Features
How to buy a hard disk
Most Macs that use the ATA connection limit can't address the full capacity of disks larger than 128GB, so it's not worth adding a 250GB internal disk, say, to a Sawtooth Power Mac G4. If you need high-capacity storage, you'll either need to add another bus (either SATA or based on a newer ATA controller), usually via PCI, or add an external disk.
OTHER CHARACTERISTICS
As well as the amount that a given hard disk will hold, there are other characteristics that should influence your buying decision. The first is spindle speed - that is, the number of times per second that the physical platters revolve. This largely governs both how quickly data can be transferred to and from the disk, and how quickly the drive can position the relevant spot on the disk under the read/write heads to find the information you want.
The second is the buffer, a small area of flash RAM that holds frequently and recently accessed data to speed up data retrieval. Generally speaking, bigger buffers are better. Reliability is of paramount importance, but since manufacturers have started to abandon the traditional mean-time-betweenfailure (MTBF) yard stick, claiming it's not an accurate practical measurement of reliability, our best advice is to pick a drive with a generous warranty and maintain a consistent backup regime.
CONFIGURATION
If you're just replacing an internal drive, or adding a second drive either internally or externally, it's a simple enough process. If you need to copy data from your existing internal disk onto a replacement unit, the easiest thing to do is to buy an external case, fit the replacement drive in it and use OS X 10.4's Restore tab in Disk Utility (earlier versions don't create bootable
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This goes for laptop drives as well as those from desktop machines. However, while working with desktop hard disks is easy, we'd recommend not tinkering with laptops unless you're very sure of yourself.
You could also consider adding a Raid (redundant array of independent disks) system to your tower Mac. This can be done quickly and cheaply simply by adding a second internal disk and using Disk Utility to Raid the volumes together to provide speed or security benefits. A much more robust solution, though, is either to fit a dedicated hardware Raid controller card or buy an external Raid box that will manage the process of controlling the flow of data for you, and simply pass the data requested to the Mac over an eSATA or more familiar USB or FireWire connection.
When you format your drive, it's best to pick the Mac's native system, Mac OS Extended (often called HFS+) Journaled. Indeed, if we're talking about your boot drive, it can't use the main alternative format types, Unix and MS-DOS. Although, if you're formatting an external drive to shuttle data between different computer, it would be wise to format it using the MS-DOS option. Macs can read and write to this no problem - as can PCs - but Windows can't natively read HFS or HFS+ drives.
ALTERNATIVES
If all you need is a little capacity to shuttle documents around, consider a USB memory stick: they're cheap, require no extra cables or power supplies, and they're very small. Crucial's Gizmo drives impressed us with their speed and value for money (see www.crucial.com/uk for more information). Digital camera memory cards and Microdrives can also be pressed into service for small amounts of data, with the addition of a memory card reader. Alternatively, you could use web-based file transfer services to move files between Internetconnected Macs. Subscribers to Apple's .Mac service could use their iDisk, and everyone can use sites such as www.mailbigfile.com. An iPod can act as an external disk - check the relevant option in iTunes' preferences.
