I will update this post after the new drive arrives and it has been installed.
Repair shops will not accept such older laptops for repairs so this is the only option that was open for me. Others have successfully installed SSD drives into older laptop computers, which may extend the life of the products until the owners can afford to replace them with something else. So for less than a hundred dollars, a solution has been found, and the older computer can be kept running, although it does not compare to its younger brother laptops that are in the Apple constellation, which have SSD drives factory installed. They come in various sizes and prices, and include low shipping charges. Not giving up hope, I found a manufacturer in Asia who still makes SSD hard drives with ATA 44 PIN connectors and thus the computer can accept the new drive. Using an adapter would also create the problem of not fitting both into the computer physically. I was unfortunately disappointed to discover that I needed an adapter, since the 44 PIN connection does not fir with the newer SATA type. These both seem to be issues for smaller laptops and for laptops in general. I have Disk Inventory X installed and it shows me WoW takes up the most space but only 13.2GB. Recently that drive also went out, and I hoped to replace it with a brand new Samsung 500 GB SSD drive that has no moving parts, and would of course not generate heat or noise. I have a powerbook G4 1.67Ghz 80GB 512MB, but its down to 38.7GB of free space and WoW takes up 13.2GB of space and I can't seem to find out what is taking up the other 20-something GB of space. MacBook Pros are shipping, and this week we have real world battery life and performance benchmarks as well as the first teardown guide. This Weeks MacBook, PowerBook, and iBook News.
I also have an older PowerBook G4 and took it apart before to upgrade the factory hard drive of 40 GB for an 80 GB Fujitsu IDE type drive. Compiled by Charles Moore and edited by Dan Knight - 2006.02.24. Obviously this is the key issue - whether the dimensions would allow a fit for a new drive and possibly an adapter in the very small space allocated for the hard drive bay. Duncan, or someone with a similar name asked whether or not the new SSD drives would fit into an older Apple laptop computer with or without an adapter.