iMac hard drive upgrade

[evilmonkey]

Could anyone tell me what type of hard drive to buy and what the probable maximum capacity would be to upgrade the internal hard drive on a new Core2Duo based iMac (20" if that helps). thanks for the input

 

[heatlesssun]

I'm not a Mac owner, but PCs and Macs use all the same hardware (except motherboards) these days and I build my own desktop PCs

I'm assuming you just want a bigger hard drive. A standard 3.5" Serial ATA (SATA) drive that you can buy from BestBuy or online from Newegg or ZipZoomFly (better prices usually) should do the job nicely, all the way up to 750GB if you like and its in your budget. The online Apple store offers 250GB and 500GB as options for the 20" iMac, but any capacity should work, they are all the same physical size.

The major brands are Seagate, Maxtor (now owned by Seagate), Western Digital (WD) and Hitachi. Any brand should be be fine. I like Maxtor and WD drives. Have bought a dozen of each over the years, and never had any problems before two years, except on one external Firewire Maxtor drive that crapped out on me after two months, but it was still under warranty.

If your old drive is still good, you can get a SATA to Firewire enclosure for the old drive and add it to your system as an external drive for extra storage.

Hope this helps and good luck!

 

[tsn | spazz]

Man, it's a pain in the ass to change out the harddrive and WILL void your warranty.

Unless you believe your iMac is the greatest computer with no issues, I wouldn't do it.