Powerbook Hard Drive Woes!, Replacement suggestions Options

[minskybabs]

Hello everybody,

Oh woe is me, my 80Gb factory fitted hard drive on my powerbook (G4 alu 1.25Ghz 15 inch w 1.25Gb Ram, out of warranty, no applecare!!) is dying/has died/is an ex hard drive.

One day when checking my emails, the laptop froze, and I had to hard reboot, this kept on happening, I re installed OSx tiger and it seemed better for an hour or so, then died again. Finally I managed to get it mounted, by starting up from a bootable back up on an external FW drive, and using Disk warrior (god bless Alusoft!!) I have managed to salvage all my important data (my last backup was a little longer ago than it should have been, oops lesson learnt!).

However both Disk warrior and now I notice it, disk utility in Tiger report that the S.M.A.R.T. status is failing, which sounds bad, and from my investigations means the disk is soon to go to the great hard drive scrapheap.

Anyone had this happen, and have any advice on replacements?

I don't really fancy replacing the drive myself, it looks like a nightmare, my local apple centre quotes around £360 UK for replacement, I have managed to find a smaller repair man who is apple experienced who has quoted around £190. It seems hard to find out which hard drives are MAC compatible, I have looked at xlr8yourmac for the drive database, but can't find the drives mentioned there, on the net in the UK.

ANy thoughts on the trade off of disk size, speed and heat. I don't really use it from the battery, but don't want it getting hotter than it already does. It is used for music (normally with the external drive) and itunes and iphoto and surfing, a seperate account. I guess I want as much space as possible, and as I use an external hd for audio, the speed is less important? Or if I got a fast drive (eg 7200 rpm instead of 54000 rpm) maybe I could use the Mac for audio without the external drive, most people suggest that the external drive is always a better idea?

Thanks for any thoughts.
Minskybabs.

[pandabeatz]

5400rpm is good for your mac and upto 120GB. i hope the £190 is including the drive, it is not such a major proceedure, however if you can afford it....
any good drive should do the trick just max out cos it is worth it. the prices usually increase steadily up to some point then they are silly, ie fantasy example 80GB £1.50 100GB £2.50 120GB £3.50 160GB £6.50,
so try to go for the drive before the jump. if your mac is older then dont go for more than 120GB. there are a few reliable harddrive companies. also it is worth sending the old broken drive to the manufacturer with a copy of your mac reciept. they might exchange/repair it for you cos usually hard drives are not supposed to fail. however that may be a long ting....

[jce44]

Here's a link in the UK that will give you a start on finding a compatible HD replacement-

http://www.macupgrades.co.uk/store/machine...powerbook-g4-15

There are instructions for do it yourself elsewhere online also... It's really not too difficult, even in a laptop...

Good Luck! And yes, especially for music, the faster RPM the better..

[minskybabs]

Excellent thanks for the info and links people, I think it is worth me paying for the installation, I don't like the look of the instructions at all!!

I am going for the £190, install and drive by a local guy.b This will get me a 120Gb 5400rpm western digital drive, fitted and working (hopefully!). I was getting very confused by the number of hard drives available, and I get a guarantee with this guys work, so I am fairly happy. Will let you know how it works out! I wish I had found that macupgrades.co.uk site earlier, it looks excellent, I was googling around for ages and din't come across it!

I reckon I will also attempt to shame Toshiba into replacing their faulty drive, and buy a firewire enclosure for the replacement if they do. The factory fitted drive is only than two years old, it really should last longer than that, especially as I am really careful with it, and it is nearly always just used on the coffee table, hardly ever taken out of the house! Any ideas how to contact Toshiba?

Cheers Minskybabs

[cheekypaul]

Excellent thanks for the info and links people, I think it is worth me paying for the installation, I don't like the look of the instructions at all!!

I am going for the £190, install and drive by a local guy.b This will get me a 120Gb 5400rpm western digital drive, fitted and working (hopefully!). I was getting very confused by the number of hard drives available, and I get a guarantee with this guys work, so I am fairly happy. Will let you know how it works out! I wish I had found that macupgrades.co.uk site earlier, it looks excellent, I was googling around for ages and din't come across it!

I reckon I will also attempt to shame Toshiba into replacing their faulty drive, and buy a firewire enclosure for the replacement if they do. The factory fitted drive is only than two years old, it really should last longer than that, especially as I am really careful with it, and it is nearly always just used on the coffee table, hardly ever taken out of the house! Any ideas how to contact Toshiba?

Cheers Minskybabs

I had a similar experience to you with an old 500mhz titanium, installed a 7200rpm drive. It was a Toshiba, and it only lasted a year!! after that i used Micro Anvika of Tottenham Court Road , with a different model and i haaven't looked back, i get full track count on pro tools!
Good luck....