Mac Upgrade - RAM and new Hard Drive Adivce

masterthief

Hoping some Mac users on here are savvy with prices, etc.

Okay, I have a G5 dual 2.0gh and I want to add 2GB RAM and either (a) add another internal hard drive or (b) get an external hard drive (looking around 500GB here).

from the 'research' I've done into this, the RAM on the apple store seems way more expensive than is available elsewhere, and I was gonna go with a Formac 500Gb friewire external hard drive but have heard several complaints about their reliability in the review sections of websites (including the apple discussion forums).

My two main questions are:

(1) Is there any/much difference between memory and HD brands when it comes to macs? are there any key brands which work better than others, any to be avoided?

(2) are there any restrictions on what gear I can buy? (i.e. do I have to find mac-specialist RAM or HD's, or will the RAM you can get from a pc store work equally well?

basically hoping to save as much cash as poss. here, but don't want to compromise on quality either. so any advice, links, etc., hugely appreciated. :beer: :beer:

colin79666

It's probably best to get ram that is for macs - not necessarily expensive apple stuff though. At work we often use Kingston mac ram. Crucial also do mac ram (and guarantee compatibility).
As for hard drive external has some advantages - you could put an external drive in a "caddy". I have an Icybox firewire and usb 2 caddy with a spare 160GB Seagate drive - works fine with my iMac.

masterthief

thanks for the advice - has the kingston worked okay in your workplace? I'll do another search for prices based on your comments.

I'm hoping to get a 500GB hard drive now, then another 500GB within the next 12 months or so. I do a lot of music production work so have to save huge amounts of data for that. the idea I'm eventually going for is 1 HD for backup imaging, 1 HD with software and OSX and non-music files, and one HD for music files (trust, I can easily fill 500GB with just music.

I was gonna get an external HD since its easier to connect and allows me to use the music files on both my G5 and my powerbook. do you still recommend getting two external HD's and using one for backup and the other for music files? or do you think there's a better way of doing this?

moomintroll_3

I've always used Crucial ram to upgrade PCs and Macs and it's been absolutely fine.

masterthief

thanks moomintroll - any thoughts on my plan to get two HD's?

marco_79

hi

I have just upgraded my iMac memory from 1GB to 4GB as I do a lot of video work. Play are selling 2GB Kingston Imac ram for £27.99. I got 2 of these installed and iMac is flying.

As for your hard drives I don't see any problem getting to 500 Gb drives would go for 7200 rpm ones if you can, you can get these pretty cheap now too.

moomintroll_3

masterthief wrote: »

thanks moomintroll - any thoughts on my plan to get two HD's?

To be honest, two HD's is what I do. I've got an external which holds music and other media and another external HD that I use to clone the internal HD and the media HD. Works well for me using SuperDuper.

colin79666

masterthief wrote: »

thanks for the advice - has the kingston worked okay in your workplace? I'll do another search for prices based on your comments.

works great in several hundred macs

masterthief

thanks guys - I' the only vaguely 'puter-savvy person in my family and the only person I know who regularly uses Macs, so while I figured I'd be okay with my plan it was great to get confirm from other Mac users.

gonna do a price compare on Kingston and Crucial and decide from there.

also props to mentioning the rpm Marco.

aight, once I get this sorted I'll probs have to ask a bit more advice re getting a 'serious' backing up procedure, so I hope you're all around to comment in a few weeks as I could do with advice (seriously considering a reformat of HD and reinstall of software to ensure the system is totally clean, but had the horrible realisation that I don't have iLife discs - they were preloaded - and I can only remember about half the freeware and gadgets I've downloaded.....)

epz_2

masterthief wrote: »

thanks for the advice - has the kingston worked okay in your workplace? I'll do another search for prices based on your comments.

I'm hoping to get a 500GB hard drive now, then another 500GB within the next 12 months or so. I do a lot of music production work so have to save huge amounts of data for that. the idea I'm eventually going for is 1 HD for backup imaging, 1 HD with software and OSX and non-music files, and one HD for music files (trust, I can easily fill 500GB with just music.

I was gonna get an external HD since its easier to connect and allows me to use the music files on both my G5 and my powerbook. do you still recommend getting two external HD's and using one for backup and the other for music files? or do you think there's a better way of doing this?

personaly i would look at a buffalo double disk nas, they start at £150 odds for 1Tb stororage and you can either use it portably with usb/firewire or plug it into your network and anybody on the network can access the drive.

never had to setup osx to do it but i imagin its the same as mounting a maped drive with samba