Musings

Bigger, Faster, Harder

(That should garner some “interesting” google queries.)

So my iBook started acting up again. I thought I had cured it, but recently, the symptoms began to recur. And they got worse. When rebooting the machine, it sometimes would take a half dozen attempts before the hard drive would spin up. Uh oh! Seems that the hard drive was slowly heading south.

So, to replace the original 15GB, 4200RPM IBM Travelstar 40GN, I bought a new 40GB, 5400RPM Travelstar 40GNX. I threw in another $50 for an external Firewire case, and cloned my old drive onto the new one with CarbonCopyCloner before bringing them into the shop for the old switcheroo.

I would have done it myself ('cuz I’m that kinda guy), but these instructions, posted to the net by some kind soul dissuaded me. Replacing the hard drive requires removing 30 (!) screws and completely disassembling the machine. (“If you’ve removed more than 30 screws… good for you! But I can’t help you put them all back” say the instructions.)

I had a bit of a fright when, after the installation, the iBook wouldn’t boot at first (“Looks like you need a new logic board,” said the tech) but then I remembered that I had to boot into open firmware (option +O +F while powering up) to reset the startup volume. Now all is good — except that the aforementioned tech seems to have lost one of the little rubber feet.

Grrr…