Gli iMac vanno dal supporto di EIDE ATA-3 a Ultra ATA come indicato in EveryMac.com nella sezione "Int. HD Interface:" per ogni iMac, ma la buona notizia è che sono tutti compatibile con le versioni precedenti .
Fortunately, the technology itself is pretty easy to use, even if the labels given to it often stink. So one useful way of dealing with all the standards and labels is simply to ignore them! Look past the hype, and focus on what the drive's actual capabilities are. If you want to really understand what a drive can do and what it supports, you should look at its specification sheet and see what features and transfer modes it is designed to use. Ignore labels like "EIDE" or "Ultra ATA/whatever" and find out what modes and functions the drive supports. Getting the real scoop on the drive means you don't need to worry about the pretty stickers slapped all over the box, or whatever the manufacturer is trying to claim.
Una cosa da tenere presente è la limitazione delle dimensioni di 128 GB. Il controller IDE di iMac non può gestire più di 128 GB di un determinato disco.
Anche il problema del surriscaldamento non è probabilmente un problema? Ad esempio, se segui la MyOWC guida all'aggiornamento di OWC per tutti gli iMac G3, anche quelli più vecchi, raccomandano un'unità da 120 GB 7200 RPM come una sostituzione. Il modo migliore per essere sicuri sarebbe quello di capire le specifiche dei requisiti energetici per quel disco originale e vedere come si combinano, e usarlo per sceglierne uno nuovo.
C'è anche qualche discussione sulle nuove unità 7200 RPM che producono meno calore rispetto alle prime unità 7200 RPM 7200 rpm Drive non Overheat My G3 iMac
Three or four years ago I installed a 7200 RPM hard drive in a 500 MHz G3 iMac (Summer 2000). I lent it to a friend, who ran it round the clock for weeks on end. Never had heat issues. It runs Tiger well enough for basic Internet, email, word processing, and old versions of iTunes and iPhoto. A fast hard drive and 1 GB of RAM really did a lot for it. The drive is an 80 GB Samsung. It is out of production, but Western Digital still makes 3.5" ATA-100 hard drives. Any modern one-platter hard drive will probably run cooler than the iMac's original hard drive.
I put a 120 GB 7200 rpm Seagate hard drive in my 600 MHz iMac and ran it 24 hours a day for years with no overheating. One time I left home for two weeks during September in Texas with the air conditioning off the entire time while I was away. There was a hot spell while I was gone. When I got home the house, was 95 degrees. I'm sure it got hotter than that while I was gone. The little iMac ran perfectly the entire time.
Today's 7200 rpm hard drives have better bearings, use less energy, make less noise, last longer, and make less heat that the old, slow hard drives that came with the G3 iMac. I say put a 7200 rpm hard drive in it and don't worry about it. Expect to see a small performance increase as a result.