Need a Deal on a New Hard Drive and ?s. Recommend a brand or sale? :)

I need a new main internal hard drive.
What do you recommend as a minimal size? I need to get it as cheap as possible.
Do you recommend a store or brand?
Do I need to make sure it is Mac compatible or are they all?
I checked out staples.com and found maxtor had a 120 gb drive for $70. There are two kinds Pata and Sata. Is one better than the other?
Thanks so much!!

What do you recommend as a minimal size? I need to get it as cheap as possible.
Impossible to be precise since we have no idea what sort of use you put your system to and so what sort of capacity you might need, nor what "as cheap as possible" really means. I probably wouldn't at this point buy a drive less than 120GB for my boot drive, but your needs and budget may make a different capacity a wiser choice.
Do you recommend a store or brand?
Without knowing where you live, it's difficult for anyone to recommend a particular vendor, but you can pretty much buy wherever you can get the best deal. Sometimes the large office supply stores will have really good deals, but not always. If you're in the US, NewEgg is a place I've found good deals, though you have to compare their prices with other vendors.
As to brands, people will have different opinions depending on their experiences. You might search through Accelerate Your Mac and read the user reviews for suggestions.
Do I need to make sure it is Mac compatible or are they all?
Drives are not system-specific, so any drive with a compatible interface should work.
I checked out staples.com and found maxtor had a 120 gb drive for $70. There are two kinds Pata and Sata. Is one better than the other?
PATA ("parallel" ATA) and SATA ("serial ATA") are two different interface types. You don't have a choice unless you want to purchase a PCI interface card; your G4 accepts parallel ATA drives only.
Regards.

Similar Messages

I need real link to purchase new hard drive and keyboard

I got water damage on my laptop fried my keyboard and my harddrive so i was looking to replace them myself and not have to pay 260 repair just to change the keyboard and hard drive. I have the part numbers i need but for some reason i cannot purchase them either they no longer sell or i just cant do it via mobile but i dont have a computer right now so.. Yeah any help?

You can buy any hard drive from amazon or newegg.com and the keyboard is

My mac failed a month ago and apple needed to put in a new hard drive, which deleted everything. so, i need to put music from my iPhone to my iTunes library on my mac, please help?

my mac failed a month ago and apple needed to put in a new hard drive, which deleted everything. i need to put music from my iphone to my itunes library, please help?

Try these 2 User Tips...
Syncing to a New Computer...
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3141
Recovering your iTunes library from your iPod or iOS device
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3991

I got a flashing folder with a question mark. I got a new hard drive and upgraded to 4 gigs and can't open anything or reload the operating system? Help?

I got a flashing folder with a question mark. I got a new hard drive and upgraded to 4 gigs and can't open anything or reload the operating system? Help? FYI: I have been using boot camp with windows 7 and started getting a kernal_data_Page_error and it would reboot windows, i was trying to do a chkdsk on the next reboot, but thats when i started getting this issue. I have put in a new hard drive and went from 2 gigs to 4. I can not get the computer to do anything, even the monitor does not show anything now????

Prep your new drive:
Drive Preparation
1. Boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu.
2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.
3. Under the Volume Scheme heading set the number of partitions from the drop down menu to one. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to GUID (for Intel Macs) or APM (for PPC Macs,) then click on the OK button. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the process has completed.
4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.
5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Security button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.
6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.
After formatting has completed quit DU and return to the installer. Install OS X.

Playlists Missing After Install New Hard Drive and Upgrade to Win 7

My computer needed a new hard drive and I upgraded from Win Vista Home Premium to Windows 7 Home Premium.
I am trying to get my Playlists back for my iTunes in my "Administrator" user account, after reinstalling iTunes and putting my music libraries back onto my computer.
(I had installed 32-bit Win7 OS myself, computer worked OK for about 1 day, then would not boot up; I took computer to shop, they said I needed new Hard Drive, and I gave them my new Win7 OS computer disks)
I am confused over whether I have 32-bit OS or 64-bit OS. They recommended installing 32-bit OS, I agreed, and believed that I had 32-bit OS installed; however, Computer / System Properties state "System type: 64-bit Operating System"
Prior to my installing Win7, I backed up the following onto my Western Digital "My Passport Essential Portable Hard Drive:"
("My Administrative Account"): Users / Owner / My Music
and
("My User Account"): Users / Yank / My Music
My "Administrative" and "User" user accounts contain different songs in iTunes.
If helpful, I could describe what is in each of these 2 backed-up music folders.
To get started, I copied both my "Owner" and "Yank" user folders in the C: User folder; however now I have "Owner," "Yank," and "Yank.Owner-Toshiba" folders in the C: User folder. I think I did this by creating a new Yank user account by creating a new account, not by my copying a folder into C: User folder. The Owner folder has a picture of a lock on the folder icon.
Because I had trouble merging My Music folders in the Owner folder, and I was confused, I copied everything that was in the Owner folder into a new folder in the Owner folder, "NEW OWNER FOLDER." I also copied my Owner Music folder into several places in my Users / Owner folder.
I also ended up changing the "iTunes Media folder location" several times, using iTunes "Edit / Preferences / Advanced tab / change "iTunes Media folder location". When I chose "Reset," it shows "C:\Users\Owner\NEW OWNER FOLDER\Music\iTunes\iTunes Media"
I've also played around with "Edit / Preferences / Advanced tab / 'Keep iTunes Media folder organized' "
When I open my iTunes, I have no playlists.
However, when I went to my "Yank" user account and opened iTunes for the first time, the playlists associated with that account were visible.
How do I get my playlists back on my Administrative Account, which is my main song collection and had many, many playlists?
Thank you.

