DEBRIS.COMgood for a laugh, or possibly an aneurysm

A couple years ago I replaced the disk drive in my Powerbook. The new drive was bigger, faster, and quieter than the stock unit; it added 30% to my storage capacity and shaved about 20 seconds off the boot time. The original drive went into a FireWire enclosure, giving me a convenient and portable backup device. (GeekNote: it’s bus-powered, so I don’t even need to carry a power cable.)

When I replaced the drive, I wondered if I was voiding my warranty. Apple offers a fantastic extended warranty plan, which includes free two-way overnight shipping, including the box and tape, and I didn’t want to lose it. I figured at the time that I’d just swap the original drive back into the laptop, should I need to get a warranty repair.

The time for the warranty repair finally came: the LCD was getting dim. I went through the troublesome process of removing the disk drive from the laptop, and then attempted to pull the original drive — which I’d already backed up, erased, and done a fresh install of OS X onto — out of its home, the OWC Mercury On-The-Go FireWire Portable.

This case is unique in that it doesn’t split open. It’s seamless. The drive is inserted from one end, into rubberized tracks that act like tiny shock absorbers. The problem, I discovered, is that these rubber tracks only slide in one direction. My disk drive wouldn’t come back out.

The manual does warn about this: “The side rails are made of silicone rubber and once inserted, it is difficult to remove.” Sigh.

So, it’s a nice case, but beware if you think you’ll ever want your disk drive back.