*Special Note... when this upgrade was initially posted, the ScienceMan naively thought that 10 GB was going to be enough space - wrong! I liked the performance of the ATA33, 7200 RPM 10 GB Maxtor drive that I decided to add a ATA66, 7200 RPM 20 GB Maxtor as well. This makes for a 30 GB AIO storage monster! See part two of this article for master and slave instructions for adding a second drive successfully.

For those of you unfamiliar with this model - don't feel bad, it wasn't sold for that long. Too bad, because it is one sweet model. I could blab on and on about how good it is but I'll direct you to the G3 AIO Stop Shop instead - it's a great site for learning more about this great computer.

Before you go any further in dissecting your own equipment... please be aware that you can damage your computer and/or void your warranty. If you're not sure of something, don't do it - let an authorized technician do it. I can't be responsible if you screw something up!

First, turn off the power switch on the back of the machine. Then unplug everything. Now search for about an hour for the phillips screwdriver your wife borrowed last. When you find it, remove the screws in the positions noted (in pink) below.

There's a handle between the bottom screws... pull on it gently to get the back of the machine to slide out.

Looking from the side you'll see the hard drive you want to replace hiding under the pull out tray (again in pink).

You'll have to unplug the 40 pin ATA connector and the power connector. At this point, if you have an anti-static wrist strap, you should use it. If not, remember to discharge any static you might be carrying before touching components with circuitry on them. Simply touch the metal case (the thing with the holes in it that makes up the sides of the slide out tray) to discharge static.

Looking up close at the drive, it's pretty easy to see what you have to unplug;

The "jumper" in the photo above is of no concern to you unless you plan to "master and slave" the drive you're removing. I'll talk more about this later - so for now, leave it alone!

Once you've unplugged the drive, move to the other side of the computer and pull up gently on the small plastic tab that is part of the hard drive tray (see photo below). At the same time, you should pull outward; this should slide that drive out like filling out of a twinkie!

Now all you have to do is remove the old drive from the drive tray with the use of a phillips screwdriver - take out the four screws (see below). Then attach the new drive to the drive tray with some crazy glue... just kidding!... put the new drive on with the same screws, in the same position, through the same holes. Be careful NOT to touch the circuitry of the drives at any time - hold the drives by their sides.

Reverse the process by which you removed the old drive. Slide the tray back in until the tab "clicks"... then plug the ATA 40 pin cable and the power connector back in. You may notice jumpers on the new hard drive as well... don't mess with them! The Maxtor drive (and most others, I hear) comes with the jumpers set in the appropriate "master" position. You should read the doucmentation that came with the drive in order to confirm this.

Now you need to temporarily connect the old hard drive to your computer so that you can transfer your files and format the new drive. You'll have to slide on your old knee braces because you have to hunch down and look at the computer from the underside. I found this was facilitated by moving the computer close to the edge of the table. Look for a power connector and an ATA cable (see below)... pull them both off of the CD-ROM.

Now simply connect your old hard drive to the cable and power connector you just removed from the CD-ROM. Now, swivel your whole computer so that the hard drive can rest on the table. The hard drive will be kind of squashed under there - not really a problem (I used a muffin fan from a Mac Classic to hold up the main tray!). It should look like the side view photo below;

Now you're ready for action! Don't put the computer back together yet... only certain parts! Plug in your ADB cable (the one that leads to the keyboard) and your main power cable to the computer. Turn the power switch on, and fire that baby up!

Your new hard drive will NOT be on the desktop. You'll have to use drive setup in order for the MacOS to recognize the drive. I used the latest version of drive setup, version 1.7.3. *Please note that there is now a more recent version of drive setup associated with MacOS 9, drive setup 1.8.1.

Double click Drive Setup - the progress window will indicate that it is "searching for drives connected to this computer...". Once it has found the drives (ther should be two!) select the appropriate drive (it won't let you initialize your old drive because it is the start up drive). Then click initialize. But before you go on you should really click on "Custom Setup..." before you go on. At the top of thios window you can choos to partition the drive if you wish. Also, in the middle of the window, you can choose HFS+ if you want (smaller allocation blocks), this option will be described as "Mac Extended". Once you've configured the drive setup the way you want, then go ahead and initialize that baby! Your new drive is now available on the desktop.

Well, you're basically done! When I did this, I simply copied over all of my files to the new drive, including the system folder. I've often read that you should install a new system folder from scratch on the new hard drive...but my copied system folder seemed to work just fine. I confirmed this by choosing the new drive as the start up disk, then restarting.

Are you going to sell your old drive? Now is the time to wipe it clean if you don't want some buyer getting to see all your personal files!

Once you are sure everything is working A-OK, shut down and disconnect the power again. Disconnect the old hard drive and plug the cables back into the CD-ROM. Now carefully slide the large tray closed, careful not to pinch any cables. Put the screws back in! Reattach your cables! Have a beer... you're done!

I did not do any benchmark tests on the new drive compared to the old - there are some interesting numbers in this xlr8yourmac article if you're interested in that kind of thing. However I did notice that start up was considerably faster, as are certain other functions of the computer. The best part of the whole upgrade though is... NO MORE WHINING SOUND! The old stock Quantum SE 4GB drive had a horrible whine - it is sheer heaven to have that gone (and I sold it to some PC owner... hee-hee)!

Say... are you brave? Want to really rip the guts out of your computer! Then you might consider adding the old drive back into the G3AIO as a "slave" drive. Or perhaps you want to do what I did... sell the wimpy 4 GB drive and put in more monster storage. You can only do this if you did not have the internal zip drive installed. This leaves you a free drive bay to work with. So if you wish to throw caution to the wind then follow me into the "master and slave" zone of the death!