Hard Drive upgrade on Intel iMac

[reven.sanchez]

Hi,

I have an early 2006 Intel iMac which has worked flawlessly always. I'm deeply in love with this machine.

Unfortunately, I have some black stains in the corners of the screen and I've found a guide to open it up and clean them. They are due to heat/humidity, as it seems. (for reference in case someone needs it: Clean iMac TFT stains -in Spanish, sorry-

Anyway, I thought it might be a good idea to upgrade the HD while it's open. I've got a 250Gb (WD) drive and thought that a 500Gb drive is a cheap and reasonable upgrade.

The thing is I don't know which one to go for. I've got a WD Caviar SE16 500Gb (WD500KS) in a WD My Book external drive. It seems a natural replacement, is cooler than the 250Gb model and only slightly louder. I would then get a 1TB drive for the external.

The other option is to get a new drive for the iMac. I want a WD, but can't decide between the blue or black series. Will the black series drives be too hot? Too noisy? The Caviar Black 1Tb (WD1001FALS) has a 32Mb cache and seems awesome. Quieter (slightly) and better error rate but I'm afraid it'll get too hot (it's supposed to be a "performance" drive). Also the power rating is slightly more demanding (490mA on 12V vs the 450mA of the actual 250Gb drive on my mac); will this be an issue?

I know more is better, but I don't need a very big drive on the iMac if I have a good external for backups and archiving photos, etc. Is it just better to future proof?

Any advice or tips will be much appreciated. Thanks

 

[AppleNewton]

i upgraded all my harddrives to 1tb black wd's and theyre fantastic. quiet, run cool and no issues.
im running 3 of them and had a batch of WD Blue drives 500gb & 750gb's


i found these sites just doin a quick search:

youtube:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=iVgL9u7ySUk Pt.1

Photo guides:
http://jasontomczak.com/2007/11/23/4/

http://home.comcast.net/~woojo/DFFA53A0-F23D-4541-9015-481FD3B6532E/iMac_Disassembly.html


hope theyre of use.

 

[bozz2006]

the drive in your mybook may be PATA, and therefore incompatible with your imac.

 

[reven.sanchez]

AppleNewton, thanks for the links and feedback.

bozz2006, checked it: it's SATA 300Gb/s. Also checked on WD's website with the drive's model number.

Thank you guys. I'll go for the black instead of the blue, I think. But I still can't decide whether to get a 1Tb drive for the mac or if the 500Gb is enough...

 

[bozz2006]

if it were me, I'd probably just go for the 1TB. Price difference isn't that great, and what happens if in a couple years time you're wishing you had more space? To me it makes sense to get the big boy now.