YAY!
I didn't try shift-start of iTunes, but I DID GET MY PLAYLISTS BACK BY FOLLOWING YOUR OTHER ADVICE:
I went to my external hard drive, went to my backup at Users / Owner / My Music / iTunes / and searched for library.itl
Four files with that name were found, with different dates.
I chose the most recent, dated just a few days before I made my backup to the external hard drive.
I copied it to my computer's hard drive into the following location:
C:\Users\Owner\NEW OWNER FOLDER\Music\iTunes
which overwrote the file which was located there.
When I opened iTunes, ALL MY WONDERFUL PLAYLISTS WERE THERE!
THANK YOU SO MUCH FOR SOLVING THIS FOR ME!
CAN YOU IMAGINE HOW DISAPPOINTED I FELT WHEN I BELIEVED THAT I HAD LOST ALL OF THE PLAYLISTS WHICH I HAD CREATED OVER THE YEARS? Many of my playlists were composed of whole albums whose songs I had added to iTunes.
THANK YOU AGAIN SO MUCH!

Brand new hard drive and still can't get past the gray screen

i was having problems with my mac last night going to the gray screen, sometimes i'd get the folder with the question mark. i looked up for solutions and i tried every one i could find short of reformatting the hard drive. nothing worked, getting the start-up disk causes the mac to freeze on the screen with the picture of a disk and an arrow after i press the arrow to go into disk utilities. i took it to the apple store, which i wasn't really happy with my service there- i was called up immediately but then was never able to explain what was happening to the guy he just plugged in the computer, went back to helping someone else and periodically looked at my screen. i understand that they probably take care of multiple people at once so they don't get complaints about wait times, but i don't think i was really helped at all, he just ended up saying that i needed a new hard drive and if i knew how to put one in i was better off doing it myself then sent me on my way. well i bought a new hard drive and upon installing it and putting in the mac os x disk it still freezes and no solution has worked yet.

So all you need then is to know how to format the drive and install Snow Leopard.
How to erase and install Snow Leopard 10.6
https://support.apple.com/kb/HT3910

Help.......I moved my LR5 catalog to a new hard drive and lost my COLLECTIONS

I moved my LR5 catalog to a new hard drive and lost my COLLECTIONS. In the collections i get the messageI then locate the file in the new drive :
i locate the file and receive this message
How can i get the Collection to redirect to the new location?? I have about a LOT of missing pics in Collections.
Thank you! Jamie

Thank your for responding.......
To clarify....I moved LIGHTROOM to a new hard drive....including 1) Working catalogs, 2) Working exports, and 3) Working Originals. I now know i did not follow correct procedure for "moving a catalog". I dragged it to the new hard drive. Yikes!!
(I was at Imaging last week and spoke to Julianne Kost, she recommended that i use the FIND link....but this gave me the same result as i am speaking about above.)
To Clarify......The Collections are listed. The target path to the images did not change when i moved to the new hard drive.
There is an exclamation point in the right hand corner of the images in each collection. When i click on the exclamation mark i get the message....."“JK_120214_7782.NEF” could not be used because the original file could not be found. Would you like to locate it?" I then locate the file IN THE NEW current DRIVE...at which time i click on it and i receive the message.....
this file is associated with another photo in the catalog.... each file can only be associated with one photo. Then if i choose to show in library....it points to the image in the FOLDER tab...which is in fact where the image is located.
Up to this point, when i need one of these older collections i have had to recreate. i have manually gone to the original.....in the FOLDER tab, found the image and added to the Collections again. Then i go back and delete all the files with the ! ......a long and tedious task. I was hoping there was an easier way to recreate my "collections".
Initially i was going to just MOVE the entire library again ( the correct way) ....which i should've done i believe. Now i have imported more jobs and have created additional collections , so i'd love to find a short cut!
I hope this is a bit more clear!!
Thank you.

