[Karim]

My 60GB Fujitsu drive began "clunking" (like a couple of loose marbles in a can) a sign of major hard drive problems. I figured it was a possible head crash. The drive worked but the clunking was becoming more and more prevalent.

I called Apple and they said they would repair it but needed the computer and the drive together. I told them I'd call back. I didn't feel like saying goodbye to my 17" PB for 1-3 weeks..

So, I bought the Hitachi/IBM 80GB drive and put it into a firwire case and Carbon Copy Cloned my sick Fujitsu over to it.

I then tried a zero all format on the Fujitsu to see if it would mark out the bad sectors and "repair" the drive. Well, the drive looked like it formatted OK but then hung at the "writing partition" stage. After a reboot the drive was completely gone. The manufacter/model was garbaled in the disk info page in disk utillity. And it wouldn't format or partition any more.

Thanking my lucky stars (I had a backup but it would have been a pain to grab everything off tapes) that I cloned my drive in the knick of time I planned for the removal of the Fujitsu drive and the installation of the 80GB monster.

Turns out the Titanium Powerbooks were nice and easy to open up and get to the hard drive but the 17" is alot more tricky.

I wrote up some directions for people that also want to do this procedure and replace their hard drive. Note that you may/will void your Apple warranty by doing this. I plan on paying for an Apple retailer to reinstall the Fujitsu drive before I ship it to Apple for repair when I get my next Powerbook whenever it is invented. That way I will have it documented if Apple asks that the drive was swapped by the dealer.

I think the warranty issue is silly. Basically I think you should be able to take your PB apart if you want and if you put it all back together again and their is no problem than your warranty should still be valid. Of course, if you break it then I think it is fair to lose your warranty.

Here is how to dissasemble the 17" to replace the hard drive:

As always, be gentle and patient. Ground yourself before starting and/or use a static arresting strap.

1. Flip PB over

2. Remove battery

3. Remove 3 phillips screws on RAM cover

4. Remove DIMM's

5. Remove two TORX screws on right and left side of DIMM sockets

6. Under lower DIMM socket is the flat keyboard cable. Remove cable retainer clip, and gently pull out keyboard cable

7. Remove three phillips screws in battery compartment

8. Remove the four phillips screws on the right and left side of the PB case

9. Remove the five phillips screws on the rear bottom side of the PB case. Note both the outer right and left screws are threaded different so be sure to put the two unique screws back in on the outer R&L holes

10. The top case will now come off, it is one piece with the keyboard integrated into it. Gently pull it off. Use your finger nail or plastic screw driver (Don't use metal - it could/will scratch) to pop the top case off the frame working from right edge to front to left edge. It will come off without much effort

11. The hard drive is in the front left side. Their is a flex cable running over it, unplug it from the motherboard

12. their is a thin hard drive bracket on the left side of the drive held on by two TORX screws. Remove the screws, and lift the drive out angling towards the right and bull the bracket out

13. Gently pull the hard drive up and towards the front of the powerbook. The connector cable is on the rear of the drive, pull it off gently

14. Remove the four screwed on posts from the hard drive and install on your new hard drive

15. Notice when reinstalling the new drive that the posts on the right side fit into the PB by inserting them into two rubber grommets

16. Get the bracket you removed which also has two rubber grommets and put it on the drive lining up the left posts with the grommets

17. Reattach the hard drive cable and gently push the drive back into position

18. Replace the two TORX screws to mount the hard drive and its bracket

19. Replace the flex cable that runs over the hard drive and replug into the motherboard

20. Grab the top case and lower it towards the PB frame. Make sure the keyboard flex cable goes through the hole in the frame that leads to the DIMM socket board on the bottom of the PB

21 Push down gently on the top case until it seats into the frame and the side screw holes line up

22. Replace four phillips screws on right and left side - Be gentle, don't strip the screws. And use the RIGHT screwdriver

23. Replace five phillips screws on bottom rear of PB. Be sure the two unique screws go on the outer right and left sides

24. ALMOST DONE -- Flip PB over

25. Replace the two TORX screws on each side of the DIMM sockets. The longer one goes on the left side

26. Put the keyboard flex cable into its socket and take the clip and insert it under the cable (between the cable and motherboard) and push it into the socket until the locking pins engage in the socket. It keeps the keyboard cable secure in the socket

27. Replace your DIMM's into the RAM sockets

28. Replace the DIMM cover and replace the three phillips screws

29. Replace the three phillips screws in the battery bay

30. Replace the battery

31. Push the power button and smile


The Hitachi 80GN drive is very quiet. Same as the Fujitsu. And it has an 8MB cache and feels alot faster.

