Is a hard drive upgrade possible for an old Powerbook G4?

I just recently got a Powerbook G4 400 (the first version, I think). It only has a 10 GB hard drive and 256K memory. I would like to know if it is possible, or worthwile to buy a newer, bigger hard drive, memory and a new OS. If so, can anyone give me ideas about what to look for, models, etc...???
I am completely lost so thanks for any help!

It is possible to upgrade your RAM and hard drive and install a fairly recent version of OS X on your Powerbook, but I wouldn't call it worthwhile. You'll spend as much or more doing so as the machine is worth afterward.
Your machine is now over nine and a half years old (it was released in January 2001). It has a DVD-ROM drive, so it can't burn CDs or DVDs unless you replace that drive, and its non-upgradeable graphics processor is completely obsolete for any sort of multimedia or streaming video on today's websites, or for gaming. Its CPU, blazing fast for a notebook of its time, is ten to forty times slower than the ones in today's Macs.
The most recent OS X version you should consider is Tiger (10.4.x). To install it, you would have to replace your hard drive and you'd want to add RAM. A new 80GB or 120GB hard drive (you can't use one larger than 120GB in that machine without third-party commercial software and a lot of caveats) will cost $60-$75. 512MB of RAM would cost $35-50 and 1GB would cost $55-80. The kicker is that even a decent used copy of the retail Tiger installer DVD is likely to cost over $100. So at a minimum, you'd be putting $200 into a machine that right now isn't worth that much, and wouldn't be worth any more than that afterward. If you're OK with that, go ahead, but don't expect that the result is going to resemble the experience of getting a new Mac in 2010.

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Any internal hard drive upgrades available for iMac?

I have a 19 Gigabyte hard drive in my Imac running OS 10.4.11 and would like more storage. Is there a larger internal hard drive available from Apple or anyone else and at what approximate cost?

Your iMac uses the same 3.5" IDE/EIDE, Parallel ATA (PATA) - not Serial ATA (SATA), hard drives that are used in PCs. The onboard IDE controller will not recognize a capacity larger than 128 GBs, so any standard drive that's larger than that (160 GBs ->) will have unused capacity. A 120 GB drive was the optimal drive to install, but many manufacturers have discontinued that size. You should be able to find a 160 GB drive at any electronics, office supply, or computer store in your area, or you can check online retailers (like newegg.com) for a comparable drive. As an example, Micro Center is selling the Western Digital 160 GB (PATA) drive for $55. Seagate's drives are also a good choice, because of their 5-year warranty. After installing the drive, you should boot the iMac from the Tiger installer disk and use Disk Utility to format the new drive as a Mac OS Extended (Journaled) volume. You can also partition the drive into multiple volumes, if desired. This Macworld article will provide useful directions for opening up the iMac's lower housing and replacing the hard drive. As an alternative to replacing the internal hard drive, you could connect a FireWire external hard drive. The FireWire-connected drive wouldn't be subject to the 128 GB limitation, so you'd be able to use a mega-sized drive.

New hard drive and enclosure for the old one

Hi all,
I'm looking at putting a larger hard drive into my Ally PB. I checked OWC and they're so ridiculously cheap I'm gonna put a 160GB into it. I intend to buy a F/Wire 800 enclosure the old 2.5" hard drive. Now, here is my question: If I remove the existing hard drive and drop into a FW enclosure will I have to reformat the drive or will I be able to use it as a start up disc as is with all the current data and apps on it?

Hey Silly Rabbit! We meet again. I didn't even realize who the original poster was. I thought it was odd that the person responding was you but it didn't match the thread I remember you from. Then I noticed that this was a different thread but you were the one asking for help!
Silly me!
That's perfect! The only interface you're missing there is eSATA. Then you'd be set for life, with all current interfaces supported.
There's one for that too, if you're interested:
FireWire 400/800, USB 2.0, eSATA Combo Enclosure
You can find them on eBay too.

Driver upgrades possible for iMac

I am fairly new to Mac and recently purchased a new iMac. I have a question regarding the display driver. Is there a way of upgrading the display driver for MacOS, NOT Bootcamp? I did a search and I see drivers on the Apple site, but the file dates back to 2005. The display on my iMac is the ATI Radeon HD 4670.
Thanks.

