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Adding a larger hard drive to my ibook

G

GetGo

macrumors regular
Original poster
Has anyone done this? If so I have a few questions....

1. Is is hard to do?
2. Is it costly?
3. Does it void the Apple care protection?
4. Where do I buy the drive from?
5. Is it worth doing this?

I am running out of space on my 12" ibook.
 
1. yes
2. not really
3. i bet
4. i dont know
5. hell no

if i were you id just buy an ipod. the majority of my files are all media, (ex. music, video, etc) so just store those on the ipod and you gain a battery powered external hard drive and an awesome mp3 player. ive heard horror stories about people trying to do it themselves and something about very very small screws.

keith
 
I installed a hard drive in an iBook and here is my advice:

I will never do this sort of thing again. There are at least 40 screws you have to take out to get to the existing drive and not all of the screws are the same so you have to remember which ones go where.

If you install the drive yourself, IT WILL VOID THE WARRANTY. Have an Apple certified technician install the drive instead. It will be done right and it will not void the warranty.

As for buying a drive, any 2.5" drive will work (4200 or 5400 RPM drive). I like the IBM Travelstar drives myself. But if you want a fast and quiet drive, get a Seagate. I have a 40 gig 5400 RPM Seagate in my PowerBook and I can barely hear it.
 
Macworld did a feature on how to do this, and specifically on the iBooks it seemed to be a serious PITA.... 🙁 I think it was somewhat easier on the PB's. Hmmm.... I tried to go back and find it, but I couldn't find the right issue. It might have been another magazine I got a free subscription to for a while and then threw away. But what I remember is that it was rated high on the difficulty scale.

Another couple of options might be a FW drive or a network drive that you put on your wireless network, and offload stuff you wouldn't use away from home or your office or wherever you primarily use your iBook?
 
Read the iBook take apart guide. You take EVERYTHING apart, and then you have the hard drive. The only thing the guide says you can do beyond that is remove the metal bars that hold everything together. And Apple says that it is almost not worth it to take apart all of that, just transfer customer's data to a new iBook, then fix the other one if you can. Its something that I wouldn't do, and I have a lot of experience in building/fixing computers. Nothing official, but you get the idea...
 
It's going to be a wait till they introduce a larger than 100GB HDD 2.5" size. So I am not in the least bit worried, since things I do not need or use is backed-up on to my iPod or DVD optical, or why has HD-DVD not been released yet the wait is brutal. 🙁


Once that happens I don't believe anything will make much of a difference as long as OS, Updates and Apps are kept in a small package with the demand of more app library content to access for feature rich I can see more applications being blown out onto 3+ DVD's at present of one sleek 20+ GB HD-DVD. 🙂
 
Here's what I have:

60GB iBook Hard Drive (built in) (18gb Free)
80GB LaCie d2 External Firewire Drive (10gb Free)
15GB iPod (5gb Free)

Here's what I do:

I keep 15gb free on my internal, and store everything that doesn't fit on my internal on my external. This way, I can have what I usually use with me, such as music and such, and other stuff that I don't use as often, or only usually use when I am at home at my desk on my external. If I need to take something with me, I nab it off my external — the transfer times are very fast. This set up is extremely efficient, and I have more space than I could have if I had just updated the hard drive in my computer. I would suggest an external drive, you can get small, bus powered, portable, shock-resistant drives from LaCie that are extremely efficient at doing what the do. They slip into a pocket if need be, and can be found up to 80 gigs. Good luck! 🙂
 
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