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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Mac Notebooks > Hard Drive Upgrade?

Hard Drive Upgrade?
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Fresh-Faced Recruit
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Apr 6, 2006, 01:34 PM
 
I have a 1.33 Mhz G4 12inch powerbook w/ 80 gig hd that has a bad logic board, I pulled the Hard Drive and swapped it with a firewire drive to retrieve my data. I have a 1.2 mhz 12inch G4 iBook with a 30 gig drive. I am thinking it would be nice to put the 80 gig drive into the ibook (no warranty bought used).


Is this possible? Will this cause heat issues collapse world economy or just a bad idea??
     
Mac Elite
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Apr 6, 2006, 01:41 PM
 
This will work fine, since both machines take Ultra ATA/100 hard drives. You will also see a small speed increase as the PB drive is 5400 RPM v the iBooks 4200.
iMac Core Duo 1.83 Ghz | 1.25GB RAM | 160HD, MacBook Core Duo 1.83 Ghz | 13.3" | 60HD | 1.0GB RAM
     
Posting Junkie
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Apr 6, 2006, 03:11 PM
 
Should work fine. Enjoy.
     
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Apr 7, 2006, 05:40 AM
 
Originally Posted by fuzzdevil
heat issues collapse world economy
bound to happen anyway
     
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Apr 9, 2006, 10:16 PM
 
I just upgraded my iBook's drive from 30GB to 100GB, and it runs much faster now. You shouldn't see any problems, as others have already said.
Dennis R. Metzcher
MyMacBlog.com: My experiences with the Mac OS, a switcher's point of view. With a new Mac tip each week day.
     
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Apr 10, 2006, 09:08 AM
 
dmetzcher >> I will be upgrading my optical drive to a Superdrive by the end of the week or early next week. Since I'm taking the entire thing apart anyway, I am going to also upgrade the hard drive.

I am debating between the 80gig or 100gig drives, you said you notice your ibook runs a lot faster. Did you get a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive, and also, how did it effect your battery life? I'm mobile about 60% of the day, and can't really stop and plug in my laptop. Thus far I do fine with the stock 30 gig drive, i want to at least be able to ge tthrough most of my day with on and off use when I upgrade.
MacBook Pro | 2.16 ghz core2duo | 2gb ram | superdrive | airport extreme
iBook G4 | 1.2ghz | 768mb ram | combodrive | airport extreme
iPhone 3GS | 32 GB | Jailbreak, or no Jailbreak
     
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Apr 10, 2006, 11:06 AM
 
Originally Posted by mpancha
dmetzcher >> I will be upgrading my optical drive to a Superdrive by the end of the week or early next week. Since I'm taking the entire thing apart anyway, I am going to also upgrade the hard drive.

I am debating between the 80gig or 100gig drives, you said you notice your ibook runs a lot faster. Did you get a 5400 or 7200 RPM drive, and also, how did it effect your battery life? I'm mobile about 60% of the day, and can't really stop and plug in my laptop. Thus far I do fine with the stock 30 gig drive, i want to at least be able to ge tthrough most of my day with on and off use when I upgrade.
The 100GB drive that I used was 5400 RPM. I think 7200 RPM would probably kill your battery life, but someone else who has done it (I didn't know they made 7200 RPM 2.5" drives), can respond here and let us know for sure.

As far as my own battery life, I honestly haven't checked. Once per month, usually around the 15th, I let the battery drain out and then do a recharge. Most days, it's always plugged in, so I haven't really had a chance to check the life of the battery now that I have the new drive. The iBook runs a lot faster now, but I think that has less to do with the fact that the drive is 200 RPM faster, and more to do with the fact that there is more than 5GB of available disk space. It might also have to do with the fact that my disk might be a lot less fragmented, because I cloned the original disk first, and then restored that clone to the new disk. I'm not sure. If someone who has more knowledge on that subject is reading this, I'd like to know. Logins are faster, and the OS is certainly a little snappier now.
Dennis R. Metzcher
MyMacBlog.com: My experiences with the Mac OS, a switcher's point of view. With a new Mac tip each week day.
     
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Apr 10, 2006, 03:15 PM
 
Mine has been steadily getting slower with each OS update (10.4.x update that is) I'm hoping this onslaught of upgrades I do will greatly help with that. I will also be adding either 512 or 1gig of ram to bring my total to 1gig or 1.5 gig respectively, that in itself will aide a lot. But of course, anything I can do to prolong the investment I made in the iBook the better.
MacBook Pro | 2.16 ghz core2duo | 2gb ram | superdrive | airport extreme
iBook G4 | 1.2ghz | 768mb ram | combodrive | airport extreme
iPhone 3GS | 32 GB | Jailbreak, or no Jailbreak
     
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Apr 10, 2006, 04:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by mpancha
Mine has been steadily getting slower with each OS update (10.4.x update that is) I'm hoping this onslaught of upgrades I do will greatly help with that. I will also be adding either 512 or 1gig of ram to bring my total to 1gig or 1.5 gig respectively, that in itself will aide a lot. But of course, anything I can do to prolong the investment I made in the iBook the better.
My next upgrade is another RAM upgrade to bring the machine up to 1.25GB. I have the model iBook that was available just before yours came out, so I didn't get the 512MB on-board RAM, I only got 256MB.
Dennis R. Metzcher
MyMacBlog.com: My experiences with the Mac OS, a switcher's point of view. With a new Mac tip each week day.
     
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Apr 10, 2006, 07:37 PM
 
i've read that 7200rpm drives dont affect battery life that much...in some cases they increase battery life (this is all from an article i read, so idk if it's true) because the time spent reading and writing is shorter...
     
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Apr 10, 2006, 09:40 PM
 
Originally Posted by hookem2oo7
i've read that 7200rpm drives dont affect battery life that much...in some cases they increase battery life (this is all from an article i read, so idk if it's true) because the time spent reading and writing is shorter...
,

A bit off topic, Hookem2007, Do you go to UT?
MacBook Pro | 2.16 ghz core2duo | 2gb ram | superdrive | airport extreme
iBook G4 | 1.2ghz | 768mb ram | combodrive | airport extreme
iPhone 3GS | 32 GB | Jailbreak, or no Jailbreak
     
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Apr 12, 2006, 03:09 PM
 
Does anybody here know how much an apple brand 512MB stick of RAM would cost? I really need to upgrade my ibook as I have 512 already but whenever I run itunes, Iphoto, appleworks and Safari, the system is overloaded already. I checked on Activity monitor and it says Safari is taking up 215 MB of RAM! Is that normal? I thought the internet wasn't that RAM hungry but I could be wrong. Does anybody else have Safari that uses 215 MB of RAM?? Kinda weird if you ask me, then when I am running Safari which goes down to 150MB of RAM sometimes, and LimeWire, which uses usually about another 200 MB of RAM so all my RAM is gone down the drain just doing every day tasks.
     
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Apr 12, 2006, 11:15 PM
 
Originally Posted by Krjat
Does anybody here know how much an apple brand 512MB stick of RAM would cost? I really need to upgrade my ibook as I have 512 already but whenever I run itunes, Iphoto, appleworks and Safari, the system is overloaded already. I checked on Activity monitor and it says Safari is taking up 215 MB of RAM! Is that normal? I thought the internet wasn't that RAM hungry but I could be wrong. Does anybody else have Safari that uses 215 MB of RAM?? Kinda weird if you ask me, then when I am running Safari which goes down to 150MB of RAM sometimes, and LimeWire, which uses usually about another 200 MB of RAM so all my RAM is gone down the drain just doing every day tasks.
The RAM that Apple sells is way overpriced. If I were you, I check out RAMSeeker.com, and look at the bottom of the page when it loads. There are Apple models listed there. For the iBook, you can get a 1GB RAM module for under $90 now, from Omni (linked from RAMSeeker.com). I would never buy from Apple unless I had unlimited funds and I was building the machine on their Web site. They'll charge you about $300 for the same module (obviously not the exact same brand, but Omni builds to Apple's specs), if you build an iBook on their site and add the 1GB extra.
Dennis R. Metzcher
MyMacBlog.com: My experiences with the Mac OS, a switcher's point of view. With a new Mac tip each week day.
     
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Apr 12, 2006, 11:38 PM
 
OK, i will probably but from RAMseeker.com then if its a lot cheepr.
     
   
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