Replacement Internal Drive

jamerican

jamerican

Registered
It seems as if my original internal drive is going (as suggested by an Apple Tech). For a little over 2 weeks, I have been having problems booting up, and after an erase and repartition, the problem seems to be appearing again. I boot and run from an external drive without any problems, it being a clone of the drive done before I began to experience this problem.
My Mac is a Dual 2 GHZ G5 with 1.5 GB ram and a 160GB HD. Any recommendations as to brand, size or speed? Any comments would be greatly appreciated.
 
All my G4s use Seagate 7200rpm ATA drives. So far they've been reliable, extremely quiet and cool running. I've just added another external Seagate Firewire 300GB drive which is virtually silent and very cool.

Whether this would be the case for the SATA (?) drives used in a G5, I don't know.
 
any more drives are all the same. i would look at the adds of the local computer stores in your area and get a sata(serial) drive that is bigger then the one you have thats on sale. things to look for, a good desktop hard drive should never spin slower then 7200rpm, and the bigger the buffer the better, i think 8meg is standard anymore. if you don't mind buying online, try newegg. they always have a good selection and good prices, plus there are customer reviews, so you can see if others had any problems with them.
 
In my nearly 10 years experience, I've found a lot of hard drive brands are, well, crappy. Avoid buying the stuff you can get at major retailers like CompUSA, Best Buy, etc. They tend to carry the low-end hard drives in their stores.

I've seen a lot of failures over the years from the following brands: Quantum, Maxtor, Western Digital

My clients and I have had tremendous success from Hitachi Deskstar & Travelstar hard drives (note that Hitachi drives are the former IBM drive line). When I can't get a Hitachi, I'll settle for a Seagate -- also good drives.

If you're interested in ordering either brand, shoot me an email with your phone number and I'll be glad to have something shipped to your door.
 
Thanks for the suggestions, all. I am looking at an Hitachi 250GB 7200RPM 8mb buffer for $119 and a Seagate Barracuda 250GB 7200GPM 16mg buffer for $116, both from MacSales.com. So far, the Seagate seems to be the better buy.
 
If you have a 'PowerMac G5 (Late 2005)' why is Apple not replacing the hard disk drive, hdd, - for free?

CompUSA, Best Buy, etc. sell all brands (and most models of those brands). They are no different than any other brick and mortar or on-line seller.

All manufacturers have had issues at one time or another with a hdd model or models.

In the days of the real MacOS - System 1.0 - 9.2.2, the Quantum hdds were quite stable and long lasting.

Others and I have had Maxtor hdds that sounded like a circular saw. Yes, there was a time when the spindle manufacturer, for the Maxtor hdds, did not manufacture to specifications, and Maxtor had many returns.

Western Digital hdds work fine for many and myself.

Hitachi hdds (formerly the IBM drive line) have a (60 - 90 second interval) self calibration which has been known to create an audible cat or baby like whine. I returned to CompUSA with said hdd, stating I will install any Deskstar hdd replacement, they provided, into my external FireWire enclosure. If the whine appeared - they can open another hdd box. And if that one failed - another replacement, etc. They opt'ed to refund my money. The Western Digital replacement is still working just fine.

As you will see, many persons have preferences and experiences different than others.

When purchasing the hard disk drive, whether from a store or on-line, understand the return policy explicitly.
 
My G5 is a 2004 model. AppleCare is not available in my state (Florida), so there is no way Apple is going to replace it. I bought it as a refurb from Apple in 2004 with a 1 year warranty.
 
Today, at one of my clients, another Maxtor bit the dust -- the drive was less than 2 years old. And before anyone suggests that I send it back under warranty, don't bother. I don't want another Maxtor. I've seen so many Maxtor, Western Digital, Fujitsu, Toshiba & Quantum hard drives fail over the years and rarely have I ever seen a Hitachi/IBM or Seagate fail.

Now it's important to understand that hard drives are mechanical -- they use an electric motor to spin the internal media (platter(s)) at a high rate of speed. It's inevitable that every hard drive will fail as a result of it's mechanical nature. In-fact, in my experience, most computers will go through 2 hard drives within the life-time of the computer, but usually because they were manufactured with a Maxtor, Quantum, Western Digital, Fujitsu or Trashiba (oops, Toshiba) hard drive.
 
TigerDirect has a 250GB Seagate for $89.99 and a 300GB Seagate for $104.99.

I'd stay away from Maxtor, but that's me. Western Digital drives are alright. Seagate has been the best performing drives for me personally, not to mention I've never had one fail as of yet. I've had one or two WDs fail and almost every Maxtor failed on me within a few years. Of course I'm sure there are some people who have had problems with the others and none with the Maxtors.
 
My son overnighted a Seagate SATA drive to me last night. I am going to install it today. Yesterday the internal drive in the G5 went completely dead.
 
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