iMac g4 hard drive replacement.

[Macintoshgeek]

Hello, my aunt recently bought a Macbook because her 9 year old iMac g4's hard drive finally wore out. She is now giving it to me, which i plan to fix. The only problem is that she threw out the restore discs thinking she was just going to recycle the computer. I searched ebay and couldn't find any restore discs for iMac g4 for sale. There are powermac g4 discs, but I doubt that will work the same.

So here is my problem. Do I wait for a set of restore discs to surface on ebay, or are there other means of restoring it.

On a side note, anyone know where I can get a cheap hard drive that will be compatible with the imac?

thanks for any help

 

[Intell]

All you need is a Tiger retail dvd or cd, not the Upgrade set. If the thing is new enough you could ever put Leopard on it. Full Retail Tiger discs are becoming hard to find. But if you know what your doing you could change the upgrade disc in to a retail disc (I'm not going to tell you how). If you have any Mac friends you could ask them if they have a Tiger dvd you could use. Also take note that some G4 iMacs have trouble reading dvds as they age and replacing the hard drive in one is a hard-ish thing to do. When you do open it be very careful of the cables inside as they are fragile and be sure to replace the thermal paste on the to contact points when you put it all back together or it will fuse together. As for what hard drive to put in it. You could basiclly put any 3.5 inch EIDE/IDE/PATA drive in it, even if it doesn't say anything about Mac compatibility. They really don't care what they have for a brain. I also suggest that while your inside it you replace the battery and maybe upgrade the "Service" memory. Don't forget the inside ram is a different type then the "User" upgradeable kind (desktop vs laptop).