Upgrading iBook Hard Drive?

Hi Everyone,
I was just wondering if it's possible to upgrade my iBook's hard drive? If so, how do I go about doing it and is there a way of doing it with a relatively easy transfer of information? (ie. files, drivers, authorizations, etc.)
Thanks!!

Hi Ryan
I would go for an external drive. Some to look into are Smart Disk, LaCie, or Western Digital. From Smartdisk I would say you have two options. First being the FireLite and the second being the CrossFire. The FireLite (second smallest) goes up to 100GB, which will cost you about $259. The CrossFire is slightly bigger yet still portable, which holds up to 250Gbs for about $200. Its basically the size that is the difference. I have the CrossFire 160Gb because its size is good for its space and cost. There is a third "Fire", the FireFly. I don't recommend it because it doesn't support Firewire, only USB 2.0. The advantage of having Firewire is you can boot a copy of OS X off it in a sticky situation when your computer isn't working. From LaCie I would suggest any of the Porsche drives. And lastly from Western Digital I would recommend the Passport or the Extreme. The Passport is extremely thin and small, but the downside is poor RPMs, less space, and higher price per Gb. The Extreme is bigger and thicker with up to 320Gb for around $269. It really depends on if you care about size rather then speed, space, and price.
Jon

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Apple Employees only--upgrading iBook hard drive, not under AppleCare

Does anyone know how much it would cost to upgrade my hard drive from 14 GB to maybe 30GB? Also if I can upgrade, would the workers at the Apple Store transfer the data I have on my old hard drive to my new one for free?
Thanks
iBook G3 Mac OS X (10.1.x) 14 GB hard drive

Do you mean you only want responses from Apple Employees? If so, you are barking up the wrong tree, I'm afraid.
This is a user-to-user forum, hosted by Apple for its users to help one another.
If you have a local Apple Store, you could enquire there.
If you are interested in some resources outside Apple's auspices, there are several hard drive upgrade services:
MacService
DT & T Computer Services
MCE Technologies
Good luck.

12" 1.33Ghz iBook Hard Drive speed?

hey all,
i'm curious to know if any of you have ended up w/ 5400rpm drives in your 12" 1.33Ghz iBooks. i know of a couple ppl on a diff forum who got stock iBooks and for whatever reason they got 5400rpm 40GB drives. offhand i know there's very little price difference between the 4200 and 5400 drives, so maybe apple is just streamlining their supply line? i'm just wondering if this drive speed is common for the latest revision of the 12" iBooks even tho it isn't something they advertise on the iBook page.
thanks

The hard drive is not a user-installable part. You would void your warranty or AppleCare Protection Plan to open the iBook and install a drive yourself. Since you can't buy a bare hard drive from Apple, they won't install one you've purchased somewhere else. An Apple Authorized Service Provider could install a new hard drive for you, though, without voiding your warranty.
Apple buys hard drives on the open market. If the 4,200RPM drives become constrained, they may find some 5,400RPM drives for a good price and install those for a while. Since the hard drive speed is not specified at the online Apple store, the included component can vary.
I would ask you why, exactly, you would consider the increased cost to upgrade a hard drive like this? I can edit DV and author DVDs with the 80GB 4,200RPM drive in my 1GHz G4 PowerBook. I've NEVER had an issue with my hard drive doing these kinds of operations. You should have a very good user experience with your 4,200RPM hard drive.
-Doug

Cloning iBook Hard Drive onto iMac - How?

Hello Again Mac Experts:
You guys have never failed me yet so here's another:
Situation: I want to upgrade my internal hard drive on my iBook and so want to clone the original Hard Drive, OS and files onto my iMac before doing so. I was told "Carbon Copy Cloner" was an easy, solid program to do this operation with and so I downloaded it onto my iMac.
Issue: I have my iBook connected to my iMac via Ethernet cable and can bring up it's hard drive easily via Shareware. No problem there. The problem occurs when I start the Carbon Copy Cloner software. It immediately pops up with a window that reads - "CCC cannot find any local disks located on your system besides the start up disk. Please mount another local disk and try running CCC again" - and I can get no further. I've tried fooling around with different "mounting," rebooting, and such but nothing changes.
Problem: What am I failing to understand or negotiate properly here? Do I need to do this operation via a Fire Wire cable? Am I not mounting something correctly? What gives?!
Lost at sea again. S.O.S. Thanks!
chaemo
P.S. Truthfully, I would prefer to install the OS for my iMac onto the iBook new hard drive (when I get it installed) and so did a pre-run trial but it said it couldn't install because of "bundling" incapatibility or something. Any thoughts on getting around that one!??
iMac G5 Mac OS X (10.3.9) iBook OS X 10.3.9

