Woot! New 1 TB internal in my iMac

[bhaveshp]

Just had a great experience getting my 24" 2007 Vintage Alu iMac's 320 GB hard drive swapped out for an internal 1 TB!

Wow.. nice to have more than 6 GB free. Now have 630 GB :-)

While I know some forum folks have done this themselves, I wasn't comfortable with this swap out. I've upgraded plenty of other macs before - mac mini, iMac G5 etc, but the dust & glass aspect bothered me about this one.

I searched for a local Apple Authorized Service center - (http://www.clickaway.com) and asked them for a quote. Surprisingly they quoted me only $50 as I mentioned I was comfortable with transferring the data.

I searched for the perfect 1 TB drive and rejected the following drives:
- 1 TB & 1.5 TB Seagate 7200.11 drives due to many failures (had one myself).
- WD Green - too slow
- WD Caviar Black - too noisy
- Samsung spinpoint - too many short term failures on New egg

Finally selected the new high density Seagate 7200.12 drive - This drive has a great balance of performance, quietness, and low heat. Got it for $105 locally.

The tech @ clickaway was great. Said it took him about an hour to swap the drive. I'm now cloning my backup onto the new internal drive.

BTW, I have external backup drives - one for Super duper clone, and one on the AEBS for Time Machine.

[guitarist]

You bought it from Woot?

[Speedy]

Amazing how much space pron takes.

[Lux Interior]

I hope the next iMac design has an easily accessible HDD á la the current Macbooks.

I decided to pony up the money for them to put a 1.5T drive in mine while they were swapping out a defective super drive. 320 was just so tiny. My MBP has a 500G fer cryin' awt lawd!

[testcase]

Lux, which 500GB drive did you install in your MBP? What differences have you noticed heat, noise, battery life etc)? Did you do the work yourself (I'm wondering how easy it is)? TIA!

[Lux Interior]

testcase wrote:
Lux, which 500GB drive did you install in your MBP? What differences have you noticed heat, noise, battery life etc)? Did you do the work yourself (I'm wondering how easy it is)? TIA!

I'm not sure. I think it was a Samsung spinpoint M6.

It was the second hard drive I've installed in the MBP. I didn't even consult the directions the second time. Just keep the screws well organized and it's no too difficult if you have any mechanical inclination.

Didn't really notice any difference in heat, noise or battery life. I usually don't use it on battery for long periods of time, though.