20" iMac G5, 250 GB or 500 GB hard drive?

[realityisterror]

I thought latency/seek times can be slightly higher on bigger drives but the difference wouldn't be noticeable. Correct me if I'm wrong.

It would be logical, but if you think about it, the disk is physically the same size, 3.5". So the drive head can move in the same amount of time. Sometimes latency might even be slightly less because all the data is closer together on the platter, so the chances of the head not having to move so far are greater.


reality

edit: and personally, I would go with the 250GB

 

[XIII]

What?? Speed doesn't correspond to how big your HardDrive is?



I always turn down the brightness on my monitor to save on system RAM. Sometimes I unplug the mouse and keyboard whenever running processor-intensive applications.

Good moves, good moves. If I were you, I would turn the sound off too.

 

[SmurfBoxMasta]

I always turn down the brightness on my monitor to save on system RAM. Sometimes I unplug the mouse and keyboard whenever running processor-intensive applications.

I hope this is a joke.

3 words fer yaz:

puhleeze,
puhleeze,
puhleeze.............

 

[Glenn Wolsey]

A little late to get into this one but this is what I would do. First I would ask myself, how long do I plan keeping the computer, and how much storage space do I need now. If you want to keep it for more than 2 years I would recommend getting the 500GB drive, that way you wont need to worry about the space in the future.

But if you dont store many music files or H.264 video and its mainly documents, the 250GB should suit you fine for now. Remember, you can always add an external drive for a much cheaper price.

 

[fiercetiger224]

If I were you, I would just go ahead and get the 250 GB and just add an external drive. That way you don't need to keep all your important files on your boot drive. And besides, if you got the 500 GB, you'd definitely have to partition it, since you want to keep your files on a different partition other than the boot partition just in case anything happens to it. If you're worried about speed, don't worry about it; the big 16 MB cache should help the drive out.

Oh well, just my two cents. :-D