[Dakar²]

It occurs to me that I've had my 15" PowerBook laying around for months because the HD was failing, and also have a G3 iBook that still functions. My question is, would the HD from the iBook be compatible with the PowerBook, and would it be possible for me to install it from one to the other?

[Dakar²]

In case I wasn't specific enough:

iBook G3 500 10GB
PowerBook G4 800

[shifuimam]

Yes.

PPC-based G3+ Apple laptops use IDE laptop drives, usually of the 2.5" variety. The Intel-based Apple laptops use SATA drives and are not compatible.

[imitchellg5]

It should work fine, although the iBook HD will be slower than the PowerBook's old HD. And 10 Gb is a bit lacking.

[Dakar²]

Yeah, I was actually just considering getting an entirely new drive when I checked this thread.

Question: My PowerBook model used a ATA/66 drive. Does that mean I need to hunt one of those down, or would an ATA/100 be compatible?
(I'm currently perusing Newegg and that seems to be the slowest ATA notebook drive available)

[romeosc]

ATA 100 is fine! your Mac just won't run it at full potential!

[Dakar²]

This might just make my day.

Edit: Any brands you guys would recommend? For some reason I'm under the impression Hitachi might be cheapshit.

[Dakar²]

Any HD brands people out there might recommend me to get/avoid?

[Dakar²]

Alright, this looks like a good choice.
Yay/nay?
Newegg.com - Western Digital Scorpio WD400VE 40GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache ATA-6 Notebook Hard Drive - OEM

[peeb]

Don't bother doing this. Put a new Seagate into the PB - 80-100gb are pretty cheap now.

[mfbernstein]

Yeah, for $15 more, you can get twice the capacity. Theoretically, Seagate has the best warranty (5-year limited), but in the real world, I've never seen it help out.

[shabbasuraj]

Ya leave the old drive in the old computer, and just buy a new drive.

Thus you have 2 working computers.

[Dakar²]

Thanks, everyone.

[jools]

Be sure to let us know how this went as I have a need to upgrade my G4 PowerBook with a 80plus GB Drive...

[dbwie]

The timing of this thread is good, as I just upgraded the hard drive in my 550 Mhz G4 Titanium Powerbook yesterday. My recommendation: Go to OWC: Apple Mac G4 upgrades, Laptop Batteries, Memory, Drives. Click on the pull down menu and select "my owc". This will allow you to select the computer you want to upgrade. Then you can select hard drive upgrade, and it will show you a list of hard drives that will work in your laptop. I decided on a 80 GB, 7200 rpm Hitachi/IBM travelstar drive. 7200 rpm is noticeably faster than my stock 30 GB, 4200 rpm drive, especially when waking from sleep. However, the computers fan will come on a bit more often (more heat), and it will use more battery life. (This assessment is based on only one day of testing, however I am extremely pleased with the drive). For a balance of performance and battery concerns, consider a 5400 rpm drive, which are about $20-30 cheaper than 7200 rpm at the same disk size. I chose 7200 because I use my laptop primarily as a desktop, and it is often plugged in. The OWC website also has a good instructional video on how you can install this hard drive yourself. You will definitely want to have an anti-static wrist strap, and will need some special screwdrivers to remove the screws on the bottom of the Titanium Powerbook case. I believe that all of this can be purchased from OWC. I did this HD replacement and put my old drive in an external case without much difficulty. For cloning my old drive to my new one, I used the shareware program SuperDuper... one of the best shareware programs available for the Mac. Hope this helps.

[YangZone]

I replaced the drive in my PB 800 with a Seagate Momentus ST910021AS 100GB 7200 rpm (about $100-) drive and it TOTALLY transformed the experience. It seemed to double the speed of the machine.