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Upgrading iBook HD: G3 900Mhz

D

digitaldeity

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 26, 2005
7
0
Okie well for my big upgrade to OS X Tiger I am going to upgrade my G3 900MHz iBook system. And I had a couple questions about doing so...

#1 Ram - I look at crucial.com and the best price I got was like about 100$. Has anyone found a cheaper price? And if you have is the RAM any good? Or is it "crap" ram? If crucial is the way to go, so be it.

#2 HD - I have heard about upgrading your HD you can see MASSIVE speed improvments. So right now the HD I have is the standard 40GB 4200RPM HD. So I was looking at drivesolutions.com and I found my iBook and they had a 60GB 7200RPM Drive 8MB buffer for 195$.

But the "seek time" was 10MS while some other drives were 12MS+. But some 12MS drives come with a 16MB buffer. Which is better to have? Less "seek time" or more buffer?

AND if I was to upgrade my HD, how would that effect my battery life? Would it be about the same, or a little worse...or really worse. I would think it would be about the same because it's spinning less to get the info off the drive because it's faster...

Heres the link I used for drivesolutions

http://www.drivesolutions.com/cgi-b...items&kind=apl&pos=0&type=itemid&itemid=apl20

Thanks for the help everyone! :cool:
 
mkrishnan

mkrishnan

Moderator emeritus
Jan 9, 2004
29,776
15
Grand Rapids, MI, USA
There have been some reports that, while the 7200 RPM drive uses more power per unit time when it is spun up, because it uses Adaptive Battery Life Extension, and because it will not need to be spun up for as long to read the same amount of data, that it has a net slight positive impact on battery life. But I could not find the actual test results. :(

I *think* ABLE is something that does not require direct support from the laptop itself, so that it could still work in your iBook....
 
RGunner

RGunner

macrumors 6502a
Jul 3, 2002
706
95
Midnight Sun
Drive should work fine...

BUT... are you aware of how difficult the iBook is to service? Or were you planning on having Apple do it?
 
D

digitaldeity

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Apr 26, 2005
7
0
RGunner said:
BUT... are you aware of how difficult the iBook is to service? Or were you planning on having Apple do it?
Click to expand...

I can take "anything" apart and put it back togeather, 20+ screws..HA...don't make me laugh...I'm doing it myself
:cool:
 
C

Caramel

macrumors newbie
Mar 19, 2005
22
0
My boyfriend and i always get memory from crucial.com (i think i spelled that right!) and we've never had problems with it. I did get memory from my school, who got it directly from Apple (or so they say) and it was 200.34 for a stick of 512, which upgraded me to 640. ANd i have a 40 gig hard drive and it runs just as fine as my boyfriend's G4 40 gig 512ram.... only a tick slower, becasue of the processor... i really doni't know where i was going with this but i guess i was just saying good choice with your memory selection! :p
 
K

katie ta achoo

Blogger emeritus
May 2, 2005
9,166
5
ibookowner2 said:
I think that most stores that sell ram overprice it!
Click to expand...

I got mine from the sale bin at microcenter. A 512 meg stick for my old iBook... $45! SCORE! (yeah, it was opened, but in perfect condition. SWEET!)

I've also <s>learned from experience</s> heard from the interweb that iBook G3s are HARD to take apart.
Like.. SUPER hard. Head on desk, I'd rather use a PC, why didn't I just upgrade to a sweet new iBook hard.
 
I

iBunny

macrumors 65816
Apr 15, 2004
1,254
0
Being a PC guy and building PC's and being an enthusiast, I can opt that the 7200RPM 8MB of Cache Hard Drive will be faster than anything slower than 7200RPM, even if their is more cache. Also, if you shop at http://www.newegg.com where they carry alot of PC components to build a machine yourself, they also sell that Hitachi Hard drive - 60GB 7200RPM 8MB Cache for 150$. And that is the best place online to buy hardware. ;)

I will be doing an upgrade to this myself as soon as i return to the states :D
 
Mechcozmo

Mechcozmo

macrumors 603
Jul 17, 2004
5,215
2
digitaldeity said:
I can take "anything" apart and put it back togeather, 20+ screws..HA...don't make me laugh...I'm doing it myself
:cool:
Click to expand...

Er, it isn't just that. It is a lot of metal, parts, etc. that have to fit EXACTLY RIGHT together. It is hard. Very hard. And each little piece is needed. There are a lot of metal parts that you may bend, a lot of components to be bent and broken, etc.

So good luck to you. The G3s are even harder to take apart than the G4s.
 
Balin64

Balin64

macrumors 6502a
Jul 23, 2002
772
1
In a Mauve Dream
I agree

The Apple laptops are extremely hard to pull apart: be prepared.

Also, upgrading the HD on an iBook can yield mixed results: speed improvements may be evident, but power consumption and increased heat is the downside. I would say proceed with caution. :)
 
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