7200 RPM hard drive in old G3 iMac?

morgothmorgoth
Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I have posted about similar things before I know but I have filled the 40gb hard drive on my iMac and I really need to upgrade to a bigger hard drive. I was pretty annoyed to find out that the biggest hard drive my mac can handle is 120gb (is there any way around that ?), and more disappointed still to read that 7200rpm hard drives can cause overheating problems in some older iMacs. Not only does this suggest that I can't have a faster hard drive but that I also would have to pay more for the equivelent size since 5400rpm hard drives are obsolete.



Does anyone know if you can put a 7200rpm hard drive in an iMac like mine? I know that some of the earlier iMacs aren't cool enough inside to allow for one, but my iMac is one of the most recent of the old style.



Also, would it be possible to attach a cooling fan to a 7200rpm hard drive inside my mac?



My iMac is one of the last of the the old style, G3 iMacs released. It is a graphite 600mhz G3 with 256mb ram. Not long after I bought it in 2002 they brought out the new iMac and EMac.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    santasanta Posts: 67member
    G'day



    I put an 80 Gig 7200 rpm HD in my sisters orange iMac two years ago, and it's been fine. The drive keeps busy too, running Panther with only 256 meg ram.



    Pretty impossible to fit a fan, everything is shoehorned in.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    cj171cj171 Posts: 144member
    i've had an 80gb 7200 in my imac for over a year now and it's my server so it's on constantly..no problemo
  • Reply 3 of 6
    fngfng Posts: 222member
    I think I did the same thing. It boots light a bat out of hell.8) I turn it on so little these days that my system is not a good test of how a well used 7200/iMac G3 would fare.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    not unlike myselfnot unlike myself Posts: 2,037member
    To give you the flip side. I've upgraded 4 of these. 3 of them had overheating problems (under heavy use but only rarely)



    Keep them in a ventilated area. Worst that happened was once in a blue moon it would hard freeze and I'd have to reboot. (after a short cool off)



    But the crashes weren't in-convenient enough to make me downgrade. As far as I can tell no long term damage.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    geekdreamsgeekdreams Posts: 280member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Morgoth

    It is a graphite 600mhz G3 with 256mb ram.



    Upgrade the RAM while you're at it!
  • Reply 6 of 6
    interactinteract Posts: 47member
    I installed a 120GB, 7200rpm , 8MB cache HD into my Blue Dalmatian iMac G3 500. Super increase in performance and absolutely no issues.
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