7200 RPM

My understanding is that early 7200rpm drives ran hot. Later 7200rpm drives ran cooler.

What you risk is up to you. I think people did use the later drives in those machines. You could rig some fan above or below the machine. Probably below.

Robert

Yes, I remember people doing this years ago with their G3 iMacs. There was the concern about the internals running hotter as a result of the speedier drives, but many people reported successful transplants with 7200rpm drives installed in their computers. This is going back about 12 or 13 years ago (which doesn't seem like that much to me).

So if I remember rightly, your best choice of HDD for your iMac, if you want to maximise it, is to install a 120Gb, 7200rpm hard drive with an 8Mb cache. a 120Gb would be the maximum you could install because the motherboard will only recognise up to that size.

If you installed a 256 or 320Gb HDD that will still work, but only 120Gb will be recognised. I think that's right. Someone correct me if I'm wrong, but I think bigger hard drives were only recognised in Macs manufactured after 2002, which rules out all of the G3 iMacs.

I think it will work, yes. One slight caveat however, I've considered ordering drives like this from Amazon or other on-line places, and if you read some of the reviews at the bottom you'll find comments suggesting these are not necessarily new drives, rather older drives that have been formatted. This isn't always the case, but I'm wondering if you have an independent computer shop or place near you that has them?

For example, I found some second-hand 80Gb hard drives for £10, and was able to fit them into iMacs and PowerMacs easily enough.

There's one further option; you could buy an external Firewire Hard Drive (assuming your iMac has Firewire ports) and work from hard drive with no upper space limit and read/write speeds that are faster than USB2. It would save you the hassle of disassembling sections of the iMac and you'd be able to quickly access all your data by plugging it into another machine!

[Edit] So yes, try ordering the Hard Drive from Amazon. If it doesn't work you haven't lost too much money, but I really would be inclined to go the Firewire external Hard Drive route. I just looked at your profile and it shows you have more recent Macs, like the Macbook Air. With an external Firewire hard drive you could easily transfer massive amounts of data to and from your machines (you may need an adaptor if your Macbook Air doesn't have a Firewire port), but that kind of crossover ability is incredibly cool I think.

Ah ok then, the internal drive it is. Sounds like a nice expansion to do. I'd also try bumping your Operating System up to Mac OSX.4 (Tiger) if you can. You'll get some more functionality out of it, and you'll be able to use the TenFourFox browser (which has a version designed specifically for Tiger) which may render webpages more reliably than an equivalent browser in OSX.3

I'd also try and find an Airport card (and Airport card sled) to give you wireless internet browsing. These can usually be found on eBay, I've bought one this way and they work reliably. Your iMac uses the original style Airport card. I have an aluminium G4 Powerbook that has Airport extreme built in (the next generation of Airport), and it gets a terrible wifi reception, whereas any Mac I've had using the original style Airport card (four different Macs to date), have picked up good, reliable signals from a distance and through a few walls.

Just thought I'd add this interesting link about a guy who has given up his new machines and gone back to old Macs running OS9 and earlier versions of OSX:

http://lowendmac.com/2011/back-to-mac-os-9-because-its-all-i-need/

Quite inspiring reading I think 🙂

Well it sounds like you're firmly committed to getting this iMac as modernised and with as much space as possible. Good luck to you.

I used to use my iMac on a farm in the middle of nowhere. There was no broadband/cable internet. The only option was dial-up over crackly old copper phone lines which could barely hold a connection above 28.8kpbs. I found out there was a text-only web browser called Wannabe that I could use, so I set the iMac's modem to the slowest speed (to guarantee no drop outs of the connection), and ran the text browser. The cool thing about that browser was that if I needed to open up a web page I was looking at in an all-singing, all dancing web browser, the text browser would open that up in one click.

Using the text browser I was able to fly around at broadband speeds, circumventing the only weak link I had with my iMac at the time.

The iMac is convection cooled, just like the very first ‘compact’ Macs released in the mid-80’s. All you should need to do with your iMac is make sure all the ventilation holes are clear of obstruction and dust. During long periods of operation, the bottom of the iMac should remain cool, whilst the top (around the handle) may feel quite hot. This is normal.

As a corollary, I remember people from hotter countries writing on this discussion board complaining that some of their iMacs would overheat and shut down. This was due to the heat and humidity of their location, so if you live in a particularly hot climate, it may be wise to keep the iMac in a cool room if possible.

That being said, I don’t know how much of a problem this was. It may have been an unfortunate few in extreme conditions. I’ve had four iMacs of your vintage and they’ve never shut down due to overheating, no matter how long they’ve remained on. I’ve simply made sure all those little holes are free to pull in and expel air.🙂

I think it would be unnecessary. The computer has been designed to work within certain parameters which it should be perfectly able to maintain by itself in your air conditioned home. I don’t think there’s anything to worry about.🙂