Mac HD vs. PC HD (Any difference?)

[durandal1995]

I have a 12.1" ibook G4 [A1054] with a broken 2.5" IDE hard drive. I have an old IDE hard drive that was in a Gateway laptop. Is there any reason that I would not be able to install this drive in the ibook? Is there anything fundamentally different between hard drives in macs and hard drives in windows based machines?

The hard drive that was in the ibook is a 30GB and the Gateway one is a 60GB. I'm not sure if that would matter either.

If compatibility is not an issue, am I going to have any problems formatting the old Gateway HD or installing software on it?

Also, can anyone recommend a site that would be a good place to buy a 2.5" IDE hard drive in case I want to use a different one?

 

[r.j.s]

The hardware is the same, just the formatting is different. IDE is a standard independent of Mac v. PC.

 

[durandal1995]

Great!

So I'd just install the HD and pop in the OS X cd?

 

[r.j.s]

As long as you don't need anything off of the drive from the old PC.

 

[durandal1995]

Thanks a bunch!

 

[mrkgoo]

The hardware is the same, just the formatting is different. IDE is a standard independent of Mac v. PC.

Partitioning is also different.