Hard drive choice

drumly · #1 April 23rd, 2005, 06:45 PM

Hi. I own an iBook G4 with a hard-drive that has gone to H***. So I'm in the market of looking for harddrives. There are stores near me, that is no problem, but I'm pissed off at the pricing for laptop drives, compared to PC drives. My friend just bought a hard-drive, 200GB, for 160 Canadian dollars, and then put it in an external case. I was wondering if I could do that for my iBook, since it has firewire, and usb 2.0, it obviously could connect to it, if the OS was working on the laptop drive. I want to know if I could connect it to my iBook, tell the Ibook that I want that to be the boot-device, and then install the OS through the ibooks cd drive onto the external? Please say yes, because I would rather dish out 100 $CD for a 160 GB external, than $160 for an 80 GB, then add another 100 for installation from an apple tech.

DeltaMac · #2 April 23rd, 2005, 07:29 PM

Sure, you can boot from an external hard drive, which can be any size the external case will support. You should definitely choose a FireWire case, and NOT USB 2.0 which can be buggy even on PCs.
But, you lose in portability, and don't forget, you need a case for that, too.

One thing to keep in mind. A dead hard drive possibly can lead to slow booting, even freeze up your system if the bad drive attempts to mount. These types of things may not happen in your situation, but I have seen a bad hard drive prevent the system from even powering on.

drumly · #3 April 23rd, 2005, 07:40 PM

Thanks for the tip. Hopefully the dead harddrive won't have an effect, if it does, ill be out of a notebook for a month or two. Thanks again.

tieng · #4 April 24th, 2005, 12:56 AM

Why not go ahead and put the drive into the iBook once you get the OS installed on it?

http://www.yourmaui.com/ibook.html

Viro · #5 April 24th, 2005, 04:12 AM

Have a look at PBFixIt as they have all sorts of manuals for Apple laptops that give you step by step instructions on how to install and uninstall hardware. I followed them to upgrade the hard drive on my iBook G3 and Powerbook G4.

DeltaMac · #6 April 24th, 2005, 12:18 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by tieng

Why not go ahead and put the drive into the iBook once you get the OS installed on it?

http://www.yourmaui.com/ibook.html

The poster has an iBook, and wants a 200GB hard drive, which is a 3.5 inch hard drive - will not fit in an iBook. Largest 2.5 hard drive is currently 120GB, which is fairly high priced, compared to 3.5 hard drives.

The Ghost · #7 April 27th, 2005, 10:27 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by drumly

I could do that for my iBook, since it has firewire

As mentioned above, you need a firewire case, but be sure it's firmware supports booting. Also, note that you will not be able to boot if you get a USB drive.

dmetzcher · #8 May 18th, 2005, 05:28 PM

Quote:

Originally Posted by Viro

Have a look at PBFixIt as they have all sorts of manuals for Apple laptops that give you step by step instructions on how to install and uninstall hardware. I followed them to upgrade the hard drive on my iBook G3 and Powerbook G4.

He has an iBook G4. They don't seem to have the guide for that one yet.

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