iBook G4 upgrade help

[trendkiller]

I have an old iBook G4 1.33GHz, However its getting a bit sluggish now, so I'm thinking its time to upgrade it with a new harddrive and some more ram.

does anyone know what type of hard drive i'll need and where I could buy one...I've searched the net but with no avail.

thanks

 

[monkey86]

hey dude, you need a 2.5" ide notbook harddrive (wd scorpio 250gb is perfect)

and the most ram you can get in is either 1.5gb (if you have one 512 permanently installed) or 2gb and ebay, newegg or craigslist is going to be the best place for that.

any questions PM me as ive done lots of these, have a look at this thread:

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/554506/

its a hdd swap in a 12" powerbook g4 but will give you an idea of the work involved.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

any 2.5", 9.5mm thick PATA hard drive will work. As for RAM, there's no sense in buying a DDR SODIMM larger than 1GB as the computer will only see up to 1.25GB (you already have either 256 or 512MB built in).

 

[trendkiller]

cheers guys, I've heard that the ibook hard drive is a bitch to replace but I reckon its worth a gamble. I'm pretty good at taking things apart and (more importantly) putting them back together again!

would this HD be suitable? http://www.ebuyer.com/product/136790

The only thing I'm worried about is post installation of hard drive and how to get osx on to the new hard drive? In my head the laptop wont work if the hard drive is blank (I'm not proficient with operation systems etc!)
What will i need to do either before or after i replace the hard drive?

Also I've found, again on ebuyer, some 1gb ram for £30 which is pretty good.

 

[mscriv]

The hard drive upgrade is not for the faint of heart, but it's not too difficult either. I put a new 120gb drive in my iBook G4 over a year ago. Make sure you have the right tools and use a good guide. I used this one from iFixit.

The best piece of advice I can give about the install is get a bunch of blank copy or printer pages and step by step sketch out what you are doing and tape the actual screws you remove onto the sketch as you take them out. Then when you go to put it back together just go in reverse order putting the screws back in place. This way they don't roll away or worse yet you get them confused.

As far as your OS install, well that depends on what you want to do. If you have an external case with firewire then you can use Carbon Copy Cloner to create an exact copy of your current HD onto the new one by putting it into the external. Then all you have to do is switch out the drives and the machine will boot up just like your old one. I just did this with an iMac upgrade. It's by far the simple solution if you want to keep the status quo. And Carbon Copy Cloner is a free program, nice! If you don't have an external for a 2.5" drive with firewire then I would suggest buying one anyway so you can put the old drive in it after you switch.

However, if you want to make a clean start then you will have to install a new OS on the blank drive with an Apple OS install disk. The install disk will give you access to disk utility to format the drive however you want prior to install.

If you need any help just let me know and I'll be happy to do what I can.

Edit: The drive you linked in the post above will not work. Your iBook takes an IDE PATA drive not an SATA drive. You want something like this here.

 

[NewMacbookPlz]

When I did my G4 iBook's HDD a couple years ago, it took me ~1hr to disassemble, using somebody's online pictorial, then 15min to reassemble.

I was just being super careful on the disassembly since it was my first time.

 

[trendkiller]

Excellent...Thanks very much for all your advice.
I'm quietly confident about taking apart and I'm excited about doing it too!

Whilst im on the subject of upgrades Im in serious need of a new battery, Ive heard that 3rd party batteries are worthless and that I should stick to apple certified batteries. which leads me to the question does anyone know of a cheaper place than the apple store for batteries!!!??

I'm also still running tiger on it, Is it possible or worth it to install leopard??!

thanks again for your help

 

[mscriv]

I'm using Leopard on my G4 iBook with no problems and bought a 3rd party battery about two years ago. I don't get full cycle on it, but I think this is more a reflection of the aging computer than the battery itself. If you just need a machine for web surfing, email, and basic stuff these old iBooks really work great. My wife still does Photoshop and InDesign work on it as well. Depending on your user needs the upgrades are worth it if you plan on keeping the computer for some time.

I know how you feel when you say you are excited about doing your own upgrade. I was very worried about opening up a laptop since I had never done it before, but it worked out well. Best of luck and have fun.