Shoot, on the previous, I forgot to click the "Yes, my questions has been answered" button.
Anyway, Dale thanks for your comments and suggestions on this matter for me. Your advice worked! FYI - here's what I previously posted:
chaemo
Great, I think I'm good now!
Thanks for your help with this, sorry it took so long to respond, I had to purchase a Fire Wire and try a few things before I could figure it out.
As you suspected, I did indeed need to get a Fire Wire to do the cloning (Ethernet is not the proper cable to do it with it turns out). So while I'm at my local Mac store I asked the tech guy about it and he told me the cloning was easy to do simply by using the Mac Disk Utility app and that I didn't need to bother with any outside software to do it. So I tried that but couldn't ever get it to work because it kept indicating that the disk was "too large," and again, I could get no further. So I went back to CCC, got further along this time, but again, ran into the size problem (I'm thinking here, that if my technical computing skills were a bit further refined, either one of these apps should probably work) . Finally, I tried the Superduper software, as you and Dale suggested, and that did the trick!
I now have a cloned copy of my iBook Hard Drive on my iMac. Next step is to get a new hard drive installed on my iBook and then put the clone back into it. Any suggestions on how that is accomplished? Is it just a matter of copying it onto the new hard drive or is there certian procedures with certian protocols involved?? Still riding the clueless train as you can tell!
Thanks again very much for your help with all this, once again you all come through for me! Sincerely,
chaemo

I upgraded my hard drive and my ipod no longer recognizes my computer. It will not sync. What should I do?

I upgraded my hard drive and my ipod no longer recognizes my computer. It will not sync. What should I do?

- First get iTunes to see the iPod:
iPhone, iPad, or iPod touch: Device not recognized in iTunes for Windows
- The transfer iTunes purchases to the computer:
iTunes Store: Transferring purchases from your iPhone, iPad, or iPod to a computer
- For non-iTunes purchased music you need a third-party program like one of those discussed here:
Copy music from Ipod to new computer...: Apple Support Communities
- Connect the iPOd to the computer and make a backup by right clicking on the iPod under Devices in iTunes and select Back Up
- Restore the iPod from that backup.

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

I'm installing windows 7 64-bit on my imac which I've done before but I get a message that the partition is GPT even after I format the bootcamp partition. I just upgraded my hard drive to a 3tb and I'm allocating 1tb for windows. How can I fix this?

No easy fix for a few reasons:
1) Bootcamp requires a hybrid MBR for the partition table. That is: both an MBR and a GPT partition table at the same time with the GPT one having all partitions and the MBR one having only the ones that are relevant, but at most 4 of them (including the protective partition and the Macintosh HD one). Which leads us to:
2) The MBR part of the hybrid partition table cannot work with 3TB hard drives. MBR is limited to 2TB.
I am working on a small EFI app that can boot Windows in EFI mode on a Mac and that would mean that you can go GPT only on your system. The progress of the app is slow due to the nature of EFI and for now requires that you do an unattended Windows install with slipstreamed graphics drivers, but we are adding VGA loading on top of EFI quite soon after the rest of the app stabilises. The status of the app is documented at:
Win7 x64 booting natively via EFI (no bios emulation)
Windows does actually successfully boot in EFI mode on most Macs (anything with a 64bit EFI should work), but does not have graphics support even if you load the driver due to the VGA pci registers not being set by the firmware. Furthermore, in Setup and Safe Mode, Windows uses VGA instead of GOP which is a failure by design since VGA is a BIOS standard and not really compatible without hacks with EFI. Other EFI implementations also add VGA compatibility at a high cost to the firmware complexity for the VGA cards available on the market that don't actually contain anything in their ROM except the VGA BIOS.
My recomendations:
1) Install on a second smaller hard-drive; or
2) Wait for the EFI app to come out officially and use that to boot Windows Vista SP1 x64 and Windows 7 x64 (RTM and SP1) in the native EFI mode.
3) Wait for Windows 8 which supports VGA-less booting acording to the AMD presentation at UEFI Plugfest.