Hi ZS
Go up on the menu bar to Apple > Software Update and check, but to be honest the latest iMac should be fully up to date except for maybe the most recent Safari 5.0.1 release.
Dennis

G40 2384-A9U Hard drive upgrade

I updated the bios to 1.21 which seems to be the latest bios 2006. The hard drive upgrade listed for purchase 2004 was an 80G. I was hopeing that I could put a larger dirve in because the newer bios was 2 years past the hard drive upgrade listing. I tried a 250G but it does not seem to be recognized. Does anyone know what the max hard drive size the latest bios supports?
Solved!
Go to Solution.

I first entered CMOS (setup) and under security, and set the desktop to disable. I was able to transfer the data to the 250G from the 40G using Ghost 2003 and selecting the image setting -IB (Image Boot). I was fortunate enough to have a floppy drive on the notebook (G40 2384-A9U). I attached an external USB 40G drive to the notebook, booted with Norton's Ghost 2003 boot disk created with USB support enabled. I went into options and selected Image Boot under the image tab and then copied the existing 40G drive to the external 40G USB drive. I then replaced the 40G drive in the notebook with the 250G drive, booted with the Norton Ghost disk and selected the image boot again and copied the 40G USB drive to the new 250G drive now in the notebook. I went back into the CMOS (setup) and put the security for the desktop back to normal. The only thing different seem to be the utilities are missing if you hit the IBM access button. I notice that when you disable the security for the desktop in CMOS, you will see an unpartitioned space of almost 2Gigs. This appears to be where some of the 4 sectors that lenovo uses to hold the boot information and probably their utility programs. The norton -IB switch does seem to get the boot sector information but not the utility portion of the unused area. The result is the unused space is reduced to only 2 megs on a 40 Gig drive and shows up as 4 megs on the 250 Gig drive.

Need help picking the correct hard drive upgrade for my MBP

I need help picking the correct/best hard drive upgrade for my MBP. It is the 15" 2GHz Core Duo. Came with a spacious 90GB drive.
Suggestions and recommendations very appreciated.

It will take almost any 2.5 inch sata drive.
Take a look at www.newegg.com and www.macsales.com to see what's out there and how much it costs.
Toshiba have a 320gb 2,.5 inch drive in the works, but it's not quite out yet and will be expensive.
I'll start you off..
http://www.newegg.com/Store/SubCategory.aspx?SubCategory=380&name=Laptop-Hard-Dr ives

Hard Drive upgrade

I'm considering a hard drive upgrade but i dont know crap about them. I went over to newegg because i heard it was a good site and found this one......
"Western Digital Scorpio Blue WD5000LPVT 500GB 5400 RPM 8MB Cache 2.5" SATA 3.0Gb/s Internal Notebook Hard Drive -Bare Drive"
The only problem is, I dont know wheter it is compatible with my Early 2009 13 inch macbook pro..... Should I go with this one or are there better ones out there? I'm not really worried about price. I was aiming to get a 500gb. Thanks.

It is compatilbe if it's a 2.5" notebook SATA II 3.0 Gb/s model. Take Csound1's advice. If you buy a WD drive or any other makers' drives do not purchase any "green" drives as they don't work well in Macs.
If you want better performance get a drive rated for 7200 RPM with as large a cache as possible (typically 16 MBs.) Other makers to consider include Hitachi, Seagate, and SamSung.
If you want faster speed consider the Seagate XT500 hybrid. Or visit OWC and look into their DataDoubler that enables you to replace the optical drive with an SSD (or another HDD.)

Wipe my hard drive clean except for the OS whats the best way?

I need to wipe my hard drive clean except for the OS whats the best way?

From Kappy (note: with this method, you will need to update to the present OS version using the appropriate Combo Update from Apple Downloads.)
Boot from the OS X Installer Disc One that came with the computer. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities (Installer menu if using Panther or Jaguar) menu. After DU loads select the startup volume from the left side list then click on the Erase tab. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled) then click on the Options button. Select the one pass Zero Data option and click on the OK button. Then click on the Erase button.
Note: You can skip the Zero Data option if you are not concerned about removing sensitive personal data from the hard drive. If you choose to skip this part of the process then it is possible for others to recover data from the hard drive. The Zero Data procedure will prevent others from getting access to your personal information.
This process will take 30 minutes to several hours depending upon the size of the hard drive. After formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Now complete the OS X installation. At the completion of the installation do not restart the computer. Instead just shut it off. The next user will be presented with the Setup Assistant when they turn on the computer just as it would if new out of the box.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/12364050?messageID=12364050#12364050

