new hard drive for my ibook

S

surgeons

Registered
Hello,

I'm new to mac os x forums. My ibook hard drives crashed a few days ago and one of the technicians at mac osx was able to help me restore my system with disk warrior and recover my data before my hard drive crashed for good again. thank God, I was able to back up my data. So now I need to get a new hard drive installed. The original system came with a 30 gig hard drive. I would like to upgrade to at least 60gig. First off, is that possible. The original hard drive was 4200rpm, am I ok to go higher than that, or would the system cooling fan won't handle it. I have ibook G4 12 inch by the way.

Finally, I called in a couple of apple certified repair places and they would charge me in the range of 300 - 400 dollars for this. Now I can get a Hitachi 60 gig hard drive for just over a 100 bucks, I was wondering if I could install the thing on my own. I've done installs previously on pcs and what not, so do you guys reckon its doable or what. Has any of you done it on your own. Is it as simple as installing the thing, then using your install dvd to format the hard drive and then installing the operating system. kindly help. thank you.
 
i'm in a very similar position to you. My iBook G3's HDD is on its way out and needs replacement.

Someone on this forum told me about PBFixIt.com (now ifixit.com). It offers a very well-made tutorial for replacing HDD in iBooks.

View iBook G4 12" tutorial

Brace yourself - this is no simple task. You have to remove almost every component just to get to the HDD.
 
Opening an iBook can be a recipe for disaster. They're not at all user-serviceable friendly. There are a few companies that offer a service of HD replacement, usually for a set fee. They ship you a box to overnight the laptop to them, do everything in 24 hours, then ship it back. So generally it takes 3 or 4 business days to get it done, costing a heft sum ($300 to $400) depending on the drive you select.

For the money, a 5400RPM drive is probably the best bet. I've heard of 7200RPM models being used, but the price difference is pretty substantial on a per MB basis.

• MacResQ
• PowerBook Medic
• MCE Technologies
 
thanks a lot for the advice guys. really appreciate it. I just went over the tutorial Cheese, and I doubt I'll be doing it myself. Its just too complicated. Too many screws to keep track off. I live in Canada and most of the services that I've looked up online deal with US customers only, except MacResQ (thank you for the link mdnky). I've left a message with them; lets see when they get back. my problem is that I'm leaving the country in 9 days, so this service may not be able to get my ibook fixed in time. thanks again guys.
 
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