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Internal Hard Drive recommendations

BBC B 32k

BBC B 32k

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Aug 5, 2005
353
6
London
As per the title I have a white 24" iMac with a 250GB HD and I need more space. Looking at going for a 1TB drive as prices are not too high. Should I just buy a bare drive and eBay the old 250GB drive or buy an external 3.5" drive and swap round to leave me with an external 250GB?

Amazon have the Samsung Story 1TB for about £71.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Sto...KL5A1OLE&s=electronics&qid=1260716455&sr=1-86

Or they have an internal WD Caviar green 500GB for £40; 750GB for £56; 1TB (WD black) for £75.

Too much choice. How can I tell if the Samsung has a SATA drive inside?

Many thanks in advance.
James
 
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BBC B 32k said:
As per the title I have a white 24" iMac with a 250GB HD and I need more space. Looking at going for a 1TB drive as prices are not too high. Should I just buy a bare drive and eBay the old 250GB drive or buy an external 3.5" drive and swap round to leave me with an external 250GB?

Amazon have the Samsung Story 1TB for about £71.
http://www.amazon.co.uk/Samsung-Sto...KL5A1OLE&s=electronics&qid=1260716455&sr=1-86

Or they have an internal WD Caviar green 500GB for £40; 750GB for £56; 1TB (WD black) for £75.

Too much choice. How can I tell if the Samsung has a SATA drive inside?

Many thanks in advance.
James
Click to expand...
The black is 7200RPM which is much faster and will make a little more noise. The Green parks it's head as often as it can so it's not as fast.
My WD external HD 500GB 2.5Inch uses a strange drive that goes directly to USB, no SATA or EIDE. Just USB. It's very strange.
You should buy the WD Black and a cheap 20$- SATA enclosure. No one will buy a used HD on eBay when it may be damaged etc
I have a 7200RPM 320GB in my MacBook
and a (I know I talked smack about it) Caviar Green 500GB in my iMac G5
 
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Buy the Samsung 1tb hdd. I have the 1.5tb version which I bought from amazon for £85 and its very quiet.
 
i read it last week, im trying to find where exactly i read it but meh, having a hard time lol, i was hoping of upgrading my HD too, i have a 1Tb sitting on my desk in an enclosure but cant put it in because i read it wouldnt work,

it might be system bus limitation.
 
I have a little experience with WD Green and Black 1TB drives.

And a bit with Samsung, up to 500GB.

WD Green 1TB- Nice drive, very cool running and quiet out of the box.

WD Black 1TB- a fast drive, not quite as cool running as a Green but makes plenty of "Seek" noise.

Samsung 500GB - Cool running, not as much seek noise as the WD Black.

WD and Samsung have a Automatic Acoustic Management (AAM) feature that can be set to reduce "Seek" noise. I haven't found a good way to do this on a Mac, so I just use an older generic PC and run either HDDScan, Hitachi's Feature Tool or Samsung HUTIL (for Samsung drives only) to set AAM.
The Caviar Black 1TB seek noise is reduced to an unobtrusive level with AAM "ON" but a bit slower in access time.
A Samsung can be set for virtually no noise with HUTIL.
Some drives don't support AAM - Seagate Barracuda 7200.10 for example.


It's not generally a good idea to swap your primary drive with one taken from an external enclosure.
Drives found inside external enclosures might have some kind of weird proprietary USB interface, specialized Firmware or more likely, "Cheapest they could get" syndrome.

It's a far better idea to buy a bare drive and an empty external enclosure preferably with Firewire support for your old drive.

Have Fun,
Keri

PS. If there is a drive size limitation, 500GB, 640GB and 750GB drives are also available in Green and Black versions.
 
Thanks for all the advice. I was a little concerned about being able to pull the drive out of an external enclosure so may just get an internal 750GB or poss 1TB drive.

Need the extra space as my camcorder footage is spit up all over the place on tapes and external 2.5" hard drives. Thinking of ripping my DVD collection to the iMac also.

I have looked at how to change the drive in the iMac and yes it is difficult but I like a challenge :D. I could Velcro a 2.5" portable drive to the rear over FW800 but it is hardly an Apple like solution. I most definitely do not want an extra power lead in my setup. I have a WD 320GB portable drive for Time Machine as it is that is always being unplugged :eek:

Finally where is good for low prices in the UK?

Cheers guys / gals.
James
 
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