I have replaced my ibook hard drive but when I start up I get a folder with a flashing question mark. I have tried installing the OSX disk using the "C" key but can't get any further than the flashing "?." What do I do? What is the problem?

I have replaced my ibook hard drive but when I start up I get a folder with a flashing question mark. I have tried installing the OSX disk using the "C" key but can't get any further than the flashing "?." What do I do? What is the problem?

Which iBook do you have?
http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1772?viewlocale=en_US
Which version of the OS is installed, and which version are you trying to install?
You could try starting up with Startup Manager and see if it will allow you to select the OS X install disc as the startup disk. If so, maybe you can proceed from there. I would recommend repairing the hard drive first since you are evidently having a bit of a problem with it.

I want to upgrade my Hard Drive to 1TB and more. What is the maximun Hard Drive I can install for a MacBook Pro 2009 Yesterday, I tried a SEAGATE SSHD but my screen was always a showing a QUESTION MARK (?). It's not the cable because when I put back

I want to upgrade my Hard Drive to 1TB and more.
What is the maximun Hard Drive I can install for a MacBook Pro 2009
Yesterday, I tried a SEAGATE SSHD but my screen was always a showing a QUESTION MARK (?). It's not the cable because when I put back the old original version, everything works...Any sugestion of brabnding or procédure to upgrade my hard drive?

The largest 2.5" dia SATA drives available are 2 TB in capacity.
Have you tried the Seagate SSHD connected externally to the MBP via USB? The drive itself may be faulty.
Ciao.
Here is a good place to start looking for a replacement drive:
http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/

HI, I HAVE A MacBook Pro 2.3GHz dual-core Intel i5 AND I WAN'T TO UPGRADE THE HARD DRIVE UP TO 750GB AND ALSO THE RAM MEMORY TO 8GB. WHAT SPECIFIC MODEL OF HARD DRIVE AND RAM MEMORY SHOULD I BUY??? THANKS

HI, I HAVE A MacBook Pro 2.3GHz dual-core Intel i5 AND I WAN'T TO UPGRADE THE HARD DRIVE UP TO 750GB AND ALSO THE RAM MEMORY TO 8GB. WHAT SPECIFIC MODEL OF HARD DRIVE AND RAM MEMORY SHOULD I BUY??? THANKS

No need to type in all caps - we HEAR you!
I would take a look at the internal drives offered by both Crucial (click the link "Internal Hard Drives Now Available") and OWC. I would stay away from Western Digital drives as they seem to have problems on a number of Mac models.
You can also shop for RAM at Crucial and OWC - just select the System Scanner tab at the Crucial website to find out which memory is right for your machine.
Good luck,
Clinton

Upgrade MacBook Hard Drive

While it is obvious that I can upgrade a hard drive, I would like to do so without reinstalling software and, as importantly, changing an identifier (such as a serial number) so that my online backup software will not balk when trying to back up. I hope that this is clearer than it sounds but essentially, I want the new, larger hard drive that I install, to be identified as the same as the smaller that I had after the upgrade. (Do not want iTunes to consider this a new device, don't want Carbonite to think its a different drive and make me reupload everything, etc.) How would this work?

Ahsley is correct. Carbon Copy Cloner or SuperDuper are two most common and most recommended options. You put your new drive in an external enclosure and clone your internal drive to the external one. Reboot the machine holding down the Option key and select the external drive just to make sure it is working properly (it will be much slower as it will be running over the firewire or USB port... both of which are slower than the internal SATA). After you're convinced everything is working properly, just swap the drives.
To the best of my knowledge, nothing is based off of a drive serial number... but rather the logic board serial. Using a drive serial number for any sort of verification would be a bad idea considering how often they fail or are upgraded.

Upgrade MacBook Hard Drive - Restore System from Time Machine Backup?

I have a MacBook that I want to upgrade the hard drive of. Am I right in thinking, all I need to do is:
Run Time Machine one last time, to make a recent backup of the MacBook
Install the new hard drive in the MacBook
Insert the Snow Leopard DVD, and start a clean installation
During installation, select the option to Restore System From Backup...
Will this copy across ALL of the contents of the old MacBook's hard drive, to the new MacBook's hard drive? A perfect clone? Because that's what I want to do.

I performed the installation, restoring a Time Machine backup from the external hard drive to the new blank internal one I put inside the MacBook. Everything went fine, except for one problem.
Now, whenever I try to open Safari, it immediately crashes with the error message:
"Safari quit unexpectedly
Exception Type: EXC_BAD_ACCESS (SIGSEGV)"
What's going on? How can I stop Safari from doing this? I've repaired permissions using Disk Utility, and Spotlight has finished re-indexing everything.

How thow to upgrade a hard drive in an mac mini 1.7

what hard drive does the mac mini take 1.7 model of feb 2006 and how to you upgrade the hard drive if you can? and also replace the optical DVD copy drive?
thanks
rich

To replace HD
http://eshop.macsales.com/installvideos/mac_mini_06-08/
Google did not find anything about replacing the optical drive with a HD in your model Mini

I want to upgrade my hard drive. Need suggestions.

I have a MacBook (white-early 2009). I am looking into upgrading my hard drive. I want at least 500GB. My budget is $120. I will be doing photo and video editing (not sure if that matters). I saw this one on Amazon and am wondering if it would be compatible: http://www.amazon.com/Western-Digital-Scorpio-Black-Mobile/dp/B004LR1RPK/ref=wl_ it_dp_o_pC?ie=UTF8&coliid=I1JJHTKGSKBWXY&colid=2DDV99QO43MAY
Any suggestions/advice would be appreciated. Thanks

Check newegg.com at http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=100007605%2060000345 9&IsNodeId=1&name=SATA%203.0Gb%2fs . Their prices are good, fast shipping, and perhaps most importantly, many user comments on the drives. And you can search the comments for 'mac' or 'apple' of 'macbook' comments.
I also lean towards drives that offer a 5 year warranty. Ignore those that only have 2 years or less. 3 years is ok, but 5 is of course better. I like, and use a, Western Digital Scorpio Black drive which comes in various sizes witha 5 year warranty.

I want to upgrade my hard drive

I want to upgrade my hard drive. At the moment it is 160gb in a 2009 MacBook Pro.
Do I just need a standard 2.5" sata hard drive?
I was looking at this one 500GB Hitachi 2.5” Travelstar HDD, SATA, 5400rpm, 8MB Cache.
Is this suitable.
Cheers,
Jeff

Hi keepsy,
I found one, WD Scorpio Black 7200 RPM SATA 2.5-inch that claims not to impede the batter life. Amazon (US)Or if you are in the UK, then Amazon UK. Hope that helps, although I don't know if Western Digital's claim is correct (you may wish to phone Apple to find out).
Another one Seagate Momentus XT 500 GB Internal hard drive - 300 MBps - 7200 rpm , but the emphasis is more on performance.

I am trying to upgrade my hard drive in my mac book pro using the disk utility in an attempt to clone my old hard drive. I can only get so far, just before cloning may start and receive an "error 254" and can go no further. Any idea what this error is?

I am trying to upgrad the hard drive in my mac book pro using the disk utility in an attempt to clone my old hard drive. I can only get so far throughj the process where its about to start cloing when I get a message " error 254". Any idea what that means and how do I get around this issue so I can use my new hard drive? Thanks for your input.
Vince

Connect the HDD to your MBP. Open Disk Utility>Erase and drag the HDD icon inrt the Name field. The format should be Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Click on the Erase button.
Then try the clone process again. You may use Disk Utility>Restore or a third party cloning application such as Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper.
Ciao.

Upgrading iBook Hard Drive?

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