In 2003, I purchased an Apple Aluminum Powerbook G4. The hard drive is what was standard at the time: ATA-100 2.5″ / 1 cm. Planning to recycle the nearly working, but now antiquated, machine, I decided to remove the malfunctioning hard drive and recycle it separately, ensuring that personal data is erased. The iFixit hard drive replacement guide presented a useful set of instructions for opening the computer.

Unfortunately, this is the second hard drive to die since purchasing the machine. I suspect that the machine overheats as Mac OS X keeps the fans running at a very low (and quiet) speed compared with what they are capable of. Replacing the hard drive and battery is 2/3 the cost of buying a new Windows 7 machine, so this laptop will be recycled.

Having never opened a hard drive before, I decided to take a look inside and observe the dual platter layout of this 2004 hard drive model. The capacity of the drive was 80 Gigabytes.