[Filmo]

I just picked up a 500 mhz DV imac (Graphite semi-transparent) for my mom as a X-Mas present.

The hard drive on the thing is LOUD.

1) What drive should I replace it with (40 to 60 gig range)

2) how tough is it to replace a drive in an imac and were can I find directions for opening the case.

[Krusty]

Originally posted by Filmo:
I just picked up a 500 mhz DV imac (Graphite semi-transparent) for my mom as a X-Mas present.

The hard drive on the thing is LOUD.

1) What drive should I replace it with (40 to 60 gig range)

2) how tough is it to replace a drive in an imac and were can I find directions for opening the case.

Go for 80gigs ... $15 more than a 40 these days. I have the Seagate 7200.7 80 gigger -- $71 at newegg and VERY quiet (even Seagate's specs say its quieter ... it uses 1 platter so its quieter than multi-platter disks. Also 7200 rpm but runs cool enough to use in a fanless iMac).

Its not tough at all to install in an iMac One of many visual guides

I did this upgrade on my iMac 450. Its not difficult at all. Also, read reviews at Xlr8yourmac ...scroll down and enter "hard drive" in the "drive type" dropdown and "Apple iMac slot loading" in the "Select Mac Model" dropdown -- all the info you need.

[bradoesch]

I'd highly recommend against a Western Digital special edition drive (the ones with the 8 MB cache.) I have one in my iMac DV, and it's super fast and fairly quiet. It's actually very quiet compared to the original Maxtor that shipped with the machine (and the Maxtor was a 5400 r.p.m. drive, while the WD is a 7200 r.p.m.) Anyway, the problem with the drive is that your iMac likely won't sleep with the drive installed. It will continuously spin down and then spin up again the entire time. Not a good sound, and I'm sure it's not good for the drive. This is an issue with OS 9, Jaguar and Panther. WD says this is an issue with Apple, and Apple doesn't seem to care. There are quite a few threads about this on Apple's own boards, and reader reports over at XLR8YourMac as well.
An interesting thing though...if I've booted with my FireWire drive, sleeping works just fine. I can't figure that out.
Anyway, that's my sad story of a very tired iMac...