[atomico37]

so i couldn't wait for one more paycheck to come and i bought a barebones ibook. turns out i could use more than thirty gigs. can i take the ibook to an apple store and have them upgrade the harddrive, or can i send it off somewhere like a powerbook rescue type operation? or lastly, can i do this myself?

there is probably some skill required to put in a bigger hd myself. but i do watch a lot of macgyver.

thanks in advance,
-patrock

postscript. i put a question in the digital a/v section about concerting an avi to vcd. i just downloaded a movie called "freaked". and would like to be able to play it in a dvd player. any thoughts?

if you get a chance you should check that flick out. bill, from bill and ted's, wrote and directed it. funny as shell.

[finknottle]

You could do it yourself but you would want want to be very comfortable with that kind of work and from reading your post, you haven't done it before? Better send it away....
At the moment (and I could be corrected on this), 80GB is as big as you can go but there are larger HDs about to come out for laptops...I remember reading something about Toshiba bringing out a 100GB soon??

[wataru]

Please do a search before posting. This question is asked all the time.

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...ght=hard+drive

[tooki]

Indeed.

In summary: you don't want to do it yourself. It is (to put it kindly) a nightmarish operation.

I don't know if Apple itself (e.g. at Apple stores) does upgrades, but any Apple Authorized Service Provider can do the upgrade without voiding the warranty or AppleCare, if you still have it left.'

tooki

[Detrius]

Originally posted by tooki:
Indeed.

In summary: you don't want to do it yourself. It is (to put it kindly) a nightmarish operation.

I don't know if Apple itself (e.g. at Apple stores) does upgrades, but any Apple Authorized Service Provider can do the upgrade without voiding the warranty or AppleCare, if you still have it left.'

tooki

Being a technician myself, I've done quite a bit of work in most of the different iBooks... It's not fun. It requires meticulously keeping up with which screws came from where. If you have never done it before, it will likely take three hours. I can get in to a hard drive in about 30 to 45 minutes. It takes longer to put it back together, though.

[RadarBob2]

Originally posted by Detrius:
Being a technician myself, I've done quite a bit of work in most of the different iBooks... It's not fun. It requires meticulously keeping up with which screws came from where. If you have never done it before, it will likely take three hours. I can get in to a hard drive in about 30 to 45 minutes. It takes longer to put it back together, though.

So what your are saying is that it's doable by Joe Average - if he has some room, time, and especially patience?

[andretan]

Whatever you do, please use new tools (screwdrivers) to do the job.

I attempted a DIY upgrade on my own, and ended up with a busted screw.

The screw thread was destroyed by my screwdriver and I had to put everything back and send it in to the tech guy at one of my local Mac shops to finish the job for me.
I couldn't proceed further without using a professional tool (screw extractor or whatever) to remove the stuck screw.

And oh yeah, the bottom case's a pain to remove.

And no, I'm not professionally trained to do this. I wanted to DIY because it's the only machine I've got at the moment and I've got work to do, so I really needed the extra hard drive space, and yeah, I wanted to save on getting a tech to do the job... but ended up forking out money instead.

Now, you have been warned.

And yes, I'm serious.

[the_glassman]

It's not that hard, make sure you start with a nice flat clean working environment. It's worth taking lots of pictures or even video taping it step by step. While you're in there might as well over-clock, um well maybe not.
Use a Sharpie® or a few in different colors to mark certain area and the screw heads. I'm sure there a few online guides about taking it apart. If you don't feel comfortable doing so you could always ship it to MCE Tech they upgrade hard drives and can upgrade your optical drive to a Superdrive™ (albeit for a price) if you want.
Good Luck!

[tooki]

Originally posted by RadarBob2:
So what your are saying is that it's doable by Joe Average - if he has some room, time, and especially patience?

... and outstanding technical aptitude and experience, and a proper set of jeweler's screwdrivers (all magnetized), and the service manual that explains what order to strip it apart it -- the thing is built up in layers, and you have to keep track of what screws go in at each layer.

It's a daunting procedure. I'm a seasoned Mac technician, and the first time I upgraded an iBook's drive (using directions!), it took about 1 hour to strip it apart, and 30 minutes to reassemble it. Most of the time spent disassembling was actually in meticulously marking where each screw went (I stuck the screw to sticky tape, then stuck the tape next to the screw hole it came from, with an arrow pointing to the correct hole, because there are frequently multiple holes next to each other).

So basically, I'd say, no, Joe Average should not even *think* about attempting it. If you are "Joe Clockmaker-by-Day-Mac-Geek-by-Night", then maybe.

tooki

[atomico37]

i wouldn't dare void the warranty on my ibook, so the only optioin WAS to call an apple certified upgrader. called them up and asked how much to intall a 60 gig drive. they said the drive was going to run 150 dollars(close to it anyway). no big deal. but the labor was going to be 120 bucks. probably not an unreasonable rate, but to think i could have ordered it direct from apple and pay less than fifty to get the same drive just makes me feel like a moron for not doing that in the first place. and paying almost 300 dollars would only make the moron label that much more concrete.

thanks for the help though, i'm just going to have to re-rip all my music at 32 kbps.

[Randman]

Do you have an iPod? Manually manage your music and take it off the hard drive.
Also, you might want to consider getting an external hard drive. For less than the prices you were talking about, you should be able to get something decent.
Not the best choice when mobile but fine for home. Keep music and video and what not stored there.

[Detrius]

Originally posted by atomico37:
i wouldn't dare void the warranty on my ibook, so the only optioin WAS to call an apple certified upgrader. called them up and asked how much to intall a 60 gig drive. they said the drive was going to run 150 dollars(close to it anyway). no big deal. but the labor was going to be 120 bucks. probably not an unreasonable rate, but to think i could have ordered it direct from apple and pay less than fifty to get the same drive just makes me feel like a moron for not doing that in the first place. and paying almost 300 dollars would only make the moron label that much more concrete.

thanks for the help though, i'm just going to have to re-rip all my music at 32 kbps.

Get an external drive. You don't necessarily need your entire collection to take with you at all times. Don't rip it at 32kbps. That would be too painful.

[atomico37]

kidding about the 32 bitrate, can you even rip that low?

[Luca Rescigno]

Yes. In fact, you can rip as low as 16 kbps in either MP3 or AAC.