05-02-2007, 10:24 AM

I think I'm going to take the Plunge and swap my Internal Hard Drive in my iMac so I have a few questions if people don't mind.

1. What Drive Manufacturer/Drive Spec/ other useful info to look for when buying the Internal Drive?
2. Would I be better transferring or creating an Image of my Current Drive to move on my New One?
3. How would I got about getting this Image on my New Drive?
4. Any guides out there that you think I might find useful?
5. Is it worth portioning Large Hard Drives especially the one containing the OS?

Thanks for any help you can offer. Cheers

edit: A Bit of Infor about my Current Setup or reasons behind it all.

Well basically at the moment I have a 250Gb Hard Drive and I have run out of room, following many clearances but I have got to the point where I can delete no more. So I was considering getting a 750GB Internal SATA II Drive just wondering about Problems, Help Info or anything really that could aid me in doing this.

05-02-2007, 10:43 AM

I am just curious, why are you going with an internal rather than an external?

05-02-2007, 10:48 AM

Originally Posted by KoDorSean

I am just curious, why are you going with an internal rather than an external?

Well I'm not keen on the extra noise and power supply but it came down to Transfer Rate's, seems in comparison to SATA II that USB is alot slower. Now if that's wrong then I might change my mind but that's what kind of seeled the deal.

Any considering the majority of File Types stored on it, will be a forms of Digital Media and Burning DVDs it seemed to make sense to go for the best Transfer Rates.

05-02-2007, 11:21 AM

You just need a 3.5in SATA or SATA II drive, at your preferred size. I'd recommend a seagate. Is your warranty up? Otherwise, if you replace the drive yourself, it will be voided.

05-02-2007, 11:55 AM

Get Seagate, it is the make that is most likely to work with no issues. I've had issues with Maxtor and Hitachi in other PCs, both SATA and IDE.

I also wouldn't get anything too vast. Some of the larger capacity drives often find the limitations in computer systems. Get a capacity which Apple fits as standard.

05-02-2007, 12:08 PM

Well I was looking around the 750Gb Mark. If for theory's sake I go External instead will I notice the reduction in Transfer Rate's, see the thing Is I don't want to go out and spend about £150 on something that I begin to hate due to slow loading or taking the mick to burn to a DVD.

As you can tell I still haven't fully made my mind up but I'm the kind of lad that wakes up in the Night and goes and orders it...Sad I know. lol

05-02-2007, 12:20 PM

I have a PC with 3 hard drives and an external drive (that I really don't use), flash drive worked for my needs. Will use the external to transfer larger files from the PC to the Mac.

Internal is much faster than USB 2.0 external.

The first two drives were smaller SCSI drives, I wanted speed versus size. The third was a standard 180Gb drive. I partitioned each of them. I wanted the OS to run as fast as possible BUT there were a number of programs that would only load to the C drive so it kept getting filled up, had to adjust the partitions to manage it. The second SCSI drive was partitioned to have a swap file at the outer edge for speed, then a few partitions for programs. The third drive was sectioned in thirds for misc. programs, music/pictures and storage.

Pluses:
Easier to manage programs and files in smaller partitions.

Defragmenting is quicker (except you have to do more partitions if you add and remove programs on all of them)

If you corrupt a partition you just need to reformat the partition and not the whole drive.

Negatives:
Have to remember all the drive letters and what partition they are. (I also have two DVD burners and a DVD Rom. Add a flash drive or external drive and you see the picture.

You may fill up a partition and have to re-adjust sizes.

Side note: I use Partition Magic and found it to work well.