Apple Powerbook G4 hard drive replacement
July 30th, 2009 | by admin |
This video is the result of me having to replace a dead hard drive for a G4 and realizing there aren’t nearly as many videos showing the process.
I know it’s not the “perfect” demonstration setup, not even close - ideally I’d have a top-down view with the camera mounted on the ceiling, but at least you see EVERY step of the replacement visually, all the way to OSX installation. I’m a visual person so just reading about what needed to be done wasn’t giving me a clear idea of how much work it would take.
I hope it helps at least one person out there to have a better idea of what they are getting themselves into 
Lastly I must mention http://www.ifixit.com/ because had it not been for THEIR helpful guide and website I doubt I would have been able to do this nearly as smoothly. Mad props to them for their wonderful step-by-step guides (with pictures)!
Duration : 0:5:28
[youtube F-ERjITjOUo]
25 Responses to “Apple Powerbook G4 hard drive replacement”
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Hey, that was my …
Hey, that was my idea when making it - I’d read up and seen iFixit’s picture guide but I still wanted to visually see what goes into the process so I’m happy to have helped out others in that way.
A lot of people say Carbon Copy works great - I have yet to try it out for myself so if you see this let me know if it really works out - one simple way to test it would have been if your WD drive had firewire - you could just hold the option key and boot off the external (OSX supports that).
By oltredding on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Good video - my …
Good video - my starting point. I have read all I could find on this subject, but video helps. I used a USB cable and Carbon Copy Cloner to make a copy of the 80GB original drive to a 320GB Western Digital. Lets hope in boots on the first try. if I encounter any problems I will write back - but I suspect it will be a piece of cake. TR
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Amy, glad to have …
Amy, glad to have helped out some people out there!
You can message me anytime with questions and I try to write back ASAP as well.
It’s not too scary of an operation, especially now that you’ve seen that it’s rather straight-forward and ifixit has great step-by-step with pictures to follow (as I did while making this video).
If it was some other kind of a laptop worth a few hundred bucks I’d say not worth yout time but Powerbooks are well worth repairing (and still run great nowadays!!)
By curlyamygirl on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Hey, thank you so …
Hey, thank you so much for this! It’s actually super helpful regardless of the camera angles. I’m probably going to have to do the same to my Powerbook soon. I think so.. I get my Apple loading screen and then the icon that says, “Hey, thinking about working here..” and then it just shuts off. I’m so tired of fighting this computer. But thank you for giving us visual folks a guide!
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Yes, not much you …
Yes, not much you can recover when the thing does a click-death … Starting the computer in “TARGET” mode when connected to another computer via Firewire does the same thing that having the drive in an enclosure would do - it helped to recover some files but on some the drive would get stuck in a reading “loop” and the only way to get out without waiting for 1000 hours was to power it down, power it back up and try pulling some other files.
By irulethe70s on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
did you try???????? …
did you try???????????
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
basically.
basically.
By irulethe70s on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
so it wasnt …
so it wasnt recoverable
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
It had, what I like …
It had, what I like to call, the CLICK of death … in other words every few seconds it would click if you’re not even doing anything and if you are trying to access data it would click randomly and often not read the data - the person was feeling very lucky since the most important stuff got saved to an external drive but the operating system had definitely become unusable.
By irulethe70s on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
how dead was it try …
how dead was it try using a 2.5” ATA hdd enclosure to get the data
By jc69montero on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Definitely a very …
Definitely a very unuseful video. Your back is really annoying…
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
*sigh* Does nobody …
*sigh* Does nobody read the “more info” nowadays? It is not meant as a detailed how-to video- there are some excellent ones out there for that. This video was created with the purpose of visually demonstrating to people how much work they are getting themselves into. I know it sucks and for my next HOW-TO video I’ll be swapping the HDD in my MacBook Pro with a SSD and it will be in HD and step-by-step. I agree with you that iFixIt IS THE BEST, wouldn’t have done it without their excellent guide!
By Risket on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
You really should …
You really should have had the camera angled differently. All we see is your back during some of the extremely important parts. I’m going to be upgrading the hard drive and RAM in my girlfriends Mac. Her hard drive died and Apple wanted $300 to replace it with another 80GB HD. We spend less than that and we’re putting in a 320GB HD and upgrading the RAM from 512MB to 2GB. iFixIt is the best!
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
this video has been …
this video has been QUITE useful to a number of people (check the rest of the comments). dude– learn how to read that thing on the right of the video that says “more info” instead of wasting your time posting criticism to a video that clearly wasn’t meant to be a “step-by-step” instructional video to begin with (but I have provided a link to a site that has the step-by-step instructions I followed).
By hairbird on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
this video is …
this video is useless. dude– learn how to make a helpful video instead of wasting people’s time.
By enigmo08 on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
ata is the same as …
ata is the same as ide
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
check out “more …
check out “more info” for a link to ifixit where I learned how to replace the drive, they also have drives that’ll work, I’ll re-send you the same message I sent falconwagon61 a week ago since it was more or less the same question (see 2 comments down from yours).
By andeyejah on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
hi my drive is …
hi my drive is dying on my 12 inch power g4 i went to a few shops but nobody could tell me which drive to buy in the specs it just says ata but which kind ata would work?please help thanks.
By Escorpio40 on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
why is he standing …
why is he standing in front of the camera and blocking the view? Give us step by step and not FFW
By falconwagon61 on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Where did you get …
Where did you get the hd from? I have a 12 inch, and i’m not sure which hd i should get. Any recommendations?
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Haha, agreed as …
Haha, agreed as long as it’s got firewire and you don’t need to be super-mobile you can boot straight off the external saving you all that work but then if you just want the laptop’s drive to work… I’m making a video (with MUCH better camera angles) showing the replacing of a slow internal drive with a solid state one which makes a of a difference in the way the thing performs.
By ganjaking187 on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
too much of a pain …
too much of a pain in the just buy a usb harddrive lmfao
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
I know, that’s the …
I know, that’s the plan, only next time it’s an Intel-based Mac Book Pro and I’m going to be replacing the HDD with a SSD.
By cwbh10 on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
next time put the …
next time put the camera in a different place……..
By nickdotvr on Jul 30, 2009 | Reply
Read “more info” to …
Read “more info” to the right of the video.