Hard Drive Upgrade - Incorrect Capacity Shown In Disk Utility After Installation

I have an older model Macbook Version 2.1 that had an 80GB hard drive installed. I have just installed a Western Digital Scorpio Black 500GB internal hard drive upgrade and successfully cloned my data over using Carbon Copy Cloner. The problem I have encountered is that only 98.1GB of capacity is shown in Disk Utility for the new hard drive. After starting the computer using my bootable copy via an external USB drive, I formatted the newly installed 500GB drive with the appropriate Apple formatting (e.g. GUID and Mac OS Extended Journaled) but it only shows 98.1GB of space available on the new drive. I was able to successfully clone the information from my bootable back-up of the old drive to the new drive but I just don't have the full 500GB capacity available to me.
What should I do? Is this a problem with the new hard drive or is there something I need to change on my Macbook to "see" the whole capacity of my new drive?
Thanks for your advice,
Dave

Hi Andrew,
When I formatted the new drive did it with 1 partition and it displays a TOTAL of 98.1GB free space (both in Disk Utility and About This Drive). As far as I can tell, the Macbook is treating the new WD drive as if it is only a 98.1GB drive rather than the 500GB drive that it is.
Thoughts?
Dave

IPod sync problems after hard-drive upgrade/change

Hello all,
Can anyone PLEASE help?
I have just had my hard drive upgraded/changed from the original 640GB drive to a new 2TB drive. I've also had an additional 4GB of RAM added to now give me 8GB RAM.
Absolutely everything else seems to be working fine (unusual for me and I'm often at the end of bad luck in such circumstances). The only thing I'm having problems with is syncing my iPod Classic with iTunes. Incidentally, I have the latest version of iTunes and my iPod software was up to date the last time I checked.
Before I go further, my system specs are:
iMac
24-inch, Early 2009
Processor 2.66 GHz Intel Core 2 Duo
Memory 8 GB 1067 MHz DDR3
Graphics NVIDIA GeForce 9400 256 MB
Software OS X Mountain Lion 10.8.2 (12C60)
When I connect my iPod Classic, the iPod screen initially shows 'Synchronisation in progress' (or whetver similar wording it actually is)... but this is just very briefly. It then indicates "Connected", and that's the way it stays and doesn't change at all.
It takes time to actually show up in iTunes, and when it does, I now have to very quickly click the iPod button (to bring up the iPod screen on iTunes) before the pointer turns into the spinning beach ball.
Now, it hangs... and hangs... and hangs... and hangs.
During this, I notice that "Manually manage music and videos" is ticked (which I didn't have ticked before), and also 'Enable disc use' is also ticked, although greyed out.
Occasionally, the spinning beach ball will disappear and the pointer will return, but this is very very briefly and I have a split-second to try unticking - first - the "Manually manage music and videos" box and then - later, if I'm lucky - untick the 'Enable disc use' box. However, on the odd occasion I've managed this, I haven't been able to go further except for two occasions when I managed to click "Apply". The iPoid on those to occasions started to update... but went nowhere... it just did nothing.
When the thing finally just hangs and hangs, I eventually have to 'force quit' iTunes and unplug the iPod without first ejecting. There was one other occasion when I managed to - split-second when the spinning beach ball disappeared - to click "eject" and the iPod succesfully did so.
There were a couple of occasions in the past when I had trouble with my iPhone and was told to delete/trash the iPhone photo cache folder. Remembering this, I tried this for the iPod (iPod photo cache) and it made no difference... same situation.
I did notice on one occasion at the beginning of all this that when I managed to unplug my iPod from iTunes, all the album covers were missing from the iPod (although still in iTunes). This was long before I tried deleting the iPod photo cache folder though.
Any help would be greatly appreciated.
Best regards
BionicDan

First things first the spinning beach ball is usually an indication that Search is going nuts.
Turn off Search entire Library by clicking on the downward pointing arrow to the right of the Magnisying glass and untick Search entire library.
Is your music still in iTunes on your new hard drive or is it only on your ipod?
If it is in your itunes then you should be able to plug in the iPod and uncheck Manually Manage music and sync
If the music is only on the ipod connect up as above click on the device and Drag all the music from your device to the library. then you can uncheck manually manage music and sync as normal

Time Machine confused after iMac hard drive upgrade

Here's the deal. I had my 24" iMac internal 250-gig hard drive upgraded to a 1-Terabyte drive. Tech guy cloned them with SuperDuper. New drive booted right up and works great. My question is regarding Time Machine, which I have set up to backup to an external drive. I assumed because old drive was cloned to new drive, Time Machine would think it was the same drive and just keep backing it up as it always has. But what happens is Time Machine just keep saying "processing" and nothing ever happens.
Is there a way to tell TM to start backing up the new drive as it always did or do I need to delete my current (1 1/2 yr. old) TM files and let it start from scratch again? I really don't want to do that. Any ideas?

