So there it is. My eviscerated laptop. Thanks to the incredible directions from iFixIt, I was able to disassemble my PowerBook G4 in hopes of replacing the dead hard drive.

Of course it didn’t go smoothly. Two screws were hopelessly stuck and all attempts to remove them left me with sore fingers and stripped screw heads. I ended up having to drill the two screws out, with very minimal damage sustained (can a laptop sustain minimal damage?). And now that I have it all apart I still can’t get the hard drive bracket off the hard drive. But iFixIt sells hard drive brackets, so I may not worry about that.

If all goes well I’ll have a new, slightly better hard drive for $120. Sure beats the $310 Apple would have charged. And sure beats the $1,099 for a new laptop (contrary to some reports, we didn’t just rush out and buy a new laptop within the hour). Though I still don’t have it back together and running smoothly yet, so don’t rule that out the brand new laptop. And I suppose with a three year old laptop getting a new one is going to come sooner rather than later. I’m just trying to forestall it a bit.

I feel a bit like Dr. Frankenstein. I’ll let you know how the reanimation goes.