- #BEST 3.5 HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC PRO#
- #BEST 3.5 HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC SOFTWARE#
- #BEST 3.5 HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC MAC#
Most laptops with either operating system now come with at least one oval-shaped USB-C port, and it's the one you'll want to use for connecting your external drive.
#BEST 3.5 HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC MAC#
- Best Malware Removal and Protection Softwareīuying an external hard drive or SSD for your Mac is not all that different from buying one for your Windows PC.
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Then mount the drive into the case, make any connections, close everything up, and you’re good to go.
If you’re installing an ATA/IDE drive, make sure that the jumper setting is set to Master before installing (this doesn’t apply to SATA drives). Installing a drive into an enclosure varies case by case. Look for one with a cooling fan (especially for larger capacity drives) or a heat dissipating design for better drive longevity. To build your own external drive, find an enclosure that supports your disk drive’s size and interface, preferred connection(s), and design aesthetic OWC,, and are good places to buy enclosures online. It also provides a convenient way to initialize a new internal drive, allowing you to enclose your new internal drive as an external drive, clone your old drive’s contents to it, and then swap the drives around. All you need is an enclosure.Īn enclosure is basically a shell to house an ATA/IDE or SATA 2.5- or 3.5-inch internal drive, providing power (bus power or a built-in supply) and connection interfaces. If you upgraded your Mac’s internal drive, what are you going to do with your old drive? Rather than stash it or trash it, you can easily (and inexpensively) convert it into an external hard drive. Later G4s, all G5s, and all Intel Macs can accommodate any drive capacity, but the iMac G3, Power Mac G3 (blue and white), and early Power Mac G4 have a limit of 128GB. Online retailers such as OWC provide Web guides that list storage options by Mac model.Ĭapacity Internal 