Hard Drive Advice....

steven_lufc

steven_lufc

Registered
Hi there...

My current 40gb HD is on its way out (it's making awful clunking noises) and I'd like some advice on what to do next.

It would seem a shame to lose the 40gb storage space..i'm sure i can get more use out of it if it's not my main drive and therefore not used as much..so can i install more than one internal drive and set the new one to be the main booting system drive?

..or could I buy an external firewire, or any external, and use that as my master drive but leave the internal 40gb for storage??

Not really sure of my best option or what my specific mac is capable of

Thanks in advance

G3 Slot loading 600MHz iMac
40gb HD
768mb RAM
10.2.6
 
Your iMac does not have room internally for two drives. If the hard drive is on the way out, you just may loose all the diles on it eventually - even if you use it for storage space.

First, check the drive. Use Disk Utility from the OS CD to check over the drive. If you got the Hardware test CD with your system, use that, also. (I am not sure when Apple started including those.)

I do not recommend using a firewire drive as the start up drive. While I am not sure if it was corrected, there were problems with firewire drives used as start up drives.
The hard drive is an Ultra ATA/66. You should be able to get a replacement for it and probably bigger.

Start backing up those important files! :)
 
I would say hard drives for G3 iMacs are probably relatively cheap so as Cheryl suggested, buy a replacement drive and back up all your files first, before you switch the drives out. As a last ditch effort, you could reformat the old hard drive and see if the noise persists. Normally, though, that clicking or extra noises means the drive is on its last legs.

As for firewire hard drives, they go bad too and to Cheryl's point, aren't good to boot your computer from because they aren't as reliable as your internal drive.
 
my old original 10 gig did that, and I had crashes often, but I let it sit under my desk for about a year, now it has yet to click, although the number of files are far less since it's not a boot volume. Drives are so cheap these days, go new and bigger. I like Maxtor personally.
 
Originally posted by Urbansory
I like Maxtor personally.
Click to expand...

I actually dislike Maxtor. They're noisy and slow, and suffer quality problems. I love Seagate - they have the fastest and most quiet drives :cool:
 
my maxtors don't make a sound, not sure what model you used. I have the diamondmax or something like that. I only hear this damn fan coming through my case.
 
Originally posted by ksv
I actually dislike Maxtor. They're noisy and slow, and suffer quality problems. I love Seagate - they have the fastest and most quiet drives :cool:
Click to expand...

Agreed, I've had a couple of problematic DiamondMax drives, Maxtor drives in my opinion are the noisiest on the market. Seagate make very nice fast and extremely quiet drives, I've had two running for acouple of year with out a hitch. I wouldn't choose any other brand.

steven_lufc yeah they are Hitachi now, Deskstars are also kinda noisy. They also had some widespread failure problems a while back, I'm sure that's been fixed now but I would personally still avoid them.
 
might give Seagate a try for my next drive, but I'm satisfied with both maxtors i have. This western digital was loud as all hell, I could hear it two rooms away, I have to open the case to hear the maxtors, well one of them.
 
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