Installing a new hard drive and want to re-install Photoshop

I need to install a new hard drive and want to re-install Photoshop. Since I will installing a new OS, when I deactivate Photoshop from the old hard drive, should I permanently deactivate or suspend activation?

Help > Deactivate

New Hard drive and Window disc

I bought a dv6-6047cl before, and the hard drive is not working now. (No window disc with the laptop)
So i buy a new hard drive,after i put the new hard drive and it shows me
DISK BOOT FAILURE, INSERT SYSTEM DISK AND PRESS ENTER
What should i do?
Someone told me i should buy a new window 7 Home to RESTORE TO FACTORY SETTINGS. Is that right?
If yes, which CD should i buy? Can you show me the picture?
If not, what can i do?

you download the ISO then you need use the Microsoft tool to make the bootable memory stick or cd.
Use the links in my 1st post for the Microsoft tool & a guide on using it.
Once you have your boot media made you need plug in the usb stick or load the cd & then boot notebook & enter boot option menu & boot from cd or usb drive pending on what you decide use.
A very basic guide on installing windows 7 is in link below, don't follow it blindly, just use it as a rough guide as needed & think twice, do some research or ask questions if hae doubts<>problems ...
http://www.wikihow.com/Install-Windows-7-for-Beginners
Like my post? Click Kudos (thumb+) to show appreciation.

New hard drive and photoshop license problem

I have a Dell Inspiron 6000 with a 1.5 Ghz Pentium processor, 2 GB of RAM, and Win Xp/Pro SP3.
The hard drive in this computer failed, and it has been replaced. I used an image backup from Acronis True Image 10 to "restore" the new disk.
Now, when I try to open Phostoshop CS2, I receive a message that the license is no longer valid (I have been using this version of Photoshop for a long time).
I don't have this problem with InDesign CS3 (v. 5.0.2), FrameMaker 7.2b144, or Acrobat 8.1.6.
I didn't find any helpful info on the "Product Activation" web page.
I tried a forum search and a search of Adobe.com using the search criteria "new hard drive and photoshop license problem."
The only relevant item I could find is this:
"Backup and restoration of your system using standard tools do not require reactivation. While reactivation after backing up or restoring the system was required in early versions of Adobe software (such as Adobe Photoshop® CS), Adobe has continued to improve the activation process with new technology that eliminates the need to reactivate after system restoration. In complex situations where the system is being upgraded, we recommend deactivating the Adobe software before commencing the system upgrade. Once the system upgrade is completed, the subsequent install/restore will require reactivation, which is typically accomplished without difficulty and is completely transparent to the user."
So does that mean I have to "reactivate" Photoshop CS2? If so, do I use the Activation window that is displayed when I open Photoshop? The serial number has 20 characters. Will the Adobe (re)activation recognize this old serial number? If not, what do I have to do to get this product usable again?
Please help.

>replaced your hard drive and CS2 DRM is looking for the old hard drive number and not finding it
Interesting... I use http://www.terabyteunlimited.com/image-for-linux.htm which creates a bootable CD and runs outside of Windoze
I have made image files and loaded those files to a new hard drive (I use drive swap hardware to make a backup and create a new drive every time I install or uninstall major software) and have never had any program complain about needing activation
But, since the program I use is Linux on a bootable CD, it copies EVERYTHING on a hard drive, even the hidden registration areas as far as I can tell, so when I do a restore to a new drive, everything is put on the new drive

New Hard Drive and Snow Leopard Upgrade

I'm getting ready to install a larger hard drive in my MacBook Pro. I am also going to install Snow Leopard. I assume that I just boot from the Snow Leopard disk after I install the new hard drive and it will walk me through the installation. Sorry if this is a dumb question. I'm new to Mac.
Also, I have copied my files to an external hard drive. However, will I be able to access my old hard drive if I put it in an enclosure. This will give me access in case I missed something.
Thanks in advance for your help and advice.
Dave

I am doing the same thing... an Apple Authorized Repair facility installed my new drive yesterday. They were supposed to create 2 partitions for me, but failed to do so. Instead, they just cloned my old hard drive over to the new one. This really *****, because Spotlight and System Profiler say that my disk capacity is only 200GB and available disk space 40GB (same as original drive).
What do I need to do to create 2 partitions, one with FAT32 that is 25GB (for both Windows and Chrome OS/Ubuntu) and the other 615GB partition for OS X 10.6?
The important caveat is that my Samsung Superdrive is dysfunctional, as discussed in this long thread.
When I now try to use Disk Utility to Partition the drive, I get the error:
"PARTION FAILED Partition failed with the error: Could not modify partition map because filesystem verification failed"
And when I try to use Bootcamp Assistant to partition the drive, I get this error:
"THE DISK CANNOT BE PARTITIONED BECAUSE SOME FILES CANNOT BE MOVED. Back up the disk and use Disk Utility to format it as a single Mac OS Extended (journaled) volume. Restore your information to the disk and try using Boot Camp Assistant again."
Does this mean that Apple Computer has totally screwed me over? First they gave me a faulty Super drive, and then they install a hard drive without properly formatting the partition? What should I do now?

Windows 7 won't load after installing new Hard Drive and Recovery software

HP G72 Notebook PC
xz218UAR
I guess a virus crashed my hard drive so I bought a new one. I installed the new drive and loaded the recovery disks that I also bought from HP. Apparently Windows didn't load properly and it keeps telling me to RELOAD WINDOWS. I've tried starting over from Disk 1 but it's not doing anything different to fix it.
I removed the new hard drive and reinstalled it but it's still doing the same thing.
What am I doing wrong and HOW DO I FIX IT?

Hi,
Before trying the following, make sure you can still read the 25 Character Product Activation key on your Windows COA label ( 5 blocks of 5 alpha/numeric sets ).
Assuming that this is just a problem with the Recovery process, there is a straight forward work around if you have ( or can borrow ) a retail Windows 7 installation disc that is exactly the same version as your OEM installation - ie if your notebook came with Windows 7 Home Premium 64bit this is the exact retail version you would need.
If you don't have access to a retail disc, you can create an installation disc yourself using another PC - just download the correct Disc Image from the link below and use an application such as ImgBurn to burn the ISO correctly to a blank DVD - a guide on using ImgBurn to write an ISO to a disc is Here. These Images are clean and from a well-respected source, however there are only limited versions available.
Windows-7 sp1-iso-official-32-bit-and-64-bit
Use the disc to perform the installation, enter the Windows activation key found on the COA Label when requested and when the installation has completed, use the 'Phone Method' detailed in the link below to activate the OS - this method supported by Microsoft and is popular with people who just want a clean installation of Windows 7 without the additional software load normally bundled with OEM installations.
http://www.kodyaz.com/articles/how-to-activate-windows-7-by-phone.aspx
Any additional drivers you may need can be found Here.
Regards,
DP-K
****Click the White thumb to say thanks****
****Please mark Accept As Solution if it solves your problem****
****I don't work for HP****
Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience

On a macbook I purchased secondhand hard drive got corrupted and I started to get the flashing folder with the question mark, I purchased a new hard drive and snow lion install DVD I installed the hard drive and tried disc but kept getting blinking folder

On a macbook I purchased secondhand hard drive got corrupted and I started to get the flashing folder with the question mark, I purchased a new hard drive and snow lion install DVD I installed the hard drive and tried disc but kept getting blinking folder

Welcome to Apple Support Communities. We're users here and do not speak for "Apple Inc."
Power on the computer and insert the DVD immediately.
Hold down the 'C' key to boot from the Snow Leopard DVD.
http://support.apple.com/kb/ht1533
After selecting the appropriate language, if necessary, select Utilities, and Disk Utility.
You'll likely need to partition and format the new drive before it's recognized.
http://manuals.info.apple.com/MANUALS/0/MA161/en_US/MacBook_13inch_HardDrive_DIY .pdf
(Yes, these instructions ARE 7 years old, but the procedure is the same for installing from DVD media.)

How do I transfer all my Firefox saved passwords to my new hard drive and operating system? Going from xp to windows 7.

How do I transfer all my Firefox saved passwords to my new hard drive and operating system? Going from xp to windows 7. I have the old hard drive hooked up as drive f. Can I copy and paste from old drive directory to new drive directory?

You need to copy 2 files, key3.db and signons.sqlite, from the old [[profiles|profile folder]] to the profile folder on the new computer.

My old hard drive crashed. How do you reload CS2 on new hard drive and get it activated?

My old hard drive crashed. How do you reload CS2 on new hard drive and get it activated?

You'll need to get onto Support and explain, and if you have not made a habbit of asking, they'll reset your activations limit back to zero. Or if you have only ever installed it once, you'll still have an activation to use.
http://helpx.adobe.com/x-productkb/policy-pricing/activation-deactivation-products.html

Need a Deal on a New Hard Drive and ?s. Recommend a brand or sale? :)

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for