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Upgrade 2005 iBook G4 HardDrive

The drive will work as long as it's 9.5mm and not 12.5mm tall. It does not specify. The enclosure will work. Also, installing a hard drive on an iBook is the easiest thing to do if you are not very comfortable working on laptops.
 
bizzle said:
The drive will work as long as it's 9.5mm and not 12.5mm tall. It does not specify. The enclosure will work. Also, installing a hard drive on an iBook is the easiest thing to do if you are not very comfortable working on laptops.
Click to expand...

thanks, i'll double check the specs. plus, i have the ifixit guide, and it doesnt seem like it will be that bad.
 
Careful with those connectors

Along about step 30 of the iFixit guide, if you raise the upper case too high (more than that 1/2 inch), it may already be too late for the speaker connector on the logic board. The speaker wires on my iBook were very tight, and my socket was pulled off the logic board before I even had a chance to mangle it by trying to get the plug disconnected from it. I did get it fixed, but it was a pain. Other than that, it's just tedious with all those tiny screws. I've replaced my drive twice, and am now at 320GB, a reasonable size.
 
SkyFoxe42 said:
Along about step 30 of the iFixit guide, if you raise the upper case too high (more than that 1/2 inch), it may already be too late for the speaker connector on the logic board. The speaker wires on my iBook were very tight, and my socket was pulled off the logic board before I even had a chance to mangle it by trying to get the plug disconnected from it. I did get it fixed, but it was a pain. Other than that, it's just tedious with all those tiny screws. I've replaced my drive twice, and am now at 320GB, a reasonable size.
Click to expand...

thanks. this will be my first mod on my ibook. i'm going all in, too - new hard drive, max ram, and a fresh 10.5 installation.
 
nice upgrade. i've used dozens of those samsung drives in ibooks with great success. nice and quiet, run cool which is important, waaaayyyyy faster than the original drives.

follow the ifixit screw guide (print it out, lay it flat, put the screw(s) on the correct box) and take your time with the old tape and wires, and you should be fine. best of luck.
 
Look for a 2.5" enclosure with Firewire port. It's good to clone your main hard drive to for backup and good to have a bootable clone image in case you ever need it. Plus firewire is faster than USB2.0 anyways :p
 
purchased the drive and enclosure from newegg, and received them last night. also, ordered a 1GB memory stick. got them all installed without a problem. loaded the original 10.3 os that came with the ibook, and first impressions are very favorable. i cant believe i waited so long to upgrade the machine. initially, it runs a lot smoother than with the old drive and memory. next week, i'll have a 10.5 installation disc to load, and i'll really get to see what this thing will do for me.

i never thought i would get excited about a 6 year old machine like this. is that part of the apple experience?
 
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