Should the new hard drive be internal or external?

[LimeiBook86]

My aunt has an iMac DV SE (Graphite with DVD FireWire etc), well her old hard drive is still chugging along but, she wants more space. She got a 120gb Seagate ATA drive, now my question is...should I put it internal? Or external?

I think it would be nice internally so she'd have an open FireWire port but here is what I'm thinking. Would FireWire be faster? Also will the iMac be able to handle the heat? I don't want this thing to get hotter than it should.

The other option is to get an external case and she can just use the new drive to add new files to while still using the original 13gb drive for Mac OS X and her exisiting files.

I'd like to put the hard drive internally but, I'm worried about the heat issues, also I'm not sure how fast the iMac's ATA bus is. Could FireWire be truly faster? Thanks!

 

[rickvanr]

I think it would be nice internally so she'd have an open FireWire port but here is what I'm thinking.

I don't know about speed or heat, but FireWire enclosures have 2 ports, so even with an external drive plugged in you won't lose an open port.

 

[CanadaRAM]

If you don't mind the hassle of opening the machine and installing the drive, you could install the new drive, then put the original drive in a Firewire case as a backup drive. I can't see heat being too much of a problem on a 120 Gb drive.

Firewire 400 is unlikely to be faster than a native ATA buss, and the fast Seagate internally as a boot drive will give the machine a bit snappier performance.

 

[OutThere]

Installing hard drives in original iMacs can be a big pain...they're really tightly jammed in there, and have an extremely short IDE cable...giving you little room for expansion/error. I'd go with Firewire.

 

[LimeiBook86]

Thanks for the replies, I'll look up the specs of the original hard drive and if the Seagate one has a significantly faster RPM then I'll put it internally, if not I'll put it externally. Also the iMac internal drive is quite noisy, it's always been like that though. I have experience opening that iMac before so I may give it a shot.

I'll use CarbonCopy to transfer the old drive data to the new one so I don't have to re-install anything for her.

 

[schmittie]

Should the new hard drive be internal or external?

If you go with an external drive - avoid the LaCie external hard drives designed by F.A. Porsche. Because the have no fan and a lack of air vents, they tend to overheat which causes the Firewire mount points to seperate. This happened to me, all you have to do is replace the case. Try that first BEFORE YOU SEND IT OF TO A DATA RECOVERY SERVICE!

 

[rickvanr]

If you go with an external drive - avoid the LaCie external hard drives designed by F.A. Porsche. Because the have no fan and a lack of air vents, they tend to overheat which causes the Firewire mount points to seperate. This happened to me, all you have to do is replace the case. Try that first BEFORE YOU SEND IT OF TO A DATA RECOVERY SERVICE!

Or you could save money and peace of mind by buying an external FireWire enclosure and an ATA drive to place in it.

 

[LimeiBook86]

If you go with an external drive - avoid the LaCie external hard drives designed by F.A. Porsche. Because the have no fan and a lack of air vents, they tend to overheat which causes the Firewire mount points to seperate. This happened to me, all you have to do is replace the case. Try that first BEFORE YOU SEND IT OF TO A DATA RECOVERY SERVICE!

As I stated before I bought the hard drive by itself and I'm buying a seprate case. Please read all of the thread before replying, what you posted is just borderline spam.

Also, a little update, my Aunt ordered herself a FireWire hard drive enclosure and I'll be going over this weekend to set it up, thanks guys