Mac Forum / General / Portable Macs / July 2004

Good question concerning the heat. If the answer is good I'm gonna
switch drives, too.

Hard drive replacement ain't like it used to be. I did a new iBook
(well it was new a year ago when I did it). Get a good manual. Have the
right tools. Be able to read and keep things organized (something like
23 screws of 4 different sizes). Take your time.

--

I swapped the drive in my 550MHz TiBook and found it not too hard.  
However, I had a service manual handy.  If you Google a bit you might
find one somewhere.

Do you need/want a larger drive anyway, and are asking about whether you
should get one with higher rpm's, or are you asking whether you should
put a higher rpm drive in to increase performance?

It depends on what you do, but I doubt that you would get significant
performance increases going from 5400rpm to 7200rpm. You will also drain
the battery faster and generate more heat.

Is it too much heat, I don't know but people have installed these things
and not reported problems yet. FWIW.

Were it me, I'd either leave it alone, or buy another 5400rpm drive
(make sure it has 8MB cache) and save the extra money for the new PB.

YMMV

I did this modification for exactly your reasons. It does put a little
extra zip in the Tibook (I have a 1 ghz Superdrive version), but the
speed up isn't overwhelming. On other points:

Very slightly more noise than the 5400 rpm, but not much. The sound is
faint "whooshing" which doesn't bother me.

Battery life seems about the same.

Heat, as measured from the amount the fan comes on, is unchanged.

Go look at xlr8yourmac.com and search the drive upgrade database. You'll
find many comments on this drive upgrade. My summary would be that it is
an upgrade on the margins, not something that makes a huge difference.

There is also a very detailed Tibook HD upgrade tutorial on xlr8, with
pictures.

Hi Davoud,

I just added this very drive to my TiBook 550 last week and love it. The
original drive was only 20GB, so I really needed the space. The speed
up in read/write _is_ noticeable but not overwhelming. The bottom of the
TiBook doesn't get hotter, and battery life, to the extent I have had time
to check it, is about the same.

Also I recommend buying from ZipZoomFly.com. They have this drive for
under $200 with a free shipping special. Ordered the HD on Friday; had it
Monday afternoon. I found ZipZoomFly by doing a product locator search at
the MacWorld web site.

The installation is straightforward, but you have to be careful. There is
an Apple doc on this if your TiBook is the GigaBit Ethernet model:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=111925

Finally, I bought a Wiebetech Firewire DriveDick for the removed, original
drive. Very pleased with it too.

--Fred

On 7/15/04 5:29 AM, in article 150720040829559042%star@sky.net, "Davoud"
<star@sky.net> wrote:

I would say that this is one of the best upgrades you can do to hold
yourself over. I was VERY impressed with the difference in speed, but then I
was upgrading from a 4400rpm drive. Battery life is the same as it was
before, and heat is a non-issue. I'd say go for it.

--
Brian