Replacing the internal hard drive???

Stay away from any "green" drives. You can install up to 3 TBs (I don't think 4 TB drives are yet available.) Disassembling an iMac is not a trivial task. I would visit OWC to find suitable drives and tutorials. OWC also sells drives with toolkits needed for the specific computer model.

Personally, I'd avoid WD drives. WD is not the best supporter of Macs. I would stick to Seagate, Hitachi, or Samsung for large capacity drives. Stay away from drives that have built-in sudden motion detection as these conflict with the SMS in the computer. If a drive has a SMS then be sure you can disable it via software from the manufacturer or by configuration jumpers on the drive.

Samsung F3 Spinpoint 500 GB or 1 TB have an excellent reputation. If you install a 2 TB and actually intend to use all that capacity, you will need an external drive -- stay far away from WD externals, although the Caviar Black internals have a good reputation -- of equivalent capacity for a clone, or much more for use as a Time Machine backup. The Samsung's are much better value. Probably not going to be around that much longer, at least in those designs, since Seagate gobbled them up.

Always a good idea to check out the reviews at newegg.com.

That's a first. I'm usually hearing disaster stories with WD externals. Can they boot your Mac? Many WDs won't.

Since you seem to want to keep your iMac have you considered a SSD? I put one in my 2008 and the speed is great! It rivals my MacBook Air for startup and application launch.

These two guys hammered me earlier due toa heat sensor built into the HDs on 2009 & 2010 models, but yours sounds like a great candidate. I'm using Firewire 800 cradles for 3TB of storage and the Firewire seems fast enough for my clips and photos.

I'm not selling anything, I'm just VERY pleased with the SSD upgrade.

SMS or Sudden Motion Sensor is a mechanism that detects any type of motion that might cause damage to the drive heads and parks them automatically to prevent such damage. Some drives have an SMS built-in to the drive. Macs, however, have their own built-in SMS.

Solid State Drives. They are both physically smaller and hold less data 60GB-560GB and they can get pricey but the read write speeds are 10 or more times faster. My unit runs much cooler than with the 500GB drive I had before and with 128GB for Applications and file swapping internally and 3TB for Storage Externally I'm a happy camper. I used a Crucial 128SSD and maxed my memory while I was at it. I'm keeping it for as long as they make software for it now.

NeddySeagoon wrote:

SSD = solid state drive. This is a whole new bag of cats for me.😕

Very expensive for much less capacity. And, if you keep your data on an external, that, in turn, needs to be backed up on another external.

WZZZ

Depends on what Very means. I was going to buy a new model for $1,500 or more but I spent under $300 and got big bang for the bucks IMHO.