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Upgrading an iBook hard drive
The 20GB hard drive in my iBook failed suddenly and rather noisily before Easter; I like it enough to want to resuscitate it, but I'm not keen enough to pay Apple repair prices. Since the extended warranty (which I've used in several times) had just expired, I replaced the drive myself. It worked out pretty easily, but dismantling an iBook make me a bit more nervous than the usual desktop hardware mangling, so here are a few remarks for anyone else considering it.The machine is identified as a "late 2001" iBook under Apple's bizarre model naming system. It has a 12.1-inch display, a 600MHz G3 processor, and a tray-loading DVD/CDRW drive. It's not especially fast by today's standards, but it's a nice little machine.
Choice of drive
I bought a Hitachi GST 5K100 drive at 60GB. The main criteria were increasing the size and keeping the power requirements down. The 5K100 is a 5400rpm drive; drive speed isn't a major consideration for me, but the specifications for this particular (quite recent) drive put its power ratings down at about the level of a typical 4200 (actually a little better than typical 2001-era Travelstars) as well as offering a high shock and usage tolerance.You might consider the 40GB model if you're very serious about low noise and power; it's single-platter, rated quieter and might use a little less energy (though the specs don't mention it).
I bought the drive from the excellent span.com. Including tax and shipping it came to around GBP 80, which compares favourably to repair quotes a little under the GBP 200 mark.
The original drive in the machine turned out to be an IBM Travelstar 30GN.
Dismantling the iBook
This is a longish job, although not particularly technically demanding, and you need to not mind rather substantially dismantling your laptop. The hard drive is buried under the RF shield on the topside of the case (under the left palmrest), on top of the logic board. I've not posted photos because there are several on the web -- by far the best and clearest description I found was on pbfixit.com. A few points:- The under-drive screw (step 9 pic 3) was almost inaccessible on my machine because it was directly under the DVD drive rail. I got it out with a good-quality Philips #00 screwdriver at an angle. Not sure how you're supposed to do it.
- The 'yellow' screw (step 13 pic 3) doesn't seemed to be marked in quite the right place; you need to remove one slightly to the left.
- You don't need a Torx 8 to remove the case (you can do it with an allen key instead), but you do need one to get the shockmount points out of the drive.
Power, heat and noise
The new drive is whisper-quiet compared to the old one. In a room with other machine fans running it's basically inaudible.Battery life -- always a bit of a moving target at the best of times -- seems to have been unaffected by the change. The machine can just about do 6 hours of text editing, or 3-4 hours of steady disk, processor and airport use.
My perception is that it runs fractionally than the old one, but there's a good chance that's just paranoia. The left palmrest, under which the drive sits, has always been warm during heavy disk use or when running off mains (oddly, that's despite of changes to the battery settings), but wasn't and isn't too hot to touch. The left half of the underside also still get quite hot, but I'm not yet convinced that's entirely the fault of either drive; the GPU looks like it's directly below it, and the CPU is only a little further back towards the display. In any case the heat isn't a serious source of concern, and may well not be there at all.
Obviously, none of my remarks on this come with any kind of guarantee. If you want to be sure you'll not be to blame for a broken laptop, pay for an authorized repair.