OK guys heres the rub....

I have a iMac G4 700 with a 40 Gig HDD (please no snickering :P ) which I'd like to upgrade the hard drive to something bigger. I figured this wouldn't be too much hassle. The problem is I rang 3 different Applecentres here in Perth and got 3 different answers.

One said they could give me a 120Gig installed with data transferred for $220. :lol:
The next said the drive would cost $200 and installation and data transfer would cost $120 extra. :huh:
The third said I needed a 5400rpm drive and you cant get them anymore. They said a 7200rpm drive wouldn't work in the old iMac due to the power supply being unable to handle it so an external was the only option. :blink:

Now I'm confused. I was wondering if anyone had upgraded a HDD in their iMac and could help me.

Cheers

I find it very hard to belive you cant upgrade the hard drive due to power restrictions of the imacs power supply... Apple overdo near everthing... so i dare say its not a concern, when they (or you) remove the old HDD it will have power consumption figures on the drive itself, just compare them to newer hdd's and you will find next to no difference.

As for costs it depends how big you wanna go, not sure how big the drive is for the second guy you mentioned, but his labour sounds normal for any tech. Find a local mate that will be able to do the work for you(or help), you can get a 120 gig for around (or so) than $100 (found bloated price of $120)

There is a few guides on the net so have a go, and if you get stuck ask around here.

here we go

Here is a general idea of how it would go

Woops... didn't relaise you had iMac.

The advice below is for G4

Can't believe the advice :blink:

Anyhow, it is most likely that your mac has internal 128 Gig limit. Options are, install 120 Gig ATA IDE drive and transfer your data, or install additional drive (keep your 40) and no transffer required.
Or... you can install SATA PCI card which would allow you to upgrade to faster SATA drives and will also break 128 Gig limit.

I would suggest for later option.
SATA PCI card - about $70 to 100
SATA drive 200 Gig about $120 plus
SATA 250 Gig drives $170 or so

ATA drives are on par with SATA price wise.
hope it helps

And no, your Mac does not require 5,400 RPM drives

If you'd like to see a take apart on the iMac, you can see it here: http://www.appletalk.com.au/articles...hp?article=718

Wow thanks for the quick replies...

All prices were for a 120Gig HDD. The first AppleCentre said you cant put in anything bigger.

I'm not game to take my beloved iMac apart myself.

Should I not bother and just get an external drive? From looking at other threads they seem to actually work out cheaper.

Still not sure.

The prices quoted for a 120Gb were certainly all an insane rip-off. You should only be paying $100-120 for the drive. The service charges will all be set at something insane like $132/hour.

Cheaper and better, buy an External Firewire Drive and a 200gb drive to go in it:
External Firewire HDD Case

200gb Western Digital Hard Drive

Navada are based here in Perth and I have been buying things off them for years and they do cash on delivery to your nearest post office.
Cheers, Si

You could even use Carbon Copy Cloner to copy the contents of your existing hard drive to the external drive and then boot from that drive. There may be no noticeable speed boost on an iMac but its made a huge difference on my Mini.

And if you want a true blue apple service guide for the model and consider doing it yourself, message me and we can arrange a copy

Hi,

I would be going an external hard drive... keep the internal 40gb as the boot & applications hard drive with the new external with all you documents, music, movies and anything else you want to stash.

External Cases can be from $60 to $120, I buy mine wholesale at about the $60 mark and have been 100% happy with them, i have also used the following case (a member pipsqeek? recomended them to me) http://www.stormcomputers.com.au/catalog/p...products_id=310

As for hard drives... almost anything will do, the bigger the better a 200gb should be around the $130 - $140 mark incuding gst.

neil

btw... Perth is not the most competitive place for sales, service and upgrades for Macs, i guess it is the same for PC's.

If you arent confident in upgrading the internals of the machine yourself, then dont have it done at all. The machine is too old to be worth spending money on.

I second the vote for just getting an external Firewire Hard Drive. This way you can move it to any other computers you have now or in the future.

Perhaps put the money towards a new iMac instead?

Thanks guys for all your advice.

I know my iMac is old but I not a great fan of the look of the new iMac and since Im not a power user it suits me nicely.

I think I will go for the external drive as it seems to be the easiest and cheapest. Should I go for a firewire one or would a USB one suffice?

Im a bit confused what is chewing up so much space on the hard drive actually.
I have 4.7GB in the Applications, 313MB in Documents, 10.8GB of Music, 3.2GB in Pictures, 4.6GB in the Library and 1GB in the system. That adds up to roughly 24.6GB. I supposedly have 9Gb free space so whats taking up the remaining 6GB? Do the figures for the Library and System sound normal?

Cheers

Definately get Firewire - its Bootable! A life saver in some situations. Best to spend the tiny amount extra to get an external drive with USB 2 and Firewire. I think your model only has USB 1 anyway (don't shoot me if I'm wrong folks) which is S-L-O-W!

You can always swap the drive from the external case with your internal drive later on if you get adventurous.

Have you emptied the trash and done a restart? Does the free space change after a restart?

Which version of the Mac OS are you running? If you are running both OS X and OS 9, have you emptied the trash in both?

Firewire! B)

F is for Fast
I is for Intelligent
R is for Robust
E is for Electric
W is for Wonderful
I is for Information
R is for Rejoice (because your using firewire not usb!)
E is for Everything

no but seriously Firewire is the way to go, you mac will only support usb 1.1 which is very slow. Firewire is also bootable, allowing you to backup you hard drive and boot of it if you ever need too.

neil

I have Tiger without Classic installed. I emptied the trash but I didnt notice any change in the free space.

I'm still getting used to the file structure in OSX and especially Finder (it doesnt seem as easy to use as Windows Explorer or maybe its just I'm not used to it yet) hence I cant easily find the stray GBs. :huh:

OK looks like an external hard drive with firewire and USB2 is the way to go.

Are they easy to put together or should I get the computer store to put it together for me? Any of you fellow Perthites recommend a good (cheap) store to purchase them from?

Interesting note Si_man: I rang Navada and told the guy I was looking for an external HDD. When I told him it was for a Mac he said "I cant promise it will work" in a very huffy voice. I asked him why and he said "cause we are a PC shop". This was my first experience of the "us & them" attitude I've read about. I had to laugh. :lol: