320 vs 500 gig HDD

Hey Mac-Forums i need your advise. Tried the search function and found nothing....

I was actually on apple.com and was about one click or so from purchasing a new 24" iMac 2.8 core 2 Extreme, 1 gig of ram (going to buy 4gb ram from another vendor as soon as purchase is made) and 500gig HDD, expedited shipping (because im antsy!), applecare, wireless mouse, etc....

Now I dont mind paying for the difference between 320 and 500, but just when I was telling my friend the specs i was purchasing, he tried to persuade me into purchasing the 320gb HDD due to problems that occur with larger hard drives.

So my question is, would you say it is fairly safe to go with the 500 or should i just stick with the 320.

I could not wait for leopard so I will have to purchase it when it arrives.
My plans are to run windows and allocate 20-40gigz to XP for school, and run the rest on OSX. The iMac is going to replace my old PC and will be my work horse. I mainly do photography and use graphics and web design programs from adobe. I also plan to take advantage of the awesome programs in iLife and do alot of web surfing.

I do own a 200gig FW800 external HDD.

Thanks in advance!

I don't know what specific drives are used in iMacs, but I have two 500GB Maxtor drives in my Mac Pro in addition to the 250GB drive that came with the machine. I've had absolutely zero problems, and I never let the drives spin down or sleep.

Hmm.. Now you got me worried. I just bought the same thing but with the 1TB drive. Where did you hear that large drives had problems?

I've never heard of any thing like problems due a larger HDD,

It seems you have enough money, so just go for the 500GB in my eyes.

(but thats my opinion )

Hey thanks for the insight everyone...

Not to worry anyone, but I just heard that for your main HDD, where your operating system is installed, you should keep the HDD space under 200gb or so. (though my only choices are 320vs500) Just so it doesnt have to search through a large hard drive for its day to day task and undertake unnecessary abuse..

again, I could be wrong.
I do not change computers often and want my system to last. The iMac isnt your typical setup, where you can easily access and replace the HDD, and that would be the reason for my concern.

either way, im pulling the trigger soon...

Thanks!

Larger HD's do tend to have more issues than smaller ones, the reason is kinda confusing and I don’t really remember exactly what it is but I’m 100% sure that’s its true, haha.

However, 500GB isn't "that" big in today’s standards and you shouldn't have any problems with it as long as you buy name brand. Seagate is my personal favorite just because I've never had one fail and they have the longest warrantees out there, the only brand I really try to avoid is Western Digital though. I think the iMac's ship with Seagate drives btw.

And btw, regardless of size or make disks fail, so make sure to back up anything that’s important. A great free way to back up documents and other small things is an app called Mozy (http://mozy.com/). I installed it on a whim and it saved me from losing a lot of sensitive data.

Beta1: good point, its just easier to replace an HDD in a macpro, or most PC's, than it is in all-in-ones. Ive actually opted for the 320gb for my main HDD and will invest in another external HDD. Thanks for the mozy.com link, ill definitely look into that.

on a side note: My 24' 2.8 iMac should be here between sep05-10. The 4gb ram will get here tuesday!

Thanks for the input guys/gals.

jALVA21 said:

Beta1: good point, its just easier to replace an HDD in a macpro, or most PC's, than it is in all-in-ones. Ive actually opted for the 320gb for my main HDD and will invest in another external HDD. Thanks for the mozy.com link, ill definitely look into that.

on a side note: My 24' 2.8 iMac should be here between sep05-10. The 4gb ram will get here tuesday!

Thanks for the input guys/gals.

Click to expand...

Yea, sorry, as I was writing that I forgot we were dealing with an iMac and not a tower. But the external sounds smart and it defiantly sounds like a really nice system in general.

Goodluck.