Looking for a new internal hard drive...

blue gekko

blue gekko

I *heart* Mac
Hey guys!

As the title has already stated, I'm looking for a new internal hard drive for my iMac. However I don't know anything about them! I just know that I'm looking for something running 15000 rpm if possible, but I've heard that they don't make those for Macs and 7200 rpm is the fastest available. Is this correct?

Anyway, I suppose all I'm really asking is what is the best/most reliable internal hard drive for my iMac?

Thanks in advance!
 
For which iMac model? AFAIK, higher rpm HDs are only made for SCSI interfaces which aren't used in Macs anymore. (You can add cards on Mac Pros, but not on an iMac.) So if your iMac is an intel model, you'd go for a quick SATA drive running at 7200 rpm.
 
Unless your doing something thats seriously disk intensive you wont notice any gain with a 15k drive, but you will notice the noise and heat from them.. A 7200 RPM drive is plenty fast enough and quiet.. Its abit of a pain to swap disks on the Aluminum iMacs but theres plenty of youtube videos that can walk you through it..

As for reliability Id go with Seagate or Western Digital in that order, theyve worked well for me..
 
Also in general the 15krpm drives end up being smaller boot drives to be paired with larger storage drives - but you can only put the one drive in the iMac.

I personally have had good luck with Samsung spin-point drives, they are quiet and decent quality, as well as the very well known Seagate and WD drives Mattbook mentions.

As fryke says if you tell us which iMac we can give a recommendation, and also if you tell us which country you are in we may be able to recommend a vendor.
 
If it's an aluminum iMac, I'd let a repair shop replace the drive. Costs a bit, but you don't want fingerprints on the inside of your glass or dust. It's really a drag to take them apart and you can't get to the harddrive without taking the screen out.
 
I live in Australia and I've actually heard that Hitachi make some really reliable internal hard drives for Mac. I'm not sure how to tell what model I've got, however I'll give you the specs as seen on the System Profiler.

Hardware Overview:

Model Name: iMac
Model Identifier: iMac7,1
Processor Name: Intel Core 2 Duo
Processor Speed: 2.4 GHz
Number Of Processors: 1
Total Number Of Cores: 2
L2 Cache: 4 MB
Memory: 2 GB
Bus Speed: 800 MHz
Boot ROM Version: IM71.007A.B03
SMC Version: 1.20f4
Serial Number: W88050UAX86

Also, it doesn't say this on the System Profiler, but it's a 20" monitor and under "About This Mac" it says:
Memory 2GB 667 MHz DDR2 SDRAM

Not sure if this helps or not, but I'm using the computer for 3D modeling and animation as well as digital video and image manipulation. So I suppose it does have quite a lot of semi-intense tasks to do.

Thanks heaps for the quick replies!
 
From the look of it you have the mid2007 aluminium imac - OWC says you can have most any kind sata HD - even a 10k rpm one (though as i mentioned it is a smaller capacity).

That said everymac point out it will invalidate your warranty and as fryke says taking those machines apart is no picnic.

Me I don't like Hitachi drives at all, too many bad stories, I would stick to Seagate.WD or maybe Samsung as I said if you are committed to upgrading.

But why do you want to upgrade, is your internal HD damaged/non-working? If so maybe Apple will replace it if you have it under warranty. If not just buy an external HD. Less hassle and/or cheaper as no fitting fees, and can be migrated to a new machine later. Buy yourself a decent external enclosure, maybe one with a firewire 800 interface for fast transfer, and get yourself a nice high quality 3.5 inch drive to put in it.
 
Thanks to everyone for the replies. I had heard there was an Hitachi hard drive running at 15000 rpm. Is this true? Just thought a faster speed might help with Adobe apps.
 
It really wont help much at all. I would seriously, just get a 7200 rpm drive. Fast drives help only with booting and loading massive files, they will not help at all with processing, such as 3d rendering. If you want a faster machine i would greatly reccomend increased ram over a faster hd.

And again, beware of Hitachi drives, they don't have a great reputation.
 
Thanks to everyone. This was good for me to understand a little about speed and also about the quality of some of the brands out there!
 
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