Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

celtictricky

macrumors newbie
Original poster
May 2, 2004
3
0
Hi All,

I have just got my G3 900Mhz Ibook, and as a pc user I am still getting to grips with the Apple world :) Anyway, long and short is, I want to upgrade the stock hard drive, and also the CD drive to ideally a DVDRW - I am in the UK, does anybody know of where I can do this???? Also is there anything special about the HD I should know about, ie, can I simply drop in a 80Gb HD, and boot of the OS X disks to re-install etc???

Any help would be appreciated. Thanks

Rich
 

JOD8FY

macrumors 6502a
Mar 22, 2004
633
0
United States
Wait!

The hard drive is not a "consumer installable" piece. It will void your warranty. The Apple Store Techs would be glad to do it for you. The G3 iBook has a tray loading drive, right? While you're at the store, ask them if you can install that. I haven't installed an internal drive before, but I have installed an external one. Use Disk Utility to format it. They'll probably do that at the store for you though.

Good Luck,
JOD8FY
 

Horrortaxi

macrumors 68020
Jul 6, 2003
2,240
0
Los Angeles
Do you have a warranty? Kiss it good-bye.

Others can comment in detail about what you want to do, but it isn't a trivial exercise.
 

7on

macrumors 601
Nov 9, 2003
4,939
0
Dress Rosa
Best bet is if you have a warrenty buy the compatible drives and take them to the Apple Store and have them installed for free. Do those iBooks have a fan? If not that might be the reason if they won't install it. Anyhoo, http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/ should have the correct upgrades you can do on your iBook.

EDIT:
I already did the DVD-RW search and this is the only one I found

Reviewer's Name: Omar
Date Submitted: 3/26/2004
Drive Type: DVD+R/RW + DVD-R/RW Drives
Drive Interface: Firewire
Drive Brand: LG
Drive Model Number: gsa-4081b (8x DVD+R, 4x DVD-R, 3x DVD-RAM, 24x16x32x CDR/CDRW/CDROM)
Driver Used: Apple Hacked
Mac Model: Apple iBook 2002 (Radeon Mobility)
Mac OS Version: OS X 10.3
Reader Comments: I have an LG DVDR/CDR drive model GSA-4081B in a firewire enclosure model: ME-320. It burns data well and fast, and after installing Patchburn II I am able to burn either in Toast 6 or with the finder.

THE MAJOR BUMMER is that I can't burn music cds!!
Not with Toast 6 (6.0.3?) nor iTunes. I've tried a bunch of things with no results. If anyone has any idea how to fix this please let me know. cause I don't know if it is the drive or the case that is causing the problem.

Mike Comments: what is the specific error that happens?
what media are you trying to use? (CDR, CDRW, DVD-R, DVD+R, DVD-RAM?)

It fails even if using good quality CDRs? (try more than one brand in case there's some firmware bug affecting certain media types)
If using TAO mode, did you set the gap between tracks to 2 seconds? (vs 0).

(Reader FYI - Patchburn II for Panther download and other drive reports are linked at the main site Reader reports on Patchburn II for Panther.)
 

IrishGold

macrumors member
May 1, 2004
59
0
Macmaniac said:
it costs $379 to do.


Whoa, screw that :eek:

Do it yourself and have your old one on hand so you can just switch it back when you need to take it in for a problem.

No one else does this :confused:
 

Horrortaxi

macrumors 68020
Jul 6, 2003
2,240
0
Los Angeles
IrishGold said:
Whoa, screw that :eek:

Do it yourself and have your old one on hand so you can just switch it back when you need to take it in for a problem.

No one else does this :confused:
Not as easy as it sounds. You don't just pop the back off the computer and swap the drives. You strip it down into a hundred pieces. If you do successfully swap the drives, and then have a problem later and put back your original drives it will be obvious to the tech that you've opened the computer. Warranty void.

Don't do this on a computer that is under warranty. Even if it's out of warranty it's not usually a wise choice when you consider the cost of the replacement parts and the difficulty of doing the job--plus the slim but still very real possibility that you will break something and have a paper weight.

When your laptop gets old and you find it doesn't have the power or capacity to do what you want it to do anymore I think you're better off selling it. Macs--even older ones--retain their value extemely well. So take the proceeds of your sale and add the money you would have spent on the upgrades, and I'll bet you're within a couple hundred bucks of a new Mac that will do what you want it to do. At worst you'd be in the neighborhood of a used, but still decently powerful, Mac that will do what you want it to do.
 
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.