SATA 3 HDD's in Late 2006 20" iMac?

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SATA 3 HDD's in Late 2006 20" iMac?

Hello,

I bought a Late 2006 20" iMac online, but it only comes with a 250GB hard drive, i was thinking about upgrading it to a 1tb or 2tb.

Specifically the Western Digital Blue WD10EZEX 7200RPM 1TB or Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 7200RPM 2TB.

The WD is $69 and the Seagate $94. Both are 7200RPM, SATA III & have 64MB of cache.

I've read about people upgrading the hard drive in this iMac and noticing a speed upgrade straight away, but i've also heard about SATA III hard drives not working in SATA I iMacs?

I don't know if it was because the hard drive was too big (capacity) or the SATA III?

I just want to know if both of these hard drives will work? Thats all i want to know, so please dont suggest i buy another hard drive or an external hard drive or anything like that, just want to know if i can pop any one of those in and the iMac wont spaz out.

Thanks, Adrian

iMac (20-inch Late 2006), Mac OS X (10.7.5), 2.33GHz Core 2 Duo, ATI x1600 256MB

Posted on Mar 8, 2013 8:01 PM

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Answer 1

JelleV

Level 1

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Jun 15, 2013 3:34 AM in response to Danz207

Hi Adrian,

I had the same question, but took the gamble and placed a WD10EZEX in my iMac 24", late 2006. And it worked out fine, all the details at http://wickedjv.blogspot.be/2013/06/hard-drive-replacement-for-my-imac-24.html

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Answer 2

MartinR

Level 6

19,019 points

Jun 15, 2013 4:43 AM in response to Danz207

SATA III drives are backwardly compatible with SATA II and SATA I interfaces. A SATA III drive will just be limited by the speed of the SATA I bus in the 2006 iMac, otherwise they work fine.

The Seagate ST2000DM001 you mentioned is fine. As for WD, I would not recommend the WD Blue or Green drives as your main system HD ... they will work, but due to their "energy saving" features you will not get the level of performance you will out of the Seagate or a WD Black drive ($89 at B&H Photovideo) WD100FAEX

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Answer 3

Dummnut

Level 1

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Sep 1, 2013 2:01 AM in response to Danz207

Yes SATA III drives are backwards compatible (with SATA I at least) but it's a awkward area because when a SATA III drive fails to negotiate at SATA III speeds it defaults to SATA I speed. This can sometimes be a problem for SATA II capable controllers which continue to attempt a connection with the drive which has defaulted to SATA I speeds. This results in the famous spinning beachballs and logs full of continuous SATA disconnections, SATA I controllers rarely cause this phenomena with a drive defaulted to SATA I speeds

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