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sdaccord01 · Nov 11, 2004, 04:24 AM

Hi, I actually bought a 867mhz powerbook earlier this year and it was very hard using it in college with my engineering apps that were windows based and VPC wasn't very good at the time. Now that I have graduated, I don't really need to use engineering apps away from my windows desktop so I decided to get an iBook 1.2GHz to replace my HP zt3000 laptop. Great deal by the way on Amazon, and I'm going to be on the long waitlist that will surely be worth waiting for this fabulous machine. One question I have is....I understand that the iBook has a 30gb hard drive, and I think it should be 2.5" correct? I have a nice 7k60 60gb 7200rpm hitachi hard drive and a 512mb pc2100 ram module (sodimm) that I want to transfer from my hp to the iBook. I'm not familiar with reformatting and setting up a mac from scratch as I am for a windows platform, so I was wondering what I need to do to swap hard drives so I put the iBook's slow 30gb 4200rpm hard drive to the hp zt3000 and the 60gb 7200rpm hard drive to the iBook?

jamil5454 · Nov 11, 2004, 11:13 AM

First of all, swapping the HD will void your warranty but installing RAM won't. If you want to keep your warranty, buy a 2.5" external enclosure for the Hitachi and hook that to the iBook. If you do decide to swap the HD, it's not as easy as installing RAM but can be done. There are plenty of articles online on how to do this. As for installing OS X from scratch, it's very easy. Turn the computer on, put the OS X DVD-ROM in the drive, reboot, hold 'c' while the iBook is booting, and it magically boots from the Combo drive.

billybob128 · Nov 11, 2004, 01:46 PM

agreed ona new iBook i wouldnt do it cause u loose ur warentee.

however if this doesnt bother u check this site out:
http://www.bluap.nl/mac/ibookdual.php

i have just changed my HD on my iBook which was out of warentee and the HD failed. this site got me through it no problem although i found it easy enough anyway. its usefull just to have a guide.

ps. id advise against the modd to change ur HD due to the warentee

sdaccord01 · Nov 11, 2004, 06:16 PM

Thank you for your help. I would do a swap after my warranty is up, but the thing is that I want to sell my HP laptop as soon as I get it, and it would lower the resale value if I didn't put any hard drive in it, so that's why I plan to use the ibook's 30gb hard drive. THanks for the links and help!

molala · Nov 11, 2004, 11:35 PM

also advise you against voiding your warranty as you may have problems within one year (with the logic board, optical drive etc.). iBook repairs are very expensive. it isn't worth having 30GB more HD space. i think it's wiser to buy an external 60GB hard drive, or order a BTO iBook from apple with a larger HD installed.

wertwert · Nov 14, 2004, 01:42 PM

Dude I got my ibook's hdd changed to a hitachi 7200rpm 40gig hdd at an apple authorise reseller.

Just bring your hard drive along and they'll charge you a small fee for installation but it's worth the money since it doesn't void your applecare.

hanzo · Nov 14, 2004, 02:43 PM

wertwert,

If you don't mind, how much was the fee that the reseller charge you?

Centris650 · Nov 14, 2004, 09:32 PM

Originally posted by hanzo:
wertwert,

If you don't mind, how much was the fee that the reseller charge you?

Yeah, I'd like to know how much too.

troymurray · Nov 14, 2004, 10:44 PM

So if you take in a hard drive to an Apple repair facility, they will install it for you, for a fee, and it won't void your warranty?

hanzo · Nov 14, 2004, 10:51 PM

Well, I just asked some dude at The Apple Store today about getting a new hdd installed. The guy said immediately that that would void the warranty... When I asked again if he was sure, he said yeah, but then he referred me to an Apple reseller who could do the installation but voiding the warranty as well... The reseller's shop is closed today but I'll ask tomorrow if that's true.

MARINEOSX · Nov 14, 2004, 10:59 PM

I have asked many different resellers and apple care 2 diff times on the phone they told me replacing the drive will void the warranty on just the hard drive. The rest will still be covered unless you replaced something else.

wertwert · Nov 16, 2004, 02:15 AM

Ok sorry for the late reply. I'm in singapore and they charged me S$40 which makes it about 30 odd bucks.

The warranty of the hard drive will be voided understandably since you'll not be using the one provided by apple. The rest of the unit would still be under warranty though. I solved this by getting a hard drive which comes with a three year manufacturer warranty.

One thing to note, make sure you keep the receipt after visiting the apple reseller and go to one that is an authorised reseller.

I've sent my ibook to apple singapore for some repair concerning the trackpad and they used the receipt to call and verify that the hard drive was changed by an authorised reseller.