dain bramaged computer

Freaks,

I got paid today, which means I can take my computer out for repairs tomorrow. I'll end up with either my current, crusty old hard drive repaired (and its data recovered, we hope) or a spanking new (and, we hope, cheap) internal drive for my ancient Mac G4.

Macintosh's unpopularity in Korea means a good bit of inconvenience: hardware and software will be more expensive, and Mac centers are few and far between. But there's a distinct positive: it's highly unlikely that any given Mac center in Korea will be crowded. I'm hoping this will be the case tomorrow.

(Then again, you could argue that the scarcity of Mac stores forces all Mac owners to converge on the same few locations. But that theory doesn't explain why the Mac store at Yongsan's Jeonja Land was empty when I went there a few months ago.)

Wish me luck, then. I have no idea what sort of bill I'm in for. If you have any ideas about how to get the best, cheapest, and fastest deal, let me know.

A recap for those wishing to dispense advice: my Mac's internal 10GB (don't laugh) hard drive died this past Sunday, i.e., almost a week ago. I'm pretty sure the problem has to do with the read/write arm, which is why I'm hearing a noise like a glass marble bouncing on a hard plastic surface. The data on that drive are not crucial to me, but a full retrieval would be nice (otherwise, I have to reinstall a shitload of programs and install Mac OS 9.1 to access very old data files). If it turns out that my drive is kaput, I'll have to get a new one, but given how old the Mac is and how little money I have, I'd prefer to get a cheap internal drive (hell, if they've got a 20-gig drive for cheap, I'll take it).

Question: would it be better and simpler to get an unformatted internal drive from somewhere other than the Mac store? Anyone with experience maintaining a Mac in Korea is welcome to comment, as are others with good ideas.

And no: the solution is NOT to buy a PC and convert to the Way of Bill Gates.


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