iBook - how to switch hard disk off?
 

Hi everybody,

I know that it seems like a strange question but does anybody knows a way to deactivate the hard drive of an ibook?
I explain why: the hard disk on the ibook is nearly dead - I can hear scary clicking noises and if you turn the ibook upside down you can feel that something is moving (maybe something to do with the heads of the HD?).
I found out that the cost to get the thing fixed by Apple (is out of warranty) will be at least £300 - I thought that that was a bit too much as a new ibook costs £749. So, I decided to use my external firewire drive as the main drive and it seems to work fine (I lost a bit of the portability though).
The question is that the internal HD still starts to turn every now and then, making a few clicks noises - I was wondering if there is a way to switch that off as it is not used?

Many thanks in advance.

Mike

Control click or right click to eject that disk.

Go to newegg.com and pick up any notebook hard drive, replace it yourself. A mid-size notebook drive goes for about $100.

Oh, just noticed you're in the UK. I don't know who to buy from there, but find a general source for notebook drives and it will work fine.

Carlos, I think you advice is excellent if and only if Mike is extremely detail-oriented, has good eyesight, and is careful with very small electronics. Otherwise, maybe he should find a friend who is, and pay him off with pizza and beer to do the hard drive install.

The iBook is not easy to work inside of.

Trevor

Is possible to open the computer and try out the hard drive, and you can to try to install a new drive (not from apple company) i works in a spanish apple service and corrently we replace internal drives by others, without apple spare parts and apple cost

Trevor makes a good point. Do assess your mechanical skills and tools before taking it on. It's not complicated, but as he points out, requires attention to detail and working with tiny parts.

Thank you guys, I saw a few pages on the net explaining how to open the ibook and change the disk but it doesn't seem like an easy operation without the proper tools and skills.
For this reason I was thinking of getting a Lacie portable FW hard drive powered from the bus (£90 for 40 gig) and use the ibook like that.

Mike

Would work fine if it doesn't bother you to have an external peripheral. However, for the extra cost of the external drive vs. an internal, I would think that you could get a third-party computer shop to swap the drive. It's fairly quick and easy.

Again, I agree with Carlos. Fixing your internal drive is cheaper, cleaner, and there will be some cases where using an external drive is not only inconvenient but just doesn't work completely properly. You are already having to put up with the scary clicking (and no, I don't know of any way to permanently disable that drive other than opening up your iBook and physically disconnecting the drive, and if you're doing that you may as well just install another one in there.)

I'm still thinking that the paying off a detail-oriented friend with pizza and beer is the best idea, but if you don't have a pizza-and-beer-hungry-friend with the requisite skills, then paying a shop to do the work for you will still be cheaper and cleaner than going with the external FireWire drive.

Also, I've had too many problems with FireWire drives to recommend them to anybody.

Trevor

Just make sure to let him have most of the beer after the job's done :D

Trevor,

you are right, changing the internal drive is cleaner - I'll find out if there are shops around that do this sort of things.
What sort of disk should I look for? I my understanding, for what I've seen in other posts on the forum, is that a 2.5" 9.5mm thick disk is the right one (please tell me if I'm wrong) - but which make / model? On the Dabs website there are Fujitsu, Hitachi, Maxtor and Samsung drives, all around £50 for 40 gig - have you got any recommendation? or they are almost the same and go for the cheapest one?

Many thanks

Mike

I personally prefer the Hitachi/IBM Travelstar drives. And you're exactly right, you need a 2.5", 9.5 mm thick, ATA drive. You can get sizes up to 100 GB from some companies, my personal choice right now, though would be a Hitachi/IBM Travelstar 7K60 drive. This will be a little bit more expensive, because it is 7200 RPM and has an 8 MB cache. This is a very quick 2.5" hard drive. For example, here is one on dabs.com at 60 GB: http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hard...quicklinx=2NPS currently at 95.98 pounds, including VAT. If you don't need the maximum speed, I'd still recommend the Hitachi/IBM drives, for example here's one that is much less expensive, also from dabs.com: http://www.dabs.com/uk/channels/hard...quicklinx=2QK4

Trevor

I *only* put Hitachi/IBM drives in my notebooks. All of the others have caused problems for me or my clients (not as reliable or long-lived).

As with desktop drives, there are choices in speed and cache size. Speed determines how fast you can read and write sequential data. This can make a big difference when opening/saving large files. The cache size will most influence applications that read/write often and non-sequentially, such as databases. The entire machine will be a little faster if you improve either of those. Personally my choice is the Hitachi drive with 16MB of cache (huge, double that of desktop drives) at 5400 RPM. The 7200 RPM drive is nice, but I don't believe you can get the 16MB cache with that speed.

Cool. I've never used a Travelstar with 16 MB cache. Carlos, what is the model number?

Trevor

The MK4019GAX is the one I've used in the past, and it's a 40GB. I think they had a 60 with the large cache also, but not sure.

Some day I'll see if there's a 60GB 7200RPM with 16MB cache I can put in my PB to replace the stock 80GB/4200/2MB drive.

just out of curiosity...your ibook isn't under warranty...is it??? i'm guessing not. as for the tools being complex...a 5 dollar, 4 bit torx screw set (4,6,8,10,12, & 15mm) and a 5 dollar mini-screwdriver set...phillips, a 1 dollar black nylon tool (leverage & prying). in order to replace the hard drive you must first remove the: battery, bottom case, keyboard, airport card, top case, and top shield. This is not so easy for the beginner, but if you are mechanically inclined...and keep the screws organized in an ice cube tray...labelled...you could do it...in about 2 hours more or less.

If you were in Tucson, Arizona...I would offer to do this for you at the rate of $75/ hr, and would quote you exactly one hour. If you wanted me to reinstall your operatiing system...that would cost another half hour, plus another half hour on top of that to update completely.

Good Luck!

Ok, now I hate you. You made me want to go look to see if there was a faster version of that drive. The best I can find is one with 8MB cache at 7200. So I had to order it. All your fault. The model number is 7K60.

http://www1.bottomdollar.com/search_...06#description

:D

Trevor

Macknight,

yeah, it's out of warranty unfortunately. But you nearly convinced me - I like the idea of the ice cube tray to keep the screws organized! I'll need some advice on the torx screw set - and what do you mean by black nylon tool? is that to be used like a lever to open the plastic parts once the screws are been removed? Any idea which kind of shops will sell this stuff in the UK (PC world doesn't seem to have this sort of stuff).
I think I need some advice on how to organize myself to do this work - I explain:
my main worry is not opening the ibook up but is getting the thing back together again - putting all the bits in the same place they were. You guys seem to take those machines apart quite often - any suggestions on how to keep track of where all the pieces were?

Thanks

Off Topic
 

Hi Trevor,

Now you have had a look at dabs/uk, I think you would agree that we get ripped off with prices of computer bits in this country :-(

Jim.

Re: Question iBook - how to switch hard disk off?
 

Hello readers of this thread,
I recently came to this thread after doing a search on this topic. But after reading the responces I don't think the question was properly answered and it would help me out if I could re address this question.

A) Is it possible to boot an ibook from an external hard disk (preferably in os9)? [I assume this is what Mike was asking, in order to bypasss (i.e. "turn off) booting from his local loud knocking disk.]

my second question but slightly different but still relevant to the ibook HD topic:

B) Is it possible to link the HD from and ibook/Os9 to a powerbook G4/OSX through firewire ports, booting from the OSX on the G4 powerbook? [this is in order to transfer all my old files from my ibook to my powerbook without having to get an external hard drive]

basically my ibook is making this knocking noise too, and from experience with a desktop G3 and an iMac with similar sounds; the bearings and the HD disk arm that were failing, eventually not booting at all. In both cases I was able to opening up the computers and install new HDs. I will eventually open up the above mention ibook to install a new HD, but until then my urgency is in moving 20GB over to my power book asap.


thanks,
muserna


- - - - - - - - -Original post below frim Mike in the UK: - - - - - - -

I know that it seems like a strange question but does anybody knows a way to deactivate the hard drive of an ibook?
I explain why: the hard disk on the ibook is nearly dead - I can hear scary clicking noises and if you turn the ibook upside down you can feel that something is moving (maybe something to do with the heads of the HD?).
I found out that the cost to get the thing fixed by Apple (is out of warranty) will be at least £300 - I thought that that was a bit too much as a new ibook costs £749. So, I decided to use my external firewire drive as the main drive and it seems to work fine (I lost a bit of the portability though).
The question is that the internal HD still starts to turn every now and then, making a few clicks noises - I was wondering if there is a way to switch that off as it is not used?

- - - - E N D - S N I P - - - - - - - -

Yes to both questions.

In the case of transfering the files by firewire, the easiest way is to boot the ibook in target disk mode, though you may also be able to set up a network over firewire.

pre and post the HD surgery.
 

last last question:

In order to avoid the time consuming task of reloading/installing the os9 system and all the apps on the ibook once a new hard disk is installed, is it just as easy to copy the entire iBook HD to the firewire linked powerbook and tranfer it all back once the brain surgery on the iBook is complete?, i.e.:

1.start the powerbook target the disk of the ibook.
2. copy the entire HD of the ailing iBook to the powerbook.
3. install the new HD to the ibook.
4. start the powerbook targeting the new disk in the ibook.
5. copy old 0s9 system and app files back to the ibook.
?

Thanks,
muserna

I hear many good things about carbon copy cloner... you probably want to ceck it out for what you're doing. I have not used it so I don't know if you can clone a drive to a disk image on your other computer, but that's what I would try to do.

I can't think of any reason why you couldn't do what you're proposing, but have not tried it.

Long live the clones
 

Hey thanks for the Carbon Copy Cloner info. I am reading it's how to and related info regarding cloning Os9 and reinstalling it on a new system.

If anyone has experience in this and knows some issue I need to watch out for please post. Otherwise I will assuming it is pretty straight forward proceedure.

Thanks again,
muserna