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Looking for a new hard drive

g5_11

g5_11

macrumors member
Original poster
Mar 28, 2005
53
0
I have a powermac G5 and I am looking for a second hard drive that will mainly be used for a music/video library. Most drives out there have mixed reviews and I was wondering if anyone can give some suggestions as to which models have worked well for them. As the G5 is not great for holding in noise with the "screen door" front on it a quite drive would be a nice bonus. Thanks
 
Another vote for Seagates with a big BUT...

The Seagate 7200.8's are fine.
7200.9 have a feature (NCQ) enabled by default that means they wont work in a PowerMac unless you turn it off using a PC.
 
TMA said:
Another vote for Seagates with a big BUT...

The Seagate 7200.8's are fine.
7200.9 have a feature (NCQ) enabled by default that means they wont work in a PowerMac unless you turn it off using a PC.
Click to expand...

It's not the NCQ itself, but the SSC (spread spectrum clocking) part of that package that messes with Macs.

If you buy your Seagate from OWC, they turn off the SSC for you.

Nice.
 
Another vote for seagate, i had three 200GB models none of them ever made a sound (I sold the computer 2 of them were in, hence the had) Make sure you get the models with the warrenty not the OEM ones though:)
 
Thanks for the advice. Its lookin like its gonna be a Seagate. I'll look around and determine what size I need.
 
I use Western Digital here in every machine I have I can't fault them at all. In my Power Mac G5 I have a WD740GD 10,000 RPM Raptor as my boot drive, and a WD3200JD 320 GB drive for my crud.

So there you go a vote for NOT SEAGATE. ;)
 
Be careful with the Seagates.

A friend of mine just had to RMA his Seagate SATA drive (120 gigs I think). No big deal? But his roommates friend is on his 5th replacement drive from Seagate. Its another SATA, 250 gigs I think.

I have a Western Digital 200 gig in my G5...works great
 
Hmm maby the Western digitals sound better. I havn't made up my mind yet. I think I will look around at local retailers and see what the deals are with the warrentys just incase somthing happens to it.
 
io_burn said:
Buy whatever is the best bang for the buck in regards to cost per gig. Ignore fanboy brand recommendations.
Click to expand...

You can be a hard drive fanboy too?

BTW Yum Cha Inc make a good drive... maybe you should listen to brand recommendations. Or at least have a look at storagereview.com.
 
The only three I'd say stay away from are Maxtor, Hitachi and IBM. I have fared poorly with those. I have had good success with Seagate and Western Digital. No problems with those.
 
I vote Western Digital. I have 6 Western Digitals spread throughout my systems. 2 x 400 Gig Caviar RE2 drives RAID 0 and a 40 gig in my PC. I have a 250 Gig in my Xbox. An 80 Gig in my G4, and an old 8 gig drive that I use as a semi-portable drive with a USB adapter. I also have 3 Seagates. 160, 40, and 10 gig drives. The 160 was DOA, and when I RMA'd it, the cheapskates gave me a factory reconditioned drive. That is totally stupid considering it did not ever function for me. I haven't had any problems with the Western Digitals, and thats all I will buy now.
But I would buy whatever you think is good. I think most people are somewhat biased when it comes to hard drives. I love WD and dislike Seagate just because all my WD drives have never had problems and got a DOA Seagate, and some people love Seagate because they haven't ever had problems, but dislike WD because one of their drives went bad. It's all experience with the brands.
 
Just thought I'd chime in on actually using a 2nd drive on OS X since it hasn't been bought up yet. When you add a 2nd drive the drive power management can cause the machine to lock up and give you the beach ball of death while you wait for the 2nd drive to spin back up, very very annoying. By default Apple have the drives set to sleep on Tiger this is after 10 minutes, you would think if you unchecked Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible under Prefs/Energy Saver that this would fix this, it doesn't. Apple have the drives set up to still sleep after 3 hours with this option. If you want to turn off hard drive sleeping and stop the beach ball of death you need to do - firstly uncheck Put the hard disk(s) to sleep when possible under Prefs/Energy Saver then type:

sudo pmset disksleep 0

in the terminal. If you aren't sure what those commands do read the pmset manual.

Cheers.
 
i've had a few drives that have failed, but they were under warranty, so at least they got replaced.

i don't remember the brand names, but i can say - make sure that you get a drive with a decent warranty! 3 year minimum, but i think there's 2 or 3 now that offer a 5 year warranty.
 
I've had HDs from just about every brand...nowadays you almost can't go wrong really.

Any drive from Seagate, Maxtor, Hitachi/IBM, or Western Digital should be fine. At the moment I'm using 2x250GB Hitachi/IBM 7200RPM drives in my G4 plus the original 40GB drive which is also an IBM. They are quiet. I have an external 120GB Maxtor drive that is nice and quiet too.

Pretty much the only drives that are loud nowadays are the 15K rpm SCSI drives and 10k rpm WD Raptors.
 
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