ibook warranty (& HD advice)

[mopppish]

Can anyone tell me what the straight story on the ibook's warranty and AppleCare is regarding replacing your own hard drive? I've seen answers ranging from "if you don't break anything, it's cool" to "even THINKING about opening it up will void the warranty."
I ask because I had been contemplating replacing the hard drive in the brand new ibook I just bought to something more peppy, and as the hard drive seems to be making more noise than I'm comfortable with, it may avoid a headache later on (short HD life).
Anyway, regardless of the warranty situation, what are the most reliable/quietest/coolest brand and models of 5400rpm 8MB cache drives? Also, can you make a verbatim copy of an internal drive onto an external firewire drive so that if you did have to replace the internal drive, you could simply drop the image from the external onto it and avoid reinstalling system software, prefs, and apps?
Thanks.

 

[rdowns]

Replacing a hard drive yourself will void the warranty; you can have it done by an Apple Service Provider if you want to keep the warranty intact. Your warranty allows installing RAM and an Airport card. Those are the only user serviceable upgrades allowed.

 

[aquajet]

Check out this thread. You might try calling Applecare, mopppish, and see what they say.

 

[jofallon]

iBook Hard Drive

Look at pbfixit.com and sites like that for info on replacing hard drives, maybe http://www.powerbookresq.com/ to see how much a third party would cost.

I might consider trying an upgrade on an old PowerBook, and doing a PowerMac (which doesn't affect the warranty) is simple.

Getting a hard drive into an iBook sounds like a nightmare of small screws and springs.

 

[reh]

Your warranty allows installing RAM and an Airport card. Those are the only user serviceable upgrades allowed.

For the major stuff, yes. Here's the official list.
http://www.apple.com/support/ibook/doityourself/