[RayLuczak]

Hello:

The 20 GB 5400 rpm hard drive in my friend's G3/500 MHz Indigo iMac (it has FireWire sockets, etc.) died, and it appears to me that the machine's system bus is at 100 MHz.

I can't seem to find new internal Ultra ATA hard drives that follow the 100 MHz limit, but I've come across quite a few Ultra ATA hard drives that are at 133 MHz. I now have an unopened 60 GB Ultra ATA hard drive 7200 rpm/133 MHz which I bought on sale for $39; I refuse to install it unless I can have my question below answered.

Question is: Can I replace the dead hard drive (Ultra ATA/100) with a new hard drive (Ultra ATA/133) and still have it work in the G3 iMac? It's okay if the new hard drive doesn't go above the 100 MHz system bus limit. Just want to know if it WILL work in spite of that system bus limitation.

Thanks ever so much!

Sincerely,

[Luca Rescigno]

ATA/100 and ATA/133 have absolutely nothing at all to do with the computer's frontside bus. The frontside bus is how fast the processor communicates with the RAM, measured in MHz. The 100 in ATA/100 means that the hard drive interface can transfer data at up to 100 megabytes per second.

The ATA bus in your iMac is actually an ATA/66 bus, probably. It should work with any Ultra ATA hard drive up through 120 GB. So yes, your new 60 GB drive should work just fine.

[jamil5454]

That is correct. Your new drive should work. What do you have to lose?

[Lateralus]

The iMac forum is elsewhere...

*Sends to iMac forum*

[tooki]

And for what it's worth, the "is a 7200 RPM drive OK in a slot load iMac" question has been asked and answered a bajillion times already, a quick search would have brought you an answer sooner!

tooki