Here is the xbench 1.0 results of the 80GB. I didn't quit several apps but I don't think there is much effect on the disk test.

Drive Type IC25N080ATMR04-0
Disk Test 64.08
Sequential 69.46
Uncached Write 68.88 30.05 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 57.26 23.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 119.72 18.86 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 57.95 25.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 59.48
Uncached Write 50.50 0.76 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 74.64 17.12 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 55.19 0.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 62.75 12.30 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Here are my old Fujitsu results from my 17" review:

Disk Test 45.59
Sequential 42.09
Uncached Write 37.38 16.31 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 34.44 14.01 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 95.37 15.02 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 34.78 15.00 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 49.73
Uncached Write 62.51 0.94 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 39.72 9.11 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 55.81 0.36 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 46.84 9.18 MB/sec [256K blocks]

Looks like the 80GB is around 50% to almost 100% faster. Must be the 4x cache and the higher density!

One thing to note is that the Xbench results on the old drive were under OSX 10.2.4 and the 80GB is 10.2.6 so that may have some impact.


I'm going to call Fujitsu and see if they will warranty the drive themselves. Then I don't have to deal with Apple at all for the repair and not have to ship pack the PB also.

[wanderlust]

Very informative and interesting. thank you very much for posting in such detail. Makes me want to run out and upgrade my HD now. Well, almost.

[mrmister]

Very interesting! How's the hit on battery life with the new drive?

[Karim]

Hard drive power specs are identical (one spec is .1W greater) between drives. The drive is 4200RPM like the Fujitsu.

I noticed no difference in battery time drain or heat.

It seems much faster with disk intensive software (Virtual PC/iDVD/iMovie etc..)

[mrmister]

Great--where did you buy it from?

[videian28]

that's a hell of a speed increase, where and what did it cost to buy?

[djjava]

Originally posted by videian28:
that's a hell of a speed increase, where and what did it cost to buy?

for those of us wussies who wouldn't take the plunge and open up our $3300 pb17s, is it conceivable to assume that the average Joe Pb17 user could buy this drive, take it and the pb17 to an authorized Apple tech, and say, "Yo, swap drives for me please..." ???

and how would this effect the warranty?

[Karim]

I found it on googlegear for $268 but decided to buy it from my local Mac shop for $310 to help support them.

http://www.googlegear.com/jsp/Produc...uctCode=100520

I could have had them put the drive in but they said it was an involved process and would cost 1 1/2 hours of shop time = $150

I decided it would be a waste for them to pull out the bad drive and then put the new one in and when I got ready to sell the computer do the whole thing again. All that would end up costing as much as the drive was just in shop time.

It really wasn't hard to take apart the PB and put the drive in. It probably took 45 minutes the first time I did it and now would take half that since I know how to do it now.

Cost wise the drive is pretty cheap, about $0.004 per meg for notebook drives and the performance is stellar

[urrl5201]

Very probable that Apple will be using these drives or something like them in the near future when new versions come out. So I imagine there will be a time when you could actually have Apple install this drive. Very good thread and glad the drive installed correctly. I myself went and bought a 120 GIG ext firewire 800 drive with 8 MB buffer RAM from transintl.com. I am burning a DVD using it right now, as the saved movies are on the drive.

[CatOne]

Got ya beat on the disk:

Disk Test 264.33
Sequential 161.19
Uncached Write 239.97 104.70 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 216.82 88.21 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 74.65 11.76 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 378.66 163.36 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Random 734.05
Uncached Write 1443.76 21.80 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Write 390.74 89.64 MB/sec [256K blocks]
Uncached Read 1044.06 6.79 MB/sec [4K blocks]
Uncached Read 806.75 158.12 MB/sec [256K blocks]


Okay okay, it's not quite a laptop tho'

[Karim]

Those are some pretty insane numbers! Over a 160 megabytes/second!

