Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Original Apple Branded Drives

LordeOurMother

LordeOurMother

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Jul 10, 2014
397
122
Anyone else ever buy a power pc used on craigslist.. ebay.. amazon.. etc... and find it still having the original apple branded drive in it? My power mac g5 did.. and it was the original 1.6.. that came out in 2003.. that's an 11 year old drive.. I'm surprised it lasted that long. So I replaced it asap obviously.
 
I'm still running many 10+ year old OEM drives without a problem. Just because a drive is old or has many hours on it doesn't mean it should be replaced. They can still last for another 10 years or 10,000 hours.
 
The original 80GB Apple branded drive that came with a G5 I have at work is still going. My boss bought the Mac brand new in February 2005.

The drive is currently being used as a second drive in the MacPro at work.

My 17" PowerBook G4 1.67Ghz came with an original Apple 100GB HD that was in my other 17" PowerBook for five years and is now in my son's TiBook.
 
I'm sure that you'll hear about old Macs that you may find that still have the original hard drive. The SCSI drives are pretty reliable, in my experience. I still have the Quadra 605 (my first new Mac purchase, way back in '93), with 160 MB hard drive. Granted, it's not in daily use any more, but i crank it up every month or two. Bet there's others here with considerably older hard drives.
I used to say to customers with bad hard drives that they are mechanical devices, sometimes work hard while the power is on, and don't last forever.
Well, some do last a good long time (way beyond your 10 years, eh?)
 
Personally for my situation.. getting a new hard drive and then carbon copying leopard was for the best.. the hard drive sounded like nails on a chalkboard and i was getting really slow read/write times. but yeah. some hard drives are anomalies. however hard drives in my experience are the first thing to go on a device.
 
I'm running very few OEM Apple drives, but primarily because at least on relatively modern computers(G4s and G5s) I generally change them out for larger and faster drives. Better drives are plentiful and inexpensive(free in many cases, especially for IDE drives), so there's not a lot of reason for not switching them.

Depending on how the computer comes to me, I will sometimes clone the old drive onto the replacement, or often just start with a clean install of the most current OS that the computer will run. If I use CCC to clone the old drive, I generally keep the old one around as-is so I can drop it in if my replacement dies.

My eMac has its original 40gb drive, as I'm not in too big of a hurry to take it apart and change the drive. Plus, I don't have any real motivation for doing so on that particular computer.

I've had one dead OEM drive-the 4gb WD Caviar that came in my Beige G3. I switched it out for the 40gb OEM drive that came in my G4 DA.

The oldest Mac I have around is a 7100, which dates to the early 90s. Thank goodness the SCSI drive in it is still good, as I would dread having to locate a replacement.
 
L Oquence said:
Personally for my situation.. getting a new hard drive and then carbon copying leopard was for the best.. the hard drive sounded like nails on a chalkboard and i was getting really slow read/write times. but yeah. some hard drives are anomalies. however hard drives in my experience are the first thing to go on a device.
Click to expand...
Sounds like your HD was failing. So, you did the correct thing for your situation by replacing it.

Most of us would do and have done the same when it's come to our own failing drives. But if the drive is working and there is no need or desire to replace the drive most of us just continue to use them if they still continue to work.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back