Can I put a Toshiba IDE (MK1517GAP) in my titanium powerbook G4

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kpark11

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I have an old titanium Powerbook G4 lappy that has a bad hard drive. I can get a sweet deal on a Toshiba 15GB IDE Had Drive ( Model #MK1517GAP), but didn't know if that would work in this laptop.

Any advice or help would work.

Thanks,
Kelly
 
kpark11 said:
I have an old titanium Powerbook G4 lappy that has a bad hard drive. I can get a sweet deal on a Toshiba 15GB IDE Had Drive ( Model #MK1517GAP), but didn't know if that would work in this laptop.

Any advice or help would work.
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Should work fine. The titaniums are very easy to swap HDs on. But I question the "sweat deal" as larger HDs are going for dirt cheap almost.
 
Yes, if you install most any version of OS X, you would run low on space very quickly with only 15 GB.
As the drive would likely be used or reconditioned, that's false economy, IMHO
 
Thanks Jess714 for the quick reply. The reason I'm grabbing a small drive is because the computer is going to be for my 4 year old son. He's a nerd in training, and all I want to do is put a couple of childrens games on it and let him store some photos he takes with a digital camera.

The drive only cost me $10, so it was a pretty good deal. I did get the drive in last night, but wasn't able to get the OS loaded using the Reinstall disks. I'm going to give it a shot tonight.

I put the drive into a external casing to make sure it worked & format it. That didn't seem to be the problem.

Any other thoughts/suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

KP
 
Take the battery out and there is about 8 T8 hex screws that hold the bottom cover on. Remove the bottom cover and the drive is right there. You might need to take out a couple mounting screws the hold the drive in an you'll be home free. Keep us posted.
 
There phillips screw's, not T8's.

That sounds like a pretty good plan.

Good luck with your son's nerd training haha.
 
kpark11 said:
... The reason I'm grabbing a small drive is because the computer is going to be for my 4 year old son. ...

The drive only cost me $10, so it was a pretty good deal. ...

Any other thoughts/suggestions would be GREATLY appreciated.

KP
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Your 15 GB hard drive for $10 is not a good deal. It is not a good deal in terms of the $/GB of available drives. It is not a good deal in terms of its capacity.

You didn't give the specific model of your PowerBook, but it is quite likely that it shipped with a larger hard drive. With sufficient hard drive capacity, the computer can easily run MacOS X 10.4 plus Classic. With only 15 GB of hard drive capacity, it will be limited to MacOS 9.2 and/or MacOS X 10.3.9.

I strongly suggest that you look-up your specific model. Determine its minimum hard drive and OS requirements. You may find every PowerBook model ever manufactured on the Apple-History.com website.
 
The 500MHz one that i bought, only came with a 10 gig hard drive.

But the computer is for his son said, 15 gigs for a young kid, with a couple of (small) games, will do just fine. I would recommend putting in at least a 40gig,which will cost more than 15 buck.
 
Hey guys, thanks for all the action on the thread. The problem isn't with replacing the actual drive, that was the easy part. Now I'm having an issue loading the OS onto the new drive. I'm using the "Software Install" CD and when I hold down Ctrl when I reboot it just errors out with the following grey screen error.

"The Installer has unexpectedly quit. (error 1)

Press the Return key to restart the computer...
kmod_destroy: com.apple.driver.AppleFWOHCI (id 42), deallocating 14 pages starting at 0x12552000.....
"

I'm attaching a photo.
 

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kpark11 said:
... Now I'm having an issue loading the OS onto the new drive. I'm using the "Software Install" CD and when I hold down Ctrl when I reboot it just errors out with the following grey screen error.

...
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You cannot install an OS on your computer that is older than the one that the computer shipped with. Also, you cannot use the System Restore disc for one computer to install the OS on another.
 
Thanks MisterMe. But I'm trying to install from the disks that shipped with the G4. I believe it is 10.0.4.

Does that make sense?

Thanks,
KP
 
MisterMe, you got me thinking about the install, and I inserted the other "Software Install" CD which is OS 9. Everything was going great before I got the BOMB. Photo attached.
 

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If you can't boot from the MacOS 9 CD that shipped with your computer, then you will never be able to boot the computer until it is repaired.
 
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