which hard drive to buy for iMac DV 400?

[TELLEZ]

I am going to replace my 10gig drive on my iMac 400 DV with a new one. The old one will be put aside until I can afford the $2k to recover the information lost on it when I initialized it.
I am pretty bummed about my old files but now much I can do about it now.

What is the best drive for under $100? I would like to have at least 40gigs but the more the better. I also heard that I shouldn't go with a drive faster than 5400 rpms, is that true? I see a lot of 7200 rpm drives. I ve never had to replace anything on a mac product, and I know absolutely nothing about hard drives, what to look for, what brand to go for or stay away from.

Do they all fit in my iMac? Do they plug right in? Help me decide please.


p.s. if you know anyone who can recover my old information off of my drive much cheaper please pass on my information.

 

[Avalon]

HDs with 7200rpm tend to get hotter than the 5400rpm ones, so that could be an issue in your iMac. Concerning prices, well, for about a 100,- EURO (little more than 100,-$) you can get a 160GB over here...
A 80GB should be around 50,-$ I guess...

 

[Matt]

I've heard bad things about Maxtor, which all Macs now come shipped with...

 

[Badger]

Your iMac model uses an ATA (IDE) standard hard drive so there are many compatible drives on the market. Either a 5400 RPM or a 7200 RPM disk will give you a performance boost because the stock disk was only 4400 RPM. Low End Mac, www.lowendmac.com, recommends 7200 rpm models but then warns about overheating in fanless macs. Personally, I've installed several 5400 Maxtor disks (including my G3 iMac and my 6400) without problems. This is a worthwhile upgrade and will add years to the usable life of your iMac. If you want to see a good summary of the replacement procedure try: http://www.appletalk.com.au/forums/index.php?showtopic=436.
Badger

 

[pphking]

I have replaced the original 4 GB HD in my iMac Bondi Blue 233Mhz, 256 MB RAM , with a Maxtor Diamond Plus 80 GB 7200 RPM ( £70 GBP) it has speeded up my iMac and i have no problems with it at all .

Just remember to reconfigure the jumper to make it work properly ( Thanks Badger ) .

Hope this helps
Paul

 

[TELLEZ]

thanks guys, your replies have cleared a few issues for me.
now its seems every other drive seems to give people trouble with the 'sleep' feature. is it me or does it seem like they all do that? any hard drive that you can think of that doesnt cause that?

 

[Badger]

The only sleep problem I've ever encountered is due to a (long-known) bug in the OS 9 energy control panel. It is generally known as "freeze on waking" and has nothing to do with the the type or brand of hard disk. I have two macs with Maxtor replacement disks; the 6400 with 8.6 never has this problem, the iMac 333 has the problem only in OS 9 and never in OS X. I've seen similar results in clients computers.
Badger