Replacing a Powerbook Hard Drive
by Eli
when i first arrived in seattle about 4 months ago i had some kind of bug in me and i was buying and selling computers left and right. i even bought one before i got here and had hannah complete the transaction by overnighting her a check. when i think back to that, it’s kind of crazy how crazy i was about it.
well, in the end, i sold merediths old 333mhz G3 iMac for a 400Mhz G3 iMac breaking even. then i sold the 400Mhz G3 iMac for a 500Mhz G3 iBook breaking even. then i sold the 500Mhz G3 iBook and bought an 867Mhz G4 Powerbook with a difference of $200 which meredith and i split between the 2 of us. not a bad deal, huh?
so that was all well and good, and during the time from when i bought it to when i actually gave it to her it resided at the boys house and they loved it while it lasted. i took it back from them and gave it to meredith around xmas time and she was very excited to have her own computer. but, alas, her joy was short lived because the computer started breaking.
it was slowing down a lot. it was dragging at times when no dragging was necessary, and the intervals between these drags became shorter and shorter and shorter until there was nothing that could be done on the machine. absolutely nothing. so, i did some research online and posted a couple say-sos and asked for some help on craigslist and eventually arrived at the fact that the hard drive was shot. caboom!
at first i was bummin’ out about it because this was supposed to be meredith’s new present and it was supposed to work. fuck that. i called around to a few repair places and decided against their $100/hour rates in favor of some good old fashion self repair. i checked on ebay and found a replacement hard drive for a total of $60. i got a few tools i needed at the hardware store on roosevelt and sat down with my powerbook pointed at ifixit.com. you click in the upper left hand corner on “Fixit Guides”, find your mac, and then find the part you want to replace and it will lay it out for you in pictures and words. it was great. so, i pointed myself toward hard drive replacement on the 12″ aluminum powerbook and got to work.
i removed the keyboard, pulled off the entire top cover, pulled out the old drive, put in the new one, did everything i just did in reverse, formatted the hard drive, and installed OS X. it was awesome despite the fact that i sliced my finger in the process.
the whole process was awesome! it totally worked and her computer is kickin’ ass now. it was so easy and so much fun that i think that i’m going to buy myself an 80GB hard drive for my computer just to give myself some more space (40GB is not enough for el duké).
I am not shocked that when the computer left my house it was in worse condition. For example, did you know that I had 4 wonderful years with my computer, and then I moved here where “others” use it, and now I have to use what I call a “shadow windows” that can’t download or use my speakers. Hell, even Tyler’s beast of computer burden is crapped out…although I can’t say for certain if that happened since being here, or back at the hammer. Then we have the mysterious third computer, with its even more mysterious owner, who will not even try to make it work. All of these broken computers have one thing in common…do you have any idea what/who my guess is?
that is very interesting brandon! i would venture to say that it may have something to do with all the rain… i mean, there wasn’t near as much rain in muncie or bloomington as there is in seattle. so, think about it. less rain = working computers, more rain = broken computers. can’t be a coincidence.
you should check the 80 gigs in my pants.
aj, you are somethin’ else. quite the little sassafras. much love.
Congrats. Nerd.