Hard Disks ...

I've had no problems with WD drives...I own two of them myself. I'd trust my data to nothing but WD or Seagate.

We've been here before in the old forums. IIRC Dr. Bob posted that of the drives he tested, WDs were among the worst. I think it was in the Terabyte drive hack after his first drives failed but we've had this argument soo many times it could be in any number of threads.

Personally I haven't had a WD that's lasted more than a year, usually a lot less than that. Maxors and Seagates are solid drives in my experiance. They cost a bit more but you get what you pay for.

Seagate Barracuda drives have a good reputation for low noise which may be significant if you've got a fanless iMac and are accustomed to silent computing. ebuyer are a cheap source in the UK and have a good feedback forum where you can check whether there are any heat issues.

Phil

This also gets discussed over and over in the Dealmac forum. Everyone posts their personal experiences and it usually goes like this:

"Brand X has been rock solid for me. I've heard Brand Y sucks."

followed by another poster stating

"I've had several drives by Brand X fail. But I've had several drives of Brand Y with no problems so I swear by them."

and this goes on ad nauseum for 20 or 30 postings covering all the major brands.

im getting a dvd-rw (pioneer superdrive)

I already got a 80 gb upgrade when they gave me my 15" imac

Now my dad wants to get a refurb that doesnt work so he can get a free computer that costs twice to three times as much

As long as it has the right number of pins...it will work, just you wont see the 133mhz speed, it will reduce. Basically, if the ram fits, use it. Im using 133mhz in my pc which has a 100mhz ram speed.

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*APPLE MAC HOME*
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I have a 256mb stick if your interested...

iMac266 (Strawberry), G3 1400 and the G3 IIsi. I want a Tortoise...

tom- I'm assuming you're referring to a Kihei iMac? If so avoid powerful drives at all costs; the 40GB one that came with my mum's iMac 'carked it' a few weeks ago, prompting her to buy a new 80GB drive- which is now looking sketchy itself... BUT when I moved the 40GB one to my trayload iMac, well it's still working just fine.

Really, I think those iMacs needed fans.

You like your Macintosh more than me, don't you, Dave? Dave? Can you hear me, Dave...?

I added a fan to my BlueBerry. It might be a good idea for me to write up an article, I guess. It keeps it fairly cool, compared to without.

Jon.

No one should be protected from the effects of his own stupidity. - Anton Szandor LaVey in 1988 (There is a certain irony in this quote... :p)

That fixes it then. Trayloaders are great for cooling(specially with 2 fans like mine).

You like your Macintosh more than me, don't you, Dave? Dave? Can you hear me, Dave...?

try going from a 3/4-dead 333 iMac to a new eMac. I still haven't gotten accustomed to the COMPLETE lack of HD noise- it gets really unnerving at times, especially in games where I suddenly think the thing's gona and frozen on me.

then it must be faulty. *nod*

For the past 6 years I've been running reliability tests on various hard drives from every company ranging in numbers from 30-hundreds. Regardless of people's opinions, nothings is more valuable than experimental data.

BTW: it was Maxtor drives that died in my RAID. WD is down at the bottom too though.

Probally at the top, under the vents if possible.

That's the easiest mod you can make to an iMac ...ever. Well that is, once you've mastered opening the case and moving the analog boards around into odd positions... All you do is get a 1' 5"(approx.) wire attached to the fan, solder it in parallel to the other fan but on the reverse side of the power board(really obvious once you get in there), then use some good strong glue to attach the fan to the metal cage at the top-right under the air vents. Normally having 50% of the fan protruding over the cage will leave you with just enough space to get the case back together.

That's my fair share of instruction for the day...

There was no first fan. It's a 350MHz Blueberry Slotloader. I stuck an 80x80x15mm Zalman rated at 20 decibels @ 5V where the cover over the (not present on 350s) video port would go. This way, I guarantee upward airflow directly past the processor. If I put a fan in the top vent I would have to hope that the air it pulled up out of the iMac came from the processor area, and not all from the speakers or any of the other vents. It also means that I don't have a fan sitting directly above the tube, which could cause interference with the picture, like jigglies or some other EM quirks.

I also spliced the power for it onto an Antec power harness adapter so I could plug the HDD and the fan AND the sound responsive EL strip into the HDD power plug. THe HDD I put in is a 6.4Gb Toshiba 2.5" laptop drive, and it makes more noise than the fan, so this is one quiet >fanned< iMac.

I can vouch for a Maxtor 120G in a 233MHz tray loader. The only problem I have had was the recent death of my CD (unrelated). You will have to go through a few akward steps to set up a <8G partition for OS X, but if you are playing with 40s and 80s you may have already found that out...

Doug-Doug