[Karim]

Those numbers are so insane that they exceed the firewire 800 spec and are impossible.

I think Xbench needs another update or reporting MB/sec actually means MBITS/SEC. If that were true most drives suck worse than the really do.

Since Firewire is limited to 800MBITS/SEC or 80MB/sec.

[mrmister]

Hmmm. I do a lot of video work on my notebook, and that is a tempting upgrade--improved speed, more room (!) and same power consumption. I have a 1ghz TiBook, so swapping would be a snap...

...temptation, growing...

[CatOne]

Originally posted by Karim:
Those numbers are so insane that they exceed the firewire 800 spec and are impossible.

I think Xbench needs another update or reporting MB/sec actually means MBITS/SEC. If that were true most drives suck worse than the really do.

Since Firewire is limited to 800MBITS/SEC or 80MB/sec.

Heh. That's Xserve RAID over Fiber Channel. I cheated a bit

[Shaddim]

I installed the same drive in my PB 12. It's a real speed demon in comparison to the Fujitsu, depite having the same spindle speed.

[seanyepez]

Originally posted by CatOne:
Heh. That's Xserve RAID over Fiber Channel. I cheated a bit

That's some insanely fast disk performance!

[mrmister]

I ordered the drive--just trying to keep my 1Ghz TiBook competitive with all the new kids out there.

[CatOne]

Originally posted by seanyepez:
That's some insanely fast disk performance!

w00t

It's faster with the 512 MB cache modules. This one has the tiny cache, heh.

[gametime10]

Anyone have a link w/ directions on upgrading a HHD in a Ti Powerbook?

[Karim]

The Ti's are easy and the info is in your manual that shipped with the powerbook.

Here is a copy if you need it:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=52263

[gametime10]

Sweet...thanks. Man, I wish my HDD would start breaking down, so I had an excuse to upgrade. =)

[videian28]

ditto

[technocrat]

wait... you have to have a reason to upgrade?

[moofman]

Thanks a lot, Karim! I was actually wondering about swapping hard drives in the AlBooks. I have a 40 GB drive in my [dead] PowerBook that I plan on just swapping when I get my new one (be it the 12" or future 15") come August, but I hadn't seen if anyone else had done it and documented it.

Does anyone know if the structure differences between the 17" and 12"/15" are that off, or I will be able to essentially follow the same steps?

[Karim]

The 12" is a little different from what I'm told. The keyboard is integrated into the top case on the 17". On the 12" you need to pop of the F1 & F2 keys and F11 & F12 keys to access two screws that need to be removed.

There is more to it obviously but this is one significant difference.

[blot]

What drive height does the 17" PB accept -9.5mm or up to 12.5mm?

[Karim]

I'm going to guess 9.5mm is the max. It looked very tight in there.

[blot]

Thanks for the info.

Looks like the Ti has a little more room than the 17" as it can fit a 12.5mm drive. I wonder if the thickness of the Aluminium has reduced the overall internal height, after all both PB are 1" in height externally.

[vmarks]

you can fit a 12mm drive in the 12", but don't do it- it blocks the path for hot air to vent out.

Why put in a taller drive only to cook it?

[mrmister]

"I wonder if the thickness of the Aluminium has reduced the overall internal height, after all both PB are 1" in height externally."

From looking at the dissection photos, I think it is the internal framework of the AlBooks, which needs to be more robust than the TiBooks. So it isn't thicker Aluminum so much as a thicker framework, but it amounts to much the same thing.

[danbrew]

Originally posted by Karim:
I decided it would be a waste for them to pull out the bad drive and then put the new one in and when I got ready to sell the computer do the whole thing again. All that would end up costing as much as the drive was just in shop time.

Would you really put the bad hard drive back in the machine right before you sold it?

[mrmister]

"Would you really put the bad hard drive back in the machine right before you sold it?"

I think he means, "replace drive, send to Apple, get it repaired and returned, then sell."

[Karim]

Yes that is what I'm doing.

Replace HD, send to Apple for repair, then sell to someone.

I would never sell a broken Powerbook, why should I? It is covered under Applecare and so will be repaired.

If I didn't get it repaired I would have to disclose that it had a broken Hard Drive and it would be worth alot less.

And, I would never NOT disclose such a fact.