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Advice on purchasing a hard drive
- Thread starter fleegits
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People here have their favourites but Maxtor seems to be the least-preferred.
I've never had a problem with Western Digital drives but have had a couple of Seagates go bad on me. Other people will swear vice-versa... saying that, I've just ordered some new Seagates.
Your Mac needs an ATA-IDE drive, not a SATA one (different connectors).
It's possible that it may not also be able to handle a drive larger than 128Gb without an additional card so that's worth checking out if you plan on getting a large drive.
Edit: You don't have to worry about using 'Mac-only' drives. Any ATA-IDE drive will do. My G4 is the same form-factor and it's got plain old 'PC' drives in it
I've never had a problem with Western Digital drives but have had a couple of Seagates go bad on me. Other people will swear vice-versa... saying that, I've just ordered some new Seagates.
Your Mac needs an ATA-IDE drive, not a SATA one (different connectors).
It's possible that it may not also be able to handle a drive larger than 128Gb without an additional card so that's worth checking out if you plan on getting a large drive.
Edit: You don't have to worry about using 'Mac-only' drives. Any ATA-IDE drive will do. My G4 is the same form-factor and it's got plain old 'PC' drives in it
I don't know what size you are looking for so I can't look for anything specific. This site has hard drives, but I don't know if they are the best price. They will for sure work though. Just go to a site with a specific Mac section and models, and make sure compatibility is guaranteed. Also look for 7,200 RPM.
I would suggest Seagate, Hitachi and Western Digital - they provide 5, 3 and 3/1 years warranty respectively (note that this may vary with the models). Longer the warranty, more the peace of mind. 
All other manufacturers usually provide only 1 year warranty. While researching for a new hard drive a couple of months back, I found a lot of complaints from users about Maxtor and WD - so it seems like in the past few years many drives from them have not been reliable (and with the 1 year warranty it'd be a terrible waste of money). This does not mean that all their drives are bad (so look for the warranty). I was undecided between Seagate and Hitachi and finally went for Hitachi since I got a good deal with 3 years warranty (as far as I know, it's a global warranty with Hitachi).
I'm not sure what capacity you're looking for, but I have also read several bad experiences from users about drives that are bigger than 300GB (regardless of the brand) - this is most likely a temporary problem (while the companies work out the issues with higher densities).
For good performance (currently), look for:
* 8MB buffer (which is pretty much the standard now) or higher.
* 7200 rpm (standard again - don't look for anything else!)
* 8ms or lesser average seek time
* P-ATA 100 interface (this is likely the compatible choice for you, like Blue Velvet indicated)
For Parallel ATA drives, which is what you'd be buying, currently the best price per Gig for an internal drive is around 30 cents to 50 cents (US) - anything more than that is expensive!
Check www.edealinfo.com, www.dealmac.com/sections/storage.html, www.resellerratings.com, www.dealtime.net etc. for good deals. Also check these sites for price comparison - www.pricegrabber.com, www.pricescan.com, www.pricehead.com, www.bizrate.com, www.nextag.com (and also the individual websites of popular stores).
All other manufacturers usually provide only 1 year warranty. While researching for a new hard drive a couple of months back, I found a lot of complaints from users about Maxtor and WD - so it seems like in the past few years many drives from them have not been reliable (and with the 1 year warranty it'd be a terrible waste of money). This does not mean that all their drives are bad (so look for the warranty). I was undecided between Seagate and Hitachi and finally went for Hitachi since I got a good deal with 3 years warranty (as far as I know, it's a global warranty with Hitachi).
I'm not sure what capacity you're looking for, but I have also read several bad experiences from users about drives that are bigger than 300GB (regardless of the brand) - this is most likely a temporary problem (while the companies work out the issues with higher densities).
For good performance (currently), look for:
* 8MB buffer (which is pretty much the standard now) or higher.
* 7200 rpm (standard again - don't look for anything else!)
* 8ms or lesser average seek time
* P-ATA 100 interface (this is likely the compatible choice for you, like Blue Velvet indicated)
For Parallel ATA drives, which is what you'd be buying, currently the best price per Gig for an internal drive is around 30 cents to 50 cents (US) - anything more than that is expensive!
Check www.edealinfo.com, www.dealmac.com/sections/storage.html, www.resellerratings.com, www.dealtime.net etc. for good deals. Also check these sites for price comparison - www.pricegrabber.com, www.pricescan.com, www.pricehead.com, www.bizrate.com, www.nextag.com (and also the individual websites of popular stores).