Thursday, November 6, 2003

I don't quite hate hardware. I just hate the hassle of fixing broken hardware. Our 2000-vintage home iMac had a flaky hard drive for quite a while. Coincidentally or not, when we installed Mac OS X 10.3, the flakiness worsened and eventually the drive died. Fortunately we had a full backup from when we installed 10.3. After some Web search, I found step-by-step instructions on how to replace the iMac's drive. pretty straightforward, except that they recommend slower drives (5400 rpm max) because the iMac has no forced air cooling. All local retailers only sell 7200 rpm ATA drives. Even online, slower drives are not so easy to find. Eventually found one on CDW. Ordered Saturday with the fastest delivery option. No evidence on their site that they don't even process orders until the next working day. Several days and much annoyance trying to figure out the delay later, drive got here Tuesday. Installation was easy. Booted from the 10.3 CD, partioned the drive. Had a scare when the 10.3 installer claimed it could not install on the just partioned drive. Reboot. Phew, it accepted the new drive. Up and running for the last two days. Faster and very quiet, too. $88 and a couple of hours of work for an obsolete but still very usable computer. Thrift wins this time. 9:12:01 PM