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Mar 22, 2005, 10:21 PM

I'd like to upgrade the hard drive on my 12" aluminum PowerBook. I currently have a 40 GB drive and would like to go up to at least an 80. Can anyone recommend a good drive? I found a 100 GB Seagate Momentus 5400.2 on CDW for around $210. Will Apple's Disk Utility be able to format this drive?

All suggestions and/or advice are much appreciated!

Thanks,
Rob

segfault66 · Mar 22, 2005, 11:37 PM

I have the Seagate 100GB 5400RPM Momentus in my 12" PowerBook G4/1.33. The drive works great. Quieter than my previous upgrade which was a Toshiba 60GB 5400RPM drive, except for the occasional tapping noise which is slightly annoying, but not as bad as it is made out to be.

The install is not for the faint of heart. Lots of tiny screws. Search xlr8yourmac.com for instructions.

BTW, I've seen the drive on sale at Best Buy for $180, so shop around.

Good luck.

f1000 · Mar 22, 2005, 11:43 PM

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=238496

trip · Mar 22, 2005, 11:57 PM

Just my suggestion:
Buy the Hitachi 60GB / 7200RPM / 2.5 Inch / OEM / Mobile Hard Drive. It should give you a noticable speed bump.
Then take your existing hard drive and put it in an enclosure.
That should give 100 GB total with better speed. I suggest you check out the other posts on this drive since I haven't done this yet myself. It's what I plan to do when I get mine.

rocky2 · Mar 25, 2005, 08:17 PM

I did just that and the IMB/Hitachi 7200 rpm died within 6 weeks after starting to make a lot of clicking noises. I am not sure if it was just bad luck or a heat issue although the PB was not running hot (50�C at the CPU and 53�C at the GPU) and was sitting on a PB cooling plate too. For main board safety, I went back to 4200 rpm but might try a 5400 rpm Samsung drive when I can get the PB back to the bench again.
There ARE a lot of tiny screws in there--use double-sided tape to stick 'em down in the order they are removed to make reassembly easier.

legacyb4 · Mar 26, 2005, 01:39 AM

While I'm normally not faint of heart for DIY hardware upgrades, I think I'm going to be waiting until my PB is out of Applecare before going for it.

Originally posted by segfault66:
The install is not for the faint of heart. Lots of tiny screws. Search xlr8yourmac.com for instructions.

AC Rempt · Mar 26, 2005, 02:35 PM

I just did it, and it wasn't all that painful if you have good instructions. I used the ones at PBfixit.com, and they are great. They even have a printable screw guide that you can use to tape your screws on, so you can keep track of them easily.

Honestly, it was just a matter of removing screws and putting them back. Took about 45 minutes, all told.

legacyb4 · Mar 27, 2005, 02:27 AM

Understood; my point was that I remember that when the 12" PBs first came out, drive swaps were definitely a do-and-void-your-warranty type of upgrade. I figure I've paid for extended AC and no sense in chucking it down the drain if something were to come up...

Originally posted by AC Rempt:
I just did it, and it wasn't all that painful if you have good instructions. I used the ones at PBfixit.com, and they are great. They even have a printable screw guide that you can use to tape your screws on, so you can keep track of them easily.

Honestly, it was just a matter of removing screws and putting them back. Took about 45 minutes, all told.