PowerBook 3400 Hard Drives.

Since the Mac 3400 and early G3 PowerBooks cost a fortune when they are new, it makes more sense to update your investment rather than wait and hope for an eventual G4 portable. We review a variety of update possibilities for PowerBooks, such as MCE MobileStor and Simple Technology internal drives for PowerBooks.

Obviously the first thing is to max out your RAM. Next thing is to check your hard drive with a disk utility such as FWB HardDrive ToolKit. The drive on my 3400 tested out as failing, sort of what to expect after several years of use all over the world. But what replacement hard drive to chose?

You have several options, thanks to clever companies who realize there are thousands of PowerBook 3400 owners who are in the same dilemma. MCE MobileStor provides one solution; their company is dedicated to PowerBook upgrades. Simple Technology offers another choice. IBM is the company that makes the actual mini-drives that can fit into your PowerBook.

Simple Technology offers from 2.1 GB up to 6 GB. MCE offers these as well as higher capacity. We will be testing these as well as any other possibilities in our upcoming test season later this year. In the meantime, we hope at least you can rest assured that you need not toss your aging PowerBook.

Design updated July 08, 2008.