Step by step instructions for replacing the stock IDE hard drive 
with a bigger, faster, better one.  The whole thing took me about 3 
hours (1 hour to backup, 2 hours to swap drives) and this was the 
first time I have ever done anything like this.

Step 1.  Read through all the directions and print out everything so 
you can refer to it later.

Step 2.  Backup your hard drive.  Your best bet would be to backup 
to CD or tape drive, if you have a CD writer drive or tape drive.  I 
have an external zip drive and used the backup utility software by 
Dantz that came with the zip tools to do the backup.  It took about 
13 blank zip disks for my 2.4 GB stock hard drive.  If you need 
special drivers to run your zip, CD, or tape drive then copy those 
to floppy so you can use that drive after installing the new hard 
drive.  I recommend doing a full backup of everything on your hard 
drive.  I suppose you could back up to floppies if you have a ton of 
them around.

Step 3.  Set your computer to boot from CD.  Put your OS install CD 
in the CD drive.  Go to Control Panels and open Startup Disk.  
Choose the install CD as the startup drive.  This way you are set to 
boot up from CD the next time you start up (hopefully with a brand 
new, blank hard drive installed). If you forget you can always hold 
down "c" key when starting to boot from CD.

Step 4.  Study and print out the take apart manual.  Thomas Koons 
has an excellent guide to taking apart the 6400 complete with photo 
illustrations, here 
<http://homepage.mac.com/zone6400/manual/6400manual.html> .  I 
highly recommend the tip about using a wooden clothes pin to wedge 
in between the cover to help pry it off Š it left no marks at all!  
<http://homepage.mac.com/zone6400/manual/files/alternate_front.html>

Step 5.  Get your workspace prepared.  You want a place where you 
can set your 6400 and work on it without having to move around much.  
The main reason is that you want to avoid static electricity such as 
can build up while you are walking on carpet.  I used the kitchen 
table.  Set out your printouts of the instructions, a glossy 
magazine (MacWorld works great), wooden clothes pin, screw driver, a 
pair of pliers, and your new hard drive (still in its anti-static 
bag).

Step 6.  Shut the computer down and disconnect all the cables.  From 
here on you should also refer to the take apart manual for specifics 
and photos.  Move the 6400 to the workspace you have prepared.

Step 7.  Remove cover and old drive.  Take the lower front cover off 
your 6400.  The drive will be on the left side near the middle, 
standing vertically on its side. Follow the take apart directions to 
slide the drive out and disconnect the two cables from the back of 
it.  I had to use a pliers to get a good grip on the wider cable 
plug (the IDE data cable) to remove it.  Unscrew and remove the 
plastic drive sled.

Step 8.  Put the new drive in.  Take the new drive out of the anti-
static bag and screw the sled onto it. Attach the two cables to the 
back of it, firmly seating them and slide the new drive into the 
6400 until it clicks into place.

Step 9.  Replace cover and reconnect cables.  Putting the front 
cover back on is much easier than getting it off was!  After you 
have reconnected all your cables for monitor, keyboard, power, 
peripherals, etc. you can start up the machine.  You should make 
sure that when the machine starts it loads the operating system from 
your OS install CD.

Step 10.  Format and install.  Your new hard drive is most likely 
completely blank and needs to be formatted before you can use it the 
first time.  Run the DriveSetup program on your OS install CD 
Utilies folder to partition your drive and format it (not everyone 
beleives in partitioning, but I feel it is quite helpful).  See this 
site for more information about partitioning 
http://www.doctormac.net/Questions/partition.html .  

[Thomas, you might want to set this section off with a link Š it is 
more of a parenthetical footnote than a necessary part of the 
instructions]
For my purposes I created the following partitions, in order from 
center of the drive to the outer edge:

1.5 GB HFS	for System software only (and some iTunes and 
Microsoft stuff that insists on being on the root drive.  If I have 
a crash, it doesnÕt take long for DiskRepair to verify a 1.5 GB 
drive instead of having to go though all 20 GBs.

8 GB HFS+		for Applications & Games.  Apps load quickly and 
there is plenty of room.  Contents of this drive do not change much.

4.5 GB HFS+	for Documents.  I really needed HFS+ here because I 
have lots of smaller files.

4 GB HFS+		for downloads, web browser caches, and shareware that 
I am evaluating.  The contents of this drive change all the time.  I 
even went into the prefs on my web browsers to put the cache folders 
here and all downloads come here.  Why?  I donÕt have to worry about 
drive fragmentation on the whole hard drive.  Every so often I move 
the things I am going to keep into the appropriate folder on another 
partition and then just erase this whole partition.  No need to 
waste lots of time with Norton disk doctor to optimize or defragment 
this drive partition!

1.5 GB HFS	I keep this empty and will use it as a temporary 
holding area for files to be "burned" onto CD.

Step 11.  Install the OS.  I prefer to do a clean installation of 
the system software onto the new drive.  This does require that you 
spend some time resetting your preferences and reinstalling some 
upgrades (like Conflict Catcher or updating Quicktime).  Other 
people prefer just to restore the system folder from the backup.  
Either way, once you have the System installed on your new drive you 
can choose your new drive as the startup drive in the control panel 
and reboot from the new drive.  If you have a G3 upgrade card 
installed, donÕt forget to put those extensions in your system so 
your 6400 starts up and remembers it is a G3 after all!

Step 12.  Putting everything else on your new drive.  Now it is just 
a matter of restoring your backup files onto the new drive. I simply 
put the whole thing onto a partition that was NOT the partition with 
my cleanly installed OS.  At that point I chose to re-install fresh 
from CD most of my applications and games. Then I picked through the 
preferences folder in the old system folder to copy some of them 
that I didn't want to have to redo.  Take a little time to apply 
updates or patches you may have applied before to the newly 
installed software and check preference setting to get things 
running just as you like.  I switched the startup drive back and 
forth between the new installed system and my original, located on a 
different partition, to double check internet prefs and get it all 
set.  Once I had things working correctly and had moved the files 
from the backup (all dumped into one partition) to their new homes 
on my applications partition or the documents partition, then I 
deleted the remaining junk and old system folder.  I donÕt want to 
have the old system folder around to potentially confuse things.

You will be really happy with a faster, bigger drive! Good luck!
-Sean Killackey, August 2001