Recycled Computing

The iBook Can't Replace the Hard Drive Blues

- 2009.04.28

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After an influx of MacBooks into the Hatchett hacienda around Christmas time, I inherited my daughters G4 iBook with a pixel line of death on its 14" screen. I, of course, am still bonded to my G3 Pismo in spite of its aged graphics card and limited software options. (I still use Mac OS X 10.4 "Tiger" and had to go searching for an older version of Skype).

Now, in addition to the pixel line of death, the iBook had a tiny 60 GB hard drive. I had dropped a 160 GB drive into the Pismo, but it was the wrong kind of ATA, and only 128 GB is useable.

Being the sort of person who can get in over his head in a microsecond, I thought that I would switch the hard drives and get the 160 GB drive in the G4 and put the 60 GB in my trusted Pismo.

Sounds simple, right?

Nope. Those of you who have tried to replace the hard drive in an iBook G4 know what I am taking about and are already trying to warn me.

The easy part - removing the hard drive on the Pismo. It's a snap. Everyone knows this.

Step 39 of 45 in replacing an iBook's hard drive

The disaster part - removing the hard drive from the G4 iBook is not a snap. The designer of this computer - I'm trying to be polite - must have worked on the clamshell iBook G3. After 42 steps (don't believe it - see iFixIt!) and some moaning and groaning, I swapped the drives.

After I reassembled the G4, I pressed the power button and - no! Meaning no power. I wasn't sure if I had made the connection from the power button and the main board, so I took it apart and saw that the connector had broken away from the main board.

I got them G4 blues

Can't replace my hard drive easily

I got them G4 blues

Apple - your iBook frustrates me

Well, I had to strip the iBook down to get at the main board, and I am now waiting for Mr. Mike to solder the connection. Keep your fingers crossed.

Soapbox time: Apple has done a good job of making the hard drive accessible on the white MacBooks that my sons and daughter have. But - and it's a big but - I have a modest proposal for Apple.

If I was building an ideal laptop, I would make the following things accessible and removable - the hard drive, the RAM, the AirPort Card, the CPU, and the graphics card. Oh, an Express Card slot would be good, to. I don't want much, just a laptop I can use for the rest of my life.

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Recent Recycled Computing Columns

Mountain Lion Obsoletes the MacBook I Just Bought, 2012.02.24. John Hatchett just got his first Intel Mac, a preowned MacBook, in December, and now it looks like it won't be able to run OS X 10.8 Mountain Lion.
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More in the Recycled Computing index.

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Mac of the Day: PowerBook 500 Series, introduced 1994.05.16. 'Blackbird' includes a 25 to 33 MHz 68040 along with smart batteries and grayscale or color displays.
May 16 in LEM history: 98: iMac reconsidered - 01: The exclusivist Mac - Cubed - Troubleshooting - 02: SE/30 catharsis - Microsoft free - 03: SCSI and OS X on a beige G3 - 05: Failures: Apple III and Lisa - Bigger, faster, more - 06: MacBook - PowerBook 3400 still useful - 07: 3 GB in a MacBook - 08: Mac Pro beats HP and Dell - Limited USB power in Santa Rosa Macs
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