I believe all recent Macs use Ultra ATA drives. Ultra reflects the fact that data is transferred on both the positive and negative transition of the signal, resulting in a signal's data carrying capacity being doubled for a given frequency. It's just a mechanism used to increase the data transfer rate.
An Ultra ATA 66 or 100 drive should work fine, as the faster drives are backward compatible, though a 100 drive will only run at 66 speeds in your iMac (the number just refers to the maximum burst transfer rate in MB/sec, the actual substained transfer rates are much lower anyway).
I believe the drive supplied in the iMac rotates at 5400 RPM. I guess you could replace it with a 7200 RPM drive, though this may generate more heat. Other than that, a standard 3.5 inch drive should be fine.
Any IDE drive will work. The faster/new interfaces are backward compatible. I've seen 7200RPM drives cause trouble on one iMac. I'd stay with 5400RPM. The difference in speed will be small. Newer drives have more areal density and faster seek times resulting in faster performance. A large on-drive cache is also a big help.
Anyway, current drives are so much better than the one you originally had in that iMac that you will be very pleased with the result.
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[ 11-07-2002: Message edited by: FlashGordon ]</p>
An Ultra ATA 66 or 100 drive should work fine, as the faster drives are backward compatible, though a 100 drive will only run at 66 speeds in your iMac (the number just refers to the maximum burst transfer rate in MB/sec, the actual substained transfer rates are much lower anyway).
I believe the drive supplied in the iMac rotates at 5400 RPM. I guess you could replace it with a 7200 RPM drive, though this may generate more heat. Other than that, a standard 3.5 inch drive should be fine.
[ 11-07-2002: Message edited by: RodUK ]</p>
check the system profiler...
regardless i dont think it will matter because i think the drive will just run at the slower speed...
FWIW get 7200 RPM drives tho... MUCH better performance
Anyway, current drives are so much better than the one you originally had in that iMac that you will be very pleased with the result.
Look at <a href="http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/"; target="_blank">http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/</a>; for more information. There is a section detailing comments from hundreds of people who have installed their own drives in their Macs.