As V.K. says, that procedure may or may not work.
The reason for the long preparing stage is that TM, seeing a different drive, is examining every file and folder on your system, and may do a full backup of your entire system.
Download the +Time Machine Buddy+ widget. It shows the messages from your logs for one TM backup run at a time, in a small window. You'll probably see a message about a UUID error referencing your internal drive --that means TM doesn't recognize it as the same one it last backed-up.
Then you'll probably see one about a "deep traversal." That means TM is looking at every file and folder on your system to see what needs to be backed-up. This takes quite a while, of course, and you won't see anything being backed-up (xx MB of yy GB) until it's done.
If TM does perform a full backup, it may have to delete a lot of your old backups to make room for the new one. If it can't delete enough, it will fail.

Spinning beach ball after hard drive upgrade

Im running a macbook pro i7 2.2ghz 8gb ram version 10.6.8 SL
I recently upgraded my 128gb ssd to a 512gb ssd drive. I cloned the drive to new drive and ever since then, I get the spinning beach ball very often whereas I never got it prior to the hard drive upgrade. Is there anything I can check or do to eliminate the freeze ups? It is VERY annoying. Or do I just need to do a fresh install on the new hard drive.
thanks in advance

Did you properly prep the drive first:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
If you are preparing an external or a non-startup drive, then open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs) then click on the OK button. Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

Hard Drive Upgrade in Vista

I have an IBM T60p with original 90 gig HD. I spent a weekend trying to upgrade to a larger capacity drive. Downloaded several commercial programs. None of them worked properly. I finally found a way to use Vista to complete the task. This procedure works, have a new 320 gig WD 7200 RPM drive working correctly in my computer. Hard drive Upgrade in Windows Vista
This procedure was used on an IBM ThinkPad T60p with 90 gig SATA HD.Machine was upgraded with a Western Digital 320 gig BEKT SATA drive (Scorpio Black).
Before you start:You need to change the BIOS setting for Windows to recognize your new drive.
Reboot and enter BIOS
Select “Config” => Serial ATA (SATA) => SATA Controller Mode Option: => COMPATIBILITY
Save and exit
Review Boot priorities to enable the Boot from CD option
Have a copy of Windows Vista on CD; the version does not matter, you will use this only to boot from CD.
See WD product description at following website
http://www.wdc.com/en/products/products.asp?driveid=477
You will need an external USB hard drive to back up your existing hard drive.
It needs to be large enough to back up your existing drive.
Plug in the drive, Windows should recognize it.
Format the external hard drive so it is clean.
Backup Existing Drive
Back up drive C to the external drive using Windows Vista.
Go to Control Panel => Backup and Restore Center
Select the “Back-up files or your entire computer” option
Select “Back up computer
”Windows displays “Where do you want to save the backup”
Select “On a hard disk”
Windows displays hard drives available,
Select the drive you just plugged in
Click “Next”
Review the screen “Confirm your backup settings”
Windows displays “Local Disk (C) (System)” in the bottom window.
Click “Start backup”.
Backup will take 1-2 hours.
When completed, you have a complete image of your drive created by Windows Vista on the external HD
Install new Hard Drive
Shut down the machine.
Install the new hard drive per manufacturer instructions.
http://www-307.ibm.com/pc/support/site.wss/document.do?lndocid=MIGR-62826
Boot the computer using the Vista CD.
Once files are loaded, Vista will open
Click “Next”
Click “Repair Your Computer”
Windows displays a window showing operating systems available, the window will be blank.
Click “Next”
Windows displays “Choose a Recovery Option”
Select “Windows Complete PC Restore”
Windows displays the saved image from your external drive
Click “Next”
Windows displays the restoration information
Click “Finish”
Remove the Windows CD
Restore will take 1-2 hours
Set up the new drive
After restoration, the system will reboot and you should be at the Vista Log In screen.
Log in normally and check to be sure your programs work.
You now need to tell Vista you have a new drive, and resize the partition to the capacity of the new drive.
Tell Windows to recognize the new drive
Start Menu, L click “Computer”
Drive C displays the stored image with the same capacity of the old drive.
R click on drive C => properties
Select the “Hardware” tab
Highlight drive C
Select the “Properties” tab, bottom right
Click on “Change settings”, bottom left
Click on the “Volumes” tab
Click the “Populate” tab
Windows will now populate the table with the settings for the new drive.
Save the settings and Reboot the computer.
Windows will now recognize the new higher capacity drive.
After reboot
Start Menu, R click “Computer”
Select “Manage”
In the L window, select “Storage” => “Disk Management”
Disk “0” is your new drive
Select Drive C
R click Drive C, select “Extend Volume”
The Extend Volume Wizard will open
Click “Next”
Click “Finish”
The new drive capacity is now operational.
You will now have two partitions, one for Windows, one for programs and data.

