iBook hard drive upgrade in London need recommendations

[Roba]

Hi i am looking for recommendations of where i could get my HD upgraded in the UK i live in North East London. I have a iBook G4 1.42,1.5GB, 60GB. I am wanting to upgrade to a 80GB 5400RPM PMR HD. The HD that i am using is a 4200RPM HD and i want to upgrade the speed to 5400 PMR.

My iBook is under warranty until 09 so i cannot open it up myself although i am quite capable enough to do this job. If i do it myself i will void my warranty. I have been quoted £75 from a company called logosystems and i am not willing to spend that much. I have my own HD to use. I can only use i believe an authorised Mac repair centre as my iBook is still under warranty. I called the Apple store in Regents Street and asked them if they could do this upgrade for me and they said that they could not.

I wonder if anybody has done this in the UK and could recommend me a authorised repair place to use that is reasonably priced? If you had this job done before how much did it cost you?

Micromend was recommended in the thread below but i don't think that they are an authorised repair tech centre. I to have used D&G computers before but i don't think they are an authorised repair centre.
https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/235613/

Thanks

 

[Spanky Deluxe]

If you're very careful you could do it yourself without voiding the warranty. You'd have to be really careful though. Follow instructions but get lots of paper and sketch out a diagram of every step you do, marking off which screws you take out and then pierce them through the paper. That's what I do when I take apart iBooks.

 

[Roba]

Spanky Deluxe thanks for your advice. I think that i would be to scared to do it by myself even though i can. I have just under two years of warranty left and i don't think that i want to take a gamble with it. If it was out of warranty i definitely would do it myself.

Some of these repair places like Mac Upgrades maybe able to competently upgrade Mac's but i don't think that i can use a company like that as they do not display the official Apple logo on their website.

 

[dcv]

You could try Cancom on Kensington High Street. I don't know if they would do this or what they might charge but they are an Apple authorised reseller and repair centre.

contact info

BTW they have a ridiculous policy of only dropping off stuff for repair during the week, not Saturdays

 

[Roba]

dcv thanks for that link i just tried them and they wanted £90 +VAT the same as PCMTEC who i also tried.
I am not prepared to spend that amount of money out.

Realistically now i have three options, option 1 is to leave it as it is. Option number 2 is to try and beg Apple to upgrade me under warranty and Option 3 is to let somebody do it who is an expert who is familiar with Mac upgrades but are not official.

 

[MikeDTyke]

I'd go with Square, found their repair work to be top notch.

Not sure of prices on HD's though so worth giving the call in advance for a quote.

http://www.squaregroup.co.uk/


Cheers
M.

dcv thanks for that link i just tried them and they wanted £90 +VAT the same as PCMTEC who i also tried.
I am not prepared to spend that amount of money out.

Realistically now i have three options, option 1 is to leave it as it is. Option number 2 is to try and beg Apple to upgrade me under warranty and Option 3 is to let somebody do it who is an expert who is familiar with Mac upgrades but are not official.

Note if you get an Apple Authorised repair centre to do the upgrade, your warranty should be okay. The new HD will be covered under it's own manufacturers warranty.

Depending on your confidence with screw driver, you could do it yourself. I did it on a iBook G3, went from 30 to 60Gig. Took me an hour plus re-install time. If you google ibook hard drive replacement you'll find a couple of articles on how to do it.

I'm not surprised they're charging £90, for central london your looking at 1.5hrs for install and transfer of files.

M.

 

[Roba]

I think that i am going to have a go at doing the HD upgrade myself today. My HD arrived today and i have downloaded the Fixit guide and i will take pictures also and place all the screws on paper of where they should go.

I probably will not follow the iFixit guide down to the letter as sometimes these guides can over complicate things a little. For instance i followed the guides before and dismantled a Clamshell completely to upgrade a HD when i really didn't need to do that. Anyway I hope that everything goes according to plan with this upgrade. I must admit i am a little worried about the warranty situation.

The lowest price that i could get for this job was £70 incl VAT from a non Apple technician.
My current HD is not faulty so i doubt very much that Apple would replace it for me and even if they did they would most probably replace it with like for like and that is not what i want.

 

[MikeDTyke]

I think that i am going to have a go at doing the HD upgrade myself today. My HD arrived today and i have downloaded the Fixit guide and i will take pictures also and place all the screws on paper of where they should go.

I probably will not follow the iFixit guide down to the letter as sometimes these guides can over complicate things a little. For instance i followed the guides before and dismantled a Clamshell completely to upgrade a HD when i really didn't need to do that. Anyway I hope that everything goes according to plan with this upgrade. I must admit i am a little worried about the warranty situation.

The lowest price that i could get for this job was £70 incl VAT from a non Apple technician.
My current HD is not faulty so i doubt very much that Apple would replace it for me and even if they did they would most probably replace it with like for like and that is not what i want.

Best a luck, my one word of advice is have patience with the plastic clips around the two pieces of the case. They are easy broke so start gentle and increase force incrementally.

M.

 

[mokeyjoe]

I upgraded my iBook hard drive earlier this month.

I used macupgrades.co.uk.

It was expensive (about twice the cost it would have been to do it myself) but worth it in the long term.

 

[Roba]

I gave up i couldn't get one of the small screws of on the bottom of the chasis. I spent a couple of hours trying but i just decided to quit in the end and call it a day while i am still ahead. The screw that i tried to get of looks stripped so i am going to need to get that of and replace it at some point in time. I took the rest of the bottom chasis screws of and the keyboard and that is as I got before i decided to call it a day.

Macupgrades looks good and are offering the HD upgrade service at a decent price but the thing with them i will have to post my laptop to them as i do not live near them. I would also have to pay for return shipping as well i expect which makes their service in the end no cheaper for me than some of the other quotes that i have been given from official Apple tech stores that are closer to me.

Thanks for your help

 

[dcv]

Macupgrades looks good and are offering the HD upgrade service at a decent price but the thing with them i will have to post my laptop to them as i do not live near them. I would also have to pay for return shipping as well i expect which makes their service in the end no cheaper for me than some of the other quotes that i have been given from official Apple tech stores that are closer to me.

I just looked up Macupgrades as I was curious to know how much it might cost to upgrade my PowerBook's hard disk. I found this note:

"We do offer a drive fitting service, but this is for out of warranty machines only. To preserve warranty, a drive must be fitted by an Apple Centre."

It doesn't say that on the iBook page but might be worth double-checking.

 

[Roba]

After my last attempt at trying to upgrade my HD i am not sure whether i should just leave the HD as it is? I slightly puckered some of the lower case plastic and the stripped screw had to be drilled out by my brother in law this was a very nerve wracking experience. Thankfully everything is still working A OK.

I have found a like new top and bottom case which cost me £20 so i will replace the casing when the casing arrives. I am debating even whether i should do this myself as the bottom casing is ok to take of but the top part requires me to de route a few cables on the logic board. If i am very careful i think that i can do it but i am in two minds if i should attempt it or not. I have ordered myself a spudger this time round.

I have a 80GB 5400RPM PMR drive and my laptop is covered until March 09 under Applecare. I have been told that if i upgrade the HD and anything was to happen to the HD then my warranty for my HD will be void.

My memory is at 1.5GB and the HD is a 60GB 4,200RPM HD. I just mostly use the computer for web browsing these days, messenger, iWork and that is about it. Still i would like to make the laptop more up to date and a faster feel if possible although it is pretty fast the way it is right now. The HD that i bought is a Seagate ST980815A 5400.3 HD and it is under warranty for 5 years. I doubt that anything will happen to it within the next two years but it is a concern. Will the fact that i upgraded my HD take away the value if i try and sell in the future because some people maybe concerned if my warranty was still in tact because of the upgrade. I doubt that really but thought has crossed my mind.

So it is either that i am going to change the casing myself or go with the quote of £60 i was given by D&G computers to upgrade my HD and whilst they was doing that they could swap my casing also. They would come and pick my item up and bring it back to me for that price. I asked them if they were official Apple repairs and i think that the Mac guy who does the Mac repairs could well be.

If i don't go with them and go with a company that i know for sure are official Mac repairs i will either go with Logosystems or pcmtec.co.uk. I would swap on the bottom casing though before i went there and they could change the top casing for me and upgrade my HD for £88.

Maybe for the accidental damage caused to my casing i could pull some of that money back from my insurance company but i don't really like making a claim. They would most probably cover this though and if they did effectively my repair work would be free. I am two minds whether i should pay out any more money on this laptop. I don't really want to spend to much money on this laptop.

I have been trying to think over what i should do for about two days and i just am not sure right now what to do.