iBook G3 (dual usb) hard drive specs?

Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.

Any IDE/ATA (PATA) 2.5-inch enclosure should work. Serial-ATA (SATA) will NOT work.

FireWire allows you to boot.

This enclosure should do nicely:

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MOTGFW400OB/

Good luck!

Ronda Wilson wrote:
Hi, and welcome to Apple Discussions.

Any IDE/ATA (PATA) 2.5-inch enclosure should work. Serial-ATA (SATA) will NOT work.

Thickness could theoretically be an issue. I've heard of the occasional notebook hard drive that was of a (currently) non-standard thickness and might not fit properly into the space for an iBook hard drive.

The other thing is the naming convention can be really, really hard to follow. The most common naming convention now seems to be Parallel ATA, which only came into being after Serial ATA was on the market for a while. The buzzwords have often been inconsistent and hard to follow. I mean - IDE, PATA, Ultra DMA have been used at one time or another. I you shop at Newegg, several of their PATA drives are sold under the description ATA-6.

Thickness could theoretically be an issue. I've heard of the occasional notebook hard drive that was of a (currently) non-standard thickness and might not fit properly into the space for an iBook hard drive.

The original poster was asking about an enclosure for the iBook's hard drive. The iBook's hard drive is 9.5 mm high. The enclosure to which I linked should work for it.

As long as you know that the drive is definitely not SATA, then it's obvious that the earlier standard is what you need to go on, whatever they're calling it these days.

FireSBurnsmuP wrote:
Most importantly, I'd like to know what kind of connectivity it uses. I know that Macintosh computers during this period of time pretty much had all there own proprietary hardware, but I'd like to see if I can't buy an external enclosure that I could hook this hdd into.

Actually Macintosh computer hardware of that time was no more or less proprietary than common PC notebook machines. Many replaceable parts were far from proprietary. They were using industry standard IDE hard drives and industry standard DDR memory modules. Of course the batteries were proprietary, but that's common for every single notebook computer manufacturer I've every heard of. Apple had gone to USB earlier than most PC makers and most common USB devices work well on a Mac. The processors and chipsets weren't the same ones that PC makers were using, but most of the common parts were no different.

As was said earlier, a common enclosure should be able to do the trick. I personally don't like the term "enclosure" because it doesn't adequately describe what it does. I sometimes call them "interface bridges" for the part that serves as a communications bridge between the hard drive interface and the USB or FireWire interface.

Question: I am thinking about purchasing a USB 2.0 2.5" ATA Drive Adapter from Other World Computing so that I can access my old internal hard drive taken out of my old White iBook G3 800Mhz 14" Dual USB 30GB HD and then connect it, via plug-in-play, into my new MacBook Aluminum Unibody. The Drive Adapter that I want to purchase says that it is compatible with any 2.5" IDE device & that it supports ATA/ATAPI-6 Specification V1.0. It also says that it supports IDE and enhanced IDE hard drives. Can anyone tell me if this adapter will be compatible with my old iBook G3 30GB HD? What is throwing me off is all this ATA, SATA, PATA, IDE, ATAPI-6, Ultra ATA. www.everymac.com says that my old hard drive is a 30GB Ultra ATA 2.5" drive. The new drive adapter I want says that it is USB 2.0 to IDE/ATA/ATAPI 40 Pin adapter cable. Any guidance is greatly appreciated. Thanks !!!

Which version of the OS is installed on the old hard drive? The Intel MacBook may not be able to access it.

Dave Sawyer says:

Should work just fine, if what he posts is correct and the drive is functional. He of course wouldn't be able to boot the MacBook from the iBook's drive (not without reformatting and installing the OS, anyway), but he should be able to access all the files on it.

Thank you one and all for your help and guidance. I just needed to access the files on the drive and the 2.5" drive adapter I purchased from OtherWorld Computing worked nicely. I must give you the ultimate props Rhonda. When I had my G3 iBook I had to use your shim fix suggestion for the loose video chip on the motherboard and it worked like a charm. You truly are a wealth of information and a life saver. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with all of us in need.

Peace.
MZ

Again, you're welcome.