I'm also interested if anyone knows. I called the Square Group in London (Nex Oxford Street) but they said they'd get back to me ... but they didn't ...

MacBook Pro2012 : How can you get hard drive upgraded in Netherlands without losing warranty?

My MacBook Pro (2012) hard drive is almost full, Apple refuses to provide hard drive upgrade service, how can you get hard drive upgraded in Netherlands without losing warranty?

Dear Ralph, and All
My MBP is indeed non-retina.
I also have Apple care support for 3 years
I was in touch with Apple suport since last week. Response I got on Phone was pretty astounding (waiting email confirmation). They say following
- Apple support does not provide such service of upgrading hard drive
- Doing it yourself means you will lose warranty (due to nature of operation one would need to perform on the computer)
- None of authorised delars will provide such a service
So as such there apparantly is no way to get your hard drive upgraded without losing warranty.
Leaves me a bit perplexed
I do understand MBP retina (or iPAD / iPhones) are manufactured in way that makes it technically impossible to upgrade certain parts. But why non-retina MBP?
What do you all think? is this reasonable? is this what a MBP customer would expect?
Really appreaciate the quick responses i have recieved from you and others on this forum.
Many thanks
Tirath Shah

Pavilion DV7t-4100 hard drive upgrade fail

Hello all, thanks for taking the time to read my question. I'm stuck in the process of upgrading and HP Pavilion DV7T–4100 laptop. The machine is a couple of years old runs Windows 7 and came originally equipped with two Toshiba 300GB hard drives. The hard drives are configured for one drive,C:, to host the operating system the second drive,D:, to host data. The D drive has now run out of room. I have purchased a Samsung spinpoint 2TB hard drive in order to have more space, but what I thought would be an easy upgrade turned into many long hours and frustration, not to mention funny looks from the wife.
Here is what I've done to date:
1. Connected the new 2 TB hard drive to the computer via USB (Windows recognizes hard drive)
2. Cloned the D: drive onto the new hard drive using Seagate disc wizard (also tried mini tool partition wizard) maintaining the original partition size.
3. Turned the computer off, removed the D drive and installed the 2TB drive in its place.
4. Restarted the computer only to find that Windows would not see the new drive. Attempted to find a drive-by going to computer management /storage/disk management where was not present either. Rebooted the computer once more, went into BIOS where I discovered that it does not see the new drive. BIOS does not have an option to discover new hardware.
5. Suspecting a bad drive, bad cable, or other bad things, I replaced the original D: drive back. Everything seems to work fine. The computer sees the original D: drive through SATA and the replacement drive through USB. Leaving me where I started, still out of room....
6. Following new advice, I reformatted to drive with just a single volume and no data in it. I didn't want to drive via SATA but neither bios norwindows and see it.
My question is: How do I get the BIOS to recognize the replacement hard drive, so that windows will recognize the replacement hard drive, so that my wife won't recognize I'm an idiot?

Hi
You're welcome
Few things:
Update bios & chipset from your product download site: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/softwareCategory?os=4063&lc=en&cc=us&dlc=en&sw_lang=&product=4317...
Now put the new 2tb hdd & check
If no joy, don't remove it - go to disk management , take a screenshot & please post it here.
Now power off, wait - then power on again - go to bios setup & boot device options to check if you can see the 2tb hdd in anywhere here.
If no joy, proceed & shut down - take out 2tb and connect it via USB , power on - go Disk Management - take a screenshot and please post it here.
Hope you have formatted previously the hdd from Disk Management by right clicking the hdd in the lower graphical console - New Simple Volume -> format, Am I correct?
Also, please post the model number/name of both Toshiba 300gb old hdd & the new 2tb Seagate hdd.
AT LAST,
Just blow out with dry canned air - the sata port of second hdd bay , after shutting down laptop completely & after doing a hard reset.
And try connecting 2tb hdd again and check.
Also, can you check if the 2tb hdd is working by testing it in another laptop by connecting via sata.
Regards
Visruth
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Is a hard drive upgrade possible for an old Powerbook G4?

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