iBook Hard Drive Upgrade

[irishvic]

Hey guys I got the standard 1 ghz 12 inch ibook and I need a new hard drive cus this one just aint cutting it. What should I look for when buying one, does this sap battery life, and what is a hard drive I can buy that will be installed by a Mac supported Tec because I don't want to void my warranty? Thanks alot.

[irishvic]

algien?

[atif.muhammad]

if you're in America, get a LaCie Hard Drive
if you're in Europe, get a Fujitsu HandyDrive its 40GB for 80 quid and it uses power from the USB port as well.

[irishvic]

are these internal hard drives?

[ChrisFromCanada]

No those are all external. If you want to do it yourself you will only void your warranty if you screw it up, a guide can be found here (http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/50.13.1.html) (press next to go through the pages). It looks pretty hard, how comfortable are you with computers?

[hanq]

yeah, unless you're experienced with this kind of stuff don't do it. And there are countless amount of itsy bitsy little tiny screws, hiding everywhere. brings back bad memories. i did it myself about a year ago. after i was done i had two extra screws. somewhere in my ibook there are two empty screw holes. But if you're good with your hands and stuff, its not too hard. its just the screws that are confusing. just remember where they remember at the end when puting back together. oh yeah. and someone said before, it voids your warranty.

[Chip NoVaMac]

My local Mac Tech said they could install a different HDD, and they would "protect" me on my AppleCare warranty (2 additional years). I want to say the labor was going to be about $150.

[Mord]

your limited to external ones unless you are ok with taking it apart, if you are ok with it i'd get a 100GB drive as they can be got for about £120, if you live in london i can put one in for you for £40.

[irishvic]

i wanna go internal, so how do i know who is a certified mac tech because i don't want my stuff to get all retarded post hard drive op and have no warranty.

[MacNeXT]

i wanna go internal, so how do i know who is a certified mac tech because i don't want my stuff to get all retarded post hard drive op and have no warranty.

I got an iBook with the standard 30 GB drive too, which I'm starting to regret. But I'm thinking of upgrading in about a year, when the warranty expires anyway. I'm pretty confident I can do this myself. It's not that difficult. I find Apple books to be robust not only on the outside, but on the inside too. Things would be different when it would have been an intel laptop though, they can be a PITA to open up.

You say you want an internal expansion. The reason why you would want that is obvious, but you may reconsider an external drive nevertheless. Firewire drives are cheap and my FW drive is way faster than the internal one, so speed should not be the reason. I keep most stuff on the internal drive, but copy large files (movies, mp3's, backups) to the external one. It's not ideal, but I'm happy with it.

[Chip NoVaMac]

I got an iBook with the standard 30 GB drive too, which I'm starting to regret. But I'm thinking of upgrading in about a year, when the warranty expires anyway. I'm pretty confident I can do this myself. It's not that difficult. I find Apple books to be robust not only on the outside, but on the inside too. Things would be different when it would have been an intel laptop though, they can be a PITA to open up.

You say you want an internal expansion. The reason why you would want that is obvious, but you may reconsider an external drive nevertheless. Firewire drives are cheap and my FW drive is way faster than the internal one, so speed should not be the reason. I keep most stuff on the internal drive, but copy large files (movies, mp3's, backups) to the external one. It's not ideal, but I'm happy with it.

I have a PB 12" with the 40gb HDD and wish I had ordered the larger drive too.

I second the idea of external FW HDD. There are great portable ones like the FireFly and the Lacie Mobile HDD's. I was thinking about upgrading the internal, but am now leaning towards doing an external portable in the 60 to 80gb range. What I will do then is to create two partitions, one 40gb that will be for backup of my internal, and the remainder for extra storage.

The other option (and excuse :) ) is to buy a iPod in the 40 or 60 gb range.