Saturday, February 25, 2006
New Hard Drive
I upgraded my hard drive on my Powerbook this weekend. The experience once again illustrates the ease of use of the Mac OS X environment.
As background, my trusty Mac Ti Powerbook had a 60GB, 4500 rpm drive. This drive has been very reliable but has been hovering at around 1GB from full for a long time. This necessitated copying files to an external device to keep an acceptable amount of working room.
Recently, I contemplated upgrading my hard drive to a larger unit. While my initial thoughts were to purchase from the internet, I found a good deal on a 100GB, 5400 Samsung unit at MicroCenter. Just for reference I will list the steps here.
Purchase
1. Purchase parts: a. one 100GB hard drive (5400rpm) b. one external firewiire/usb hard drive case ($39.00), one T8 external screwdriver.
Preparation
1. Install new 100GB hard drive into the external case. (5 minutes)
2. Attach external hard drive to Powerbook using firewire
3. Name and format new hard drive using Apple's Disk Utility application (30 seconds). This program is included with Mac OS X
4. Clone current Powerbook hard drive contents to new drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC is an excellent backup/clone shareware tool. (1 minute to setup, 1.5 hours execution.
Confirmation of cloned drive
1. Shut down PowerBook and restart in external boot mode. Booting off the external drive is accomplished by holding down the <option> key when the Mac is starting. Both the internal and external hard drives are displayed. Select the external one and continue with the boot.
2. Once started confirm that settings and applications work. This will look exactly like your normal desktop and applications when started from your internal drive
Installation of new drive
1. Shut down the computer and then follow the excellent instructions available from www.ifixit.com.
2. The installation consist of removing 7 bolts. Remove the bottom case. Remove the old hard drive and replace with the new one.
3. Being careful, the installation took about twenty minutes. This installation is moderately hard and you should be careful. I only recommend it to people who are mechanically adept and comfortable with computer electronics.
4. Finally, install the removed hard drive into the external case. You now have a useful portable external hard drive.
The swap has worked flawlessly with no need to purchase special software. The new drive is noticeably faster. I am very pleased to have the extra breathing room on my hard drive.
As background, my trusty Mac Ti Powerbook had a 60GB, 4500 rpm drive. This drive has been very reliable but has been hovering at around 1GB from full for a long time. This necessitated copying files to an external device to keep an acceptable amount of working room.
Recently, I contemplated upgrading my hard drive to a larger unit. While my initial thoughts were to purchase from the internet, I found a good deal on a 100GB, 5400 Samsung unit at MicroCenter. Just for reference I will list the steps here.
Purchase
1. Purchase parts: a. one 100GB hard drive (5400rpm) b. one external firewiire/usb hard drive case ($39.00), one T8 external screwdriver.
Preparation
1. Install new 100GB hard drive into the external case. (5 minutes)
2. Attach external hard drive to Powerbook using firewire
3. Name and format new hard drive using Apple's Disk Utility application (30 seconds). This program is included with Mac OS X
4. Clone current Powerbook hard drive contents to new drive using Carbon Copy Cloner. CCC is an excellent backup/clone shareware tool. (1 minute to setup, 1.5 hours execution.
Confirmation of cloned drive
1. Shut down PowerBook and restart in external boot mode. Booting off the external drive is accomplished by holding down the <option> key when the Mac is starting. Both the internal and external hard drives are displayed. Select the external one and continue with the boot.
2. Once started confirm that settings and applications work. This will look exactly like your normal desktop and applications when started from your internal drive
Installation of new drive
1. Shut down the computer and then follow the excellent instructions available from www.ifixit.com.
2. The installation consist of removing 7 bolts. Remove the bottom case. Remove the old hard drive and replace with the new one.
3. Being careful, the installation took about twenty minutes. This installation is moderately hard and you should be careful. I only recommend it to people who are mechanically adept and comfortable with computer electronics.
4. Finally, install the removed hard drive into the external case. You now have a useful portable external hard drive.
The swap has worked flawlessly with no need to purchase special software. The new drive is noticeably faster. I am very pleased to have the extra breathing room on my hard drive.
Thursday, February 02, 2006
$330 pissed
Today, the latch on my PowerBook stopped working. Shut the lid and it wouldn't latch. This means the computer would not go to sleep. Now for many who know me, this is a major issue. Not only is my Mac my most important tool at work, but I am sort of fond of it. Well, I decided to take it to the Apple Store in Dallas tonight. I doubted but hoped that the "genius" at the store would have a simple fix. The latch on a Ti PowerBook G4 is a elegant (if not robust design). It is hard to describe, but when the computer is open you can not see any of the latch mechanism.
Got to the store and quickly found that it would have to be sent back to Apple for repairs. When I inquired about how much it would cost I was told a minimum of $330. Needless to say, I left with my Mac. Later this evening, I decided that I would have to fix the latch myself. A couple minutes with a penknife (adjusting the clearance on the release button) and the Mac worked just fine.
So if you can't get reasonable service, do it yourself.
Got to the store and quickly found that it would have to be sent back to Apple for repairs. When I inquired about how much it would cost I was told a minimum of $330. Needless to say, I left with my Mac. Later this evening, I decided that I would have to fix the latch myself. A couple minutes with a penknife (adjusting the clearance on the release button) and the Mac worked just fine.
So if you can't get reasonable service, do it yourself.
