A few weeks back, Melody's aunt, B, suffered a great loss: her hard drive on her G3 iBook failed. B is a writer by proffession and she has been using her iBook nigh daily since 2001. It was only a matter of time. Fortunately for a nominal fee she was able to salvage most of the data. However it was time to upgrade and she soon had a shiny new 13in. Intel Core Duo Powered MacBook with which to ply her trade.
Since we suffered a similar loss earlier in the year and had our hard drive replaced, I asked what was to become of the old G3 iBook. B replied that she supposed she would bring it to me to see what I could do with it. I had entertained notions of doing the hard drive replacement myself but when I waded into the internet walk-through tutorials for it I discovered that the hard drives in this generation of Mac laptops are not very easy to get to. So I payed CompUSA to do it for me. But now I had the chance to test my nerdish mettle. I was resolved. I would replace this hard drive myself.
I'll not bore you with all the tedious details but a few photos taken over the four hours it took to get it taken apart enough to get to the drive, replace the drive and put it all back together again. I couldn't have done it without the exceptional guide from iFixit.
I find it somewhat strange how much this sort of thing appeals to me. I suppose it's a sort of puzzle. I think it has more to do with the clearly defined goals and outcomes. The problems I deal with at work are anything but clearly defined. I think it's therapeutic to really fix something and know what you've done.
Voila! Two working iBooks. B's computer begins new life as a dedicated, portable music machine. Believe it or not this is the abbreviated pictorial version. For the full 4 hour process check out my Yahoo! Photos ablum in a few days.
And Eleanor is still cute. This morning she went over and pulled the Yoda hat from the shelf and had me put it on her. A cute and darling baby she is. Maybe she can use the laptop for college.
1 comment:
Josh,
you can see the process in more detailed photographic documentation here.
I installed a 20gig Samsung to replace the failed 10gig Fujitsu.
I was very fortunate to have the counter top above E's reach and began the process after she went to bed. All screws and bits accounted for.
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