Looking for fast internal hard drive

Question

I want to replace the existing hard drive in my iBook G4 with a faster one (7200 rpm). I realize the battery time will suffer. Does anybody have any specific recommendations (as to which brand)?
Thanks.

Answer 1

Most of the newer specifications of modern drives I've seen are
for the SATA type of hard disk drives now common in new Macs.
Since these won't work inside an older model, you still may find
some PATA/ATA/IDE compatible drives from the same manufact-
urers and through vendors of Mac specific or compatible hardware.
{Of major brands, sometimes you can find a similar spec HDD
in their line-up that is almost as good as their new SATA line;
here's a page with some that won't work in your iBook, but they
do have names and the manufacture brand. They may offer ATA:
http://www.barefeats.com/note03.html }
The slower spinning drive, may be fine; get one with a larger buffer
and enough free space so the system and applications have plenty
of room for Virtual Memory demands, and make sure the basic RAM
amount is as much as the machine can support.
Some of the newer replacement PATA drives use less power and
have better technologies than those older models in early Macs.
So, if you can find actual reviews and specifications for side-by-side
comparisons (of non-SATA vs other non-SATA) for your application,
that may give you an idea if the faster-spin rate drive is an advantage
you could live with; or something best left for another year's upgrade
when you eventually may get a newer architecture portable Macintosh.
I'd go for the 5400 slower drive, large capacity, with larger 16+ MB buffers,
instead of a faster 7200 drive, in a portable computer on limited batteries.
But I've read of others who did OK by the faster drive. Not sure if they stuck
with original equipment batteries or were able to actually gain run time with
those newer technology batteries which say they have a longer life. Of the
new batteries, you may need to get their brand of reconditioner/recharger
in order to hope to get their longer specified battery life; & charge two at a
time outside of the computer; making sure to calibrate and run them all often.
Good luck & happy computing!
edited.