[Recontech]

I want to swap out my HD from the 80gb in my PB to a 200+gb, anything I need to know? I plan on ghosting an image off the 80gb and ghosting it back to the 200gb or whatever size I get.

[ibook_steve]

As far as I know, there are no portable 2.5" drives over 200 GB. I think the biggest available right now is 160 GB. You'll obviously need an external enclosure to do what you propose.

Steve

[Recontech]

well, ok, I guess I'll have to stick with 160gb

[mfbernstein]

Biggest 2.5" IDE drive is 160GB right now (prices start around $120). There are 200GB 2.5" SATA drives, but your PowerBook doesn't support SATA. Utilities like SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner will make cloning your system to the new drive very easy.

[ibook_steve]

Originally Posted by mfbernstein 

Biggest 2.5" IDE drive is 160GB right now (prices start around $120). There are 200GB 2.5" SATA drives, but your PowerBook doesn't support SATA. Utilities like SuperDuper or CarbonCopy Cloner will make cloning your system to the new drive very easy.

Not to hijack, but where are there 200 GB SATA drives? I don't see any at Newegg.

Steve

[mfbernstein]

Newegg has 'em (oddly enough, the price has dropped almost $50 in the last two months). Regarding 200GB 2.5" SATA drives in general, caveats are that they're only 4200RPM, only Toshiba and Fujitsu are making them, and the Fujitsu one is 12.5mm high, so only the Toshiba is guaranteed to fit in a PowerBook/MacBook.

[Crouching Donkey]

I have a tip:

I upgraded my stock 80GB HD to a 160GB one, on my Powerbook. I didn't clone or ghost anything as I didn't have this software.

Instead, here is what I did:
I fitted the 160GB HD into a 2.5" enclosure (which I had anyway, and which you can buy pretty cheaply), and formatted the drive. Then performed a clean install of OS X onto it, from the discs that came with the Powerbook.

I then booted up from the new HD, and used Migration Assistant to copy all my files, folders, settings and applications from the old HD (which is still inside the Powerbook). Once this was complete, (and it can take a while depending on how much you have to copy), I checked that everything indeed had been copied, which it had. I then shutdown and rebooted the new drive, and tested certain apps, and tested the net connection etc, and rebooted again just to be certain this new drive was ready to be installed into the Powerbook. If anything went wrong at this stage, I could start all over again. Once it's in the Powerbook, I really didn't want to have to open it up and remove the drive!

Ok, so now that I was happy with it, I went ahead and replaced the old HD with the new. It booted up perfectly, as it did in the enclosure. Everything looked and felt the same except now I had twice the capacity!

The actual 'surgery' itself wasn't as difficult as I thought, though the ifixit.com guides were a real lifesaver.

Goodluck with your upgrade!

[threestain]

right I'm just about to go through this arduous process - is it best to clone or reinstall and migrate? I'm liking the cloning better at the moment!

also will a 2.5" drive fit a standard ide connector? (if not I need to go shopping approximately half an hour ago!)

it is a seagate momentus 5400.3 and it appears to have 22 pairs of pins then 2 for jumpers... ah... I now see that in fact I need to go from 44 to 40 not the other way round...

shopping it is then!

[mfbernstein]

Clone is faster and easier. Only advantage of reinstall and migrate is that you don't have some of the previously accumulated crud. If you have a setup you're comfortable with, why go to the trouble of recreating it?

2.5" drives won't fit in 3.5" enclosures without an adapter.

[threestain]

I have just swapped over my hard-drives. Painless pretty quick and smooth. And best of all I get to use the whole 160 Gb of the drive - AWESOME!

[B Gallagher]

Yeah, they're not for novices, obviously, but the guides on ifixit.com are great.

[ykarnay]

Hi all,

Here is my dilemma and I am a novice: I use PowerBook G4, 1.33ghz, 60GB, 768MB RAM
It all started with MSWord not launching, I cleaned out the duplicate fonts and removed MS Preferences. Nothign helped. It got slower by the next day. iTunes would jerk and break the songs while playing. I restarted a few times, the colored wheel wouldn't stop rotating. The next restart, the gray screen with the rotating wheel took over.

At the apple store, the tech suspected a HD failure and suggested a replacement for about $320 (without data recovery). I can't afford this much and I can't afford to loose the date (not all has beeen bacjked up in time). I am considering Data Recovery 2, trial...and if it works I may purchase the serial. Any advise?

I am looking into purchasing both intern for PB, 160GB and external for both PB and my Windows, P. I am looking into a 160GB, would my 1.33ghz PB support it? Not sure.Any suggestions? Would it be an easy and smooth task to replace it myself with fixit notes? Would I need any extra software or what not?

What do you guys think of these:
2.5" IDE & SCSI Hard Drives for Laptops (PowerBook Notebooks) at OtherWorldComputing.com
120.0GB Western Digital "Scorpio" 5400RPM 9.5... (WD1200VE) at OWC
Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio WD1200VE 120GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM
Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio WD1600BEVS 160GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache Serial ATA150 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM
120GB Toshiba 5400RPM 9.5MM SuperSlim Notebo... (MK1234GAX) at OWC
100.0GB Toshiba MK1032GAX 5400RPM 9.5MM 16MB... (MK1032GAX) at OWC
80GB Hitachi 7K100 7200RPM ATA/6 NoteBook Driv... (0A25023) at OWC
80.0GB Toshiba 5400RPM ATA/6 8MB Cache 9.5mm... (MK8032GAX) at OWC

Also, would you have any suggestions on FRW400/800/USB 2.0 External HD about 320GB?

Thanks a lot, this forum is great.
YK

[peeb]

ifixit.com is your friend on all these issues. Very clear guides on upgrading, with instructions.

[mfbernstein]

Your machine can't use SATA drives, so cross those off the list. Your PB will work fine with 160GB drives. Most people seem to prefer Seagate these days on account of the warranty.

Get a drive and an external enclosure. Put the new drive in the enclosure. Make sure to format the new drive using the APM partition type (with Disk Utility). Use SuperDuper to clone your internal drive to the external one. Only get Data Rescue if you can't clone via SuperDuper. Then swap the drives. The ifixit instructions should make it pretty easy.

Note that if the drive is failing, the less you use it, the better.

[peeb]

Originally Posted by mfbernstein 

Then swap the drives. The ifixit instructions should make it pretty easy.

For a novice, the ifixit guide for the PB is pretty frightening.