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Tips for Driving Small

An excerpt from the

The PowerBook Angle: Tips for Driving Small

Expanding a PowerBook's hard drive capacity

Wake up and go to sleep

SCSI Disk Mode

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The PowerBook Angle: Tips for Driving Small

Thanks to their rear-panel SCSI connectors, all PowerBooks can tap into the same universe of external storage options as their desk-bound cousins. (To use an SCSI device with a PowerBook Duo model, you need to add an appropriate dock, such as Apple's Duo MiniDock.)

Expanding a PowerBook's hard drive capacity

As for internal hard drives, a PowerBook's tight confines require a 2.5-inch hard drive. At this writing, drives of up to 1GB are available in this petite size. Most hard drive firms sell internal drives for PowerBooks, and some offer trade-in allowances for your existing hard drive. Some firms also offer case kits that let you turn your existing internal drive into an external drive -- a nice alternative.

Many of today's PowerBooks can also use PCMCIA (also called PC Card) based hard drives. These removable hard drives combine the capacity of a hard drive with the flexibility of a floppy disk.

Wake up and go to sleep

A hard disk is one of a PowerBook's major power consumers (the screen backlight is another). Given this, you may think it's best to put the hard drive to sleep whenever possible. Apple reinforces this thinking with the PowerBook control strip, which gives you one-click access to hard drive slumber.

The problem is, it takes four times the amount of power to wake up a sleeping hard disk than it does to keep it spinning. If you frequently alternate between putting the drive to sleep and waking it up, you are using more battery power than if you simply leave the hard disk spinning. You also waste time, because it takes a few seconds for the disk to spin up to operating speed. If you find yourself putting the hard drive to sleep every few minutes, you might be using more power than you're saving.

SCSI Disk Mode

This mode lets you connect the PowerBook to another Mac, which treats the PowerBook's hard drive as an external drive--it's a boon for beaming files between Macs.

SCSI disk mode is supported on the PowerBook 100, 160, 165, 165c, 180, 180c, 500, and 5300-series models, and Duo-system models equipped with MiniDocks. To set it up, use the PowerBook control panel to specify your PowerBook's SCSI ID (use the Portable control panel for the PowerBook 100). Verify that the PowerBook's hard disk name is different from that of the Mac you're connecting to. Shut down both Macs, then attach a SCSI Disk Adapter cable to the PowerBook. (Note that cable: it's not the standard SCSI system cable. The Disk Adapter Cable is dark gray and shorter than the SCSI system cable.) Attach a terminator to the end of the cable.

Make sure all devices in the SCSI chain are off, then connect the other end of the terminator to either a cable leading to the desktop Macintosh or to the end of the SCSI chain (you may need to remove the last device's terminator).

Finally, turn on the PowerBook. If all's well, a diamond shaped symbol (the SCSI symbol--the same icon that's next to the SCSI port on the back of the Mac) begins moving on the screen, bearing a number corresponding to the ID you set. Once you see that, turn on the desktop machine. After it starts, you'll see the PowerBook's hard drive on its desktop.

When you're ready to shut down, first shut down the desktop Macintosh, then power off the PowerBook by either pressing and holding the power switch for two seconds, then releasing. (For the PowerBook 100, press both of the two buttons on the left side of the unit.)