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Your 2012 iMac non fusion hard drive, Seagate(faster) vs WD...which do you have?

F

flavr

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 9, 2011
363
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I heard the 2012 iMacs with the Seagate hard drive is MUCH faster than the ones with Western Digital...In some cases making the 2.9 i5 faster than the 3.2 i5 (see link below)

Mine is a:

2012 iMac 27
i5 3.2
bought March 5th

Which hard drive do you guys have in your 2012 27in iMac (non fusion hard drive only). Its strange Apple would seemingly randomly give such drastically different speed hard drives in the iMac.

In this test the i5 2.9 is actually FASTER than the i5 3.2 because of having the Seagate!

http://www.macworld.com/article/2025145/lab-tested-new-27-inch-imac-speed-results.html
 
Chuckstones said:
Excuse my ignorance. But where do you find which HD you have installed!!?!:eek:
Click to expand...

On your desktop look up to the top left / click on apple logo / click about this mac / click on more info / then click on system report / in the left select Serial-ATA and look for the model in the info provided.
 
I have WD and glad I do. I have yet to see a WD fail in my computer history. Have seen two Seagates fail though.

I have an external WD that I bought 2006. It has been bumped off of the table twice and survived with no data loss both times haha.

Just a thought unrelated. I wonder if having a hard drive spin on a vertical axis (iMac) would slow down spinning(fight gravity) vs having it on a horizontal axis (PC Box, Mac Pro) with no gravity affecting spin direction
 
I got a Western Digital drive and I notice slightly slower speeds compared to Seagate's drive during Bootcamp use (when I still had the replacement iMac machines). However, I'm perfectly satisfied with my WD, as it is far more reliable in the long term. The actual speed differences through tests was anywhere between 20-35MB/s, WD being 155-165MB/s and Seagate being 175-190MB/s.
 
boto said:
I got a Western Digital drive and I notice slightly slower speeds compared to Seagate's drive during Bootcamp use (when I still had the replacement iMac machines). However, I'm perfectly satisfied with my WD, as it is far more reliable in the long term. The actual speed differences through tests was anywhere between 20-35MB/s, WD being 155-165MB/s and Seagate being 175-190MB/s.
Click to expand...

Using Black Magic I got 123-125MB/s on my Western Digital...not impressive in the least...
 
Mine came with the Seagate 1TB (non-fusion) drive. Swapped this for a Samsung 840 Pro 512gb. Before the swap I was impressed with the speed of the drive as the general speed of the iMac was about as fast as my 2011 iMac which has an SSD drive in it.
 
Kennyap...How did you manage to swap the hard drive in a 2012 iMac?
 
flavr said:
Kennyap...How did you manage to swap the hard drive in a 2012 iMac?
Click to expand...

I'll say the hardest part was taking off the screen which took me over 45 minutes because you have to be so careful that all the tape is off before lifting the screen away. I used a blow dryer and guitar pick for this. I also have suction cups from my 2011 iMac upgrade project, which helped when lifting the screen off. Note that with these new iMacs the glass screen & LCD panel are one piece (fused together), unlike the previous iMacs. That's why you have to be so careful not to damage the screen. After the screen is off it's pretty basic. If you want to know more read the Rip those macs open thread, if you haven't already: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/1507713/
 
boto said:
I got a Western Digital drive and I notice slightly slower speeds compared to Seagate's drive during Bootcamp use (when I still had the replacement iMac machines). However, I'm perfectly satisfied with my WD, as it is far more reliable in the long term. The actual speed differences through tests was anywhere between 20-35MB/s, WD being 155-165MB/s and Seagate being 175-190MB/s.
Click to expand...

which 27" imac u got?

Thanks
 
now with the haswell imacs out wonder which hdd the 27" iMacs come with? :rolleyes: guess apple will put the slower hdd in all new haswell 27" ones?
 
Yes, the two models deliver different speeds. Seagate is faster, but WD is considered to be more reliable.

I have the WD and honestly don't think it's very speedy at all. I bought Applecare, so I would have preferred to have greater speed even if such performance improvement would come at the cost of reliability.
 

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