PowerBook G4 Aluminum 15" 1.67 GHz Hard Drive Replacement

Geschrieben von: Andrew Bookholt
  • Kommentare: 10
PowerBook G4 Aluminum 15" 1.67 GHz Hard Drive Replacement

Schwierigkeitsgrad

Moderate

Schritte

17

Zeitaufwand

30 Minuten - 2 Stunden

Einleitung

Want more storage capacity? Replace your hard drive with a higher capacity unit.

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    • Use a coin to turn the battery locking screw 90 degrees clockwise.

    • Lift the battery out of the computer.

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    • Remove the following 10 screws:

    • Two 3 mm Phillips in the battery compartment, on either side of the battery contacts.

    • Four 3 mm Phillips around the memory compartment.

    • Four 16 mm Phillips along the hinge.

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    • Remove the memory compartment cover.

    • Remove the two 12 mm Phillips screws on the Aluminum bracket at the top of the memory compartment.

    I had 7mm screws here instead of 12mm. Did without them till later.

    gepkes -

    I have an Aluminum PowerBook G4 1.67Ghz since 2006.

    3/4 (from bottom to top) of the LCD becomes either black or is jumbled each time I turn on the MAC or move the screen. I need to press the LCD at several locations in order for this problem to go.... any advice ?

    Polanskiman -

    re: Polanskiman; this is usually caused by a loose ribbon connector on the rear of the LCD. Open up the display, remove the LCD, lay flat and re-connect the ribbon plug.

    aaiverson -

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    • Rotate the computer 90 degrees clockwise so the power receptacle faces you.

    • Remove the three 3 mm Phillips screws along the edge of the lower case.

    • When replacing these screws, you must install them in the correct order. Begin by installing the screw closest to the display hinge, then work your way toward the front of the computer.

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    • Turn the computer 90 degrees clockwise so the hinge faces you.

    • Remove the lower 5 mm Phillips screw on each side of the hinge (two total).

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    • Rotate the computer 90 degrees clockwise so the ports face you.

    • Remove the three 3 mm Phillips screws along the edge of the lower case.

    • When replacing these screws, you must install them in the correct order. Begin by installing the screw closest to the display hinge, then work your way toward the front of the computer. Also, be careful not to put the screws in the two holes on either side of the video out port.

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    • Turn the computer over and open the display.

    • Remove the two 4.2 mm long, 1.5 mm hex screws at the top corners of the upper case (two total).

    • A T6 Torx driver will work, but repeated use will strip the screws.

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    • Grasp the back corners of the upper case and pull up.

    • Do not pull the upper case off yet; you still need to disconnect the keyboard and trackpad cable.

    • Lift the back of the case up and work your fingers along the sides, freeing the case as you go. Once you have freed the sides, you may need to rock the case up and down to free the front of the upper case.

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    • Rotate the upper case up and toward the screen, so that the upper case rests against it.

    First of all, awesome guide. I am using it in July 2015, and there is no way I could have successfully navigate the typical Apple laptop Rubik's cube of Powerbook maintenance.

    Second, there is a REAL trick to removing the upper case here, and it involves knowing what those stupid internal metal catches look like so you can free them without folding your aluminum case into a pretzel.

    WildBill -

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    • Remove the amber tape securing the trackpad ribbon to the logic board.

    • Disconnect the trackpad ribbon from the logic board by pulling up on the connector.

    • Remove the upper case from the computer.

    in my g4 there is also a big transparent ribbon (for keyboard?), to the right of the amber trackpad ribbon, that i disconnected before removing case cover.

    [deleted] -

    re: ykuwabara; this is due to the differences between the Model A1095 (yours) and the newer A1138 (illustrated here). The A1138 combines the keyboard and trackpad signals into one cable.

    aaiverson -

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    • Remove the three 6 mm long silver Phillips screws from the retaining bracket on the left side of the optical drive.

    one of the (two, in my g4) HD bracket screws was stripped when the original HD was installed. the screw was soft, and the X was nearly an O. I drilled down the screw head with a dremel and was able to lift off the bracket. The headless screw unscrewed with pliers -- this left the thread intact though the screw wasn't usable. I had leftovers from a complete MacBook screw set which i'd gotten from iFixit for another machine. And one of them fit well enough.

    On this site and others, I found a couple of other methods for deaing with stripped screws:

    1. glue another screw head-to-head to the stripped one, using J-B Weld, then use plier to unscrew both. I didn't want to wait 6 hours for the glue to set so I didn't try this.

    2. using a cutter wheel on a dremel, cut a straight ridge into the screw head and use a regular screwdriver to undo the screw. I tried this, but because the screw is embedded flush to the surface, I would have had to cut a ridge into the bracket as well.

    3. if the screw were not aluminum (=so soft) i would have tried using very heavy downward force when unscrewing, to get the screw even slightly loosened, then finishing with pliers and an exacto or swiss army knife.

    [deleted] -

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    • Remove the retaining bracket.

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    • Disconnect the large orange hard drive cable from the logic board, removing tape as necessary.

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    • Lift the hard drive up by the right side and remove it from the computer.

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    • Remove the two silver Phillips screws and black rubber bumpers from either side of the hard drive (four sets of screws and bumpers total).

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    • There is a black pad on one end of the hard drive that you should peel off and transfer to your new hard drive.

    • Lift the plastic shield off of the hard drive.

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    • Disconnect the hard drive cable from the hard drive using a spudger by gently loosening one side at a time. (Be careful not to pry to hard or you may bend the pins.) You may need to remove a piece of orange tape attaching the ribbon cable to the hard drive.

    • This is a bit tricky. If you bend the pins, do your best to straighten them using the hard drive cable as a guide.

    • If you are installing a new hard drive, we have an OS X install guide to get you up and running.

Abschluss

To reassemble your device, follow these instructions in reverse order.

Tinte & Feder

Andrew Bookholt

578335 Reputation

3 Kommentare

Easy enough to follow. The clips at the front of the drive bay are rather delicate and tricky to re-install properly. The spudger helped with that too.

jnewsom22 -

I have a 15 inch powerbook g4 with 1,67ghz and I after installing 160gb ATA drive I only had 149,69 gb left before installing os and stuff. My question is: Does powerbooks have any hardware limitations that makes us unable to install more storage?

Ali Sadykov -

If you try to install an SSD via SATA-IDE-adaptor, please make sure it works before re-assembling the PowerBook - this saves you a lot of time. I did this four times in a row, just to see that it didn’t work out well. May be it’s the quality of the SSD, or of the adaptor. But note two things: use the “flat” version of the adaptor; and if Leopard’s disk-utility outputs and “Input/Output-Error”, try Tiger’s disk-utility for the first initializion of the SSD. Btw. the manual here is great! Thank you!

atarixle -