it last week. It arrived today and with the help of an external hard drive and Carbon Copy Cloner, in just 5 hours, I have completed duplicated my old MacBook drive onto the new one and was up and running.
134GB Free! The free space is slightly more than the entire capacity of my original drive. I wonder how fast I can fill it up?
One potentially bad thing: It might be that I need to re-calibrate my battery, but prior to installing this drive, if I kicked the plug out while not doing anything, my time remaining would be about 4:45. With the new drive in there, the time is only 3:30.
I’m re-calibrating now and will post an update when I have it.