Another question: internal hard drives for iBook G3 800 mhz

[Heath McKnight]

I'm considering upgrading my little G3 iBook I bought last March or so 2004 (and tried to sell once or twice when luscious little G4 iBooks came out--yeah, I couldn't afford it THEN...), but it's got a puny 30 gb hard drive (30 gigs puny, yeah, for me) and a CD-Rom drive. Maybe that's why it only cost me $700...new...

Anyway, I want to drop in a 60-80 gb drive and I already found a cool place to put in a slot-loading DVD burner (dual-layer, 8x--drool!):

http://www.mcetech.com/ibg3dvdr8dl.html

So, any advice on finding a good hard drive for the iBook G3 800 mhz? I'm coming up short on my searches.

Thanks as always,

heath

[Nick Hiltgen]

this question might be better answered on a different site. I'm a huge fan of macmod.com but xlr8yourmac.com is also a very good site. I think there is someone there that has actually attempted doing what you're talking about. My suggestion is pick up an 80gig and a 2.5" firwire case, use the case as a boot drive then copy all of your info over to the new (installed) 80 gig. Or do it vis versa. There's a program called carbon cloner(?) that is a free download and should satisfy your needs.

[Christopher Lefchik]

From this guide (http://www.pbfixit.com/Guide/50.12.0.html) to replacing the hard drive of a 12" iBook it appears that the laptop uses a standard 2.5" wide x 9.5mm tall hard drive. You could easily get a 2.5" drive made by one of the reputable hard drive manufacturers (like, for example, Seagate, who even makes a 7200rpm 2.5" drive (along with 4200rpm and 5400rpm versions). See http://www.seagate.com/products/notebook/momentus.html). 7200rpm is the same rotational speed most desktop drives spin at, and should give the iBook some extra pep.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Here's another guide to replacing the iBook's hard drive: http://www.sterpin.net/uk/ddibookg4uk.htm

And here are 2.5" hard drives made by Samsung (http://product.samsung.com/cgi-bin/n...int+M40+Series), and Toshiba (http://sdd.toshiba.com/main.aspx?Pat...00659c000026ad).

[Heath McKnight]

Thanks!

Now, those drives you linked, Christopher, are 100% good for iBooks?

Thanks,

heath

[Nick Hiltgen]

Heath i'm 99% sure that any 2.5" hard drive can be formated to work %100 on an ibook (or any mac for that matter) which means you should have at least a %99.5 good hard drive.

[Christopher Lefchik]

Originally Posted by Heath McKnight

Now, those drives you linked, Christopher, are 100% good for iBooks?

They are standard 2.5" drives, which appears to be what the iBook 800 Mhz uses, so you should be just fine choosing any of them. Should you go with the Seagate Momentus 7200rpm or 5400rpm make sure you get the model that has the Ultra ATA/100 (Parallel ATA) interface, as they also make models with the Serial ATA interface.