Replacing Mac mini g4 Hard drive

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Replacing Mac mini g4 Hard drive

I've had a Mac mini G4 for almost 3 years and now the Hard drive has crashed and the repair utility says that it had a S.M.A.R.T. failure. I understand this is bad and that I should probably replace the hard drive. Of course, this is no longer under warranty.

Is there a certain kind of hard drive that is recommended for this computer? It's a first generation 2005 mac mini.

If so, are they much trouble to install? I upgraded the ram awhile back using the putty knife method and it seemed pretty straightforward - the only difficult things were opening it and closing it.

Any advice on this would be appreciated.

Mac Mini g4, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on May 7, 2008 10:03 PM

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Answer 1

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

May 8, 2008 3:22 AM in response to biz123

Welcome to the Apple discussions.

You want a 2.5" notebook hard drive with parallel ATA/Ultra ATA interface. Easier said, you cannot use a serial ATA or SATA drive. 5400rpm drives come in sizes up to 250GB and 7200rpm drives are available up to 100GB. Seagates drives come with a 5 year warranty, while most others are 1 to 3 years.

You can see directions on how to replace the hard drive at http://www.ifixit.com/Guide/Mac/Mac-Mini-PowerPC/Hard-Drive/82/8/ and a video at http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/installation.cfm (choose hard drives and scroll down the list).

Two online sources I've used are http://www.macsales.com and http://www.newegg.com .

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Answer 2

biz123 Author

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May 8, 2008 10:37 AM in response to BGreg

Thanks Bgreg!

That macsales site is exactly the kind of site I was looking for, since you can specify what mac you have and they will show what hardware is available to work with that model. The installation sites look helpful too.

The Western Digital 250gb drive looks good. I'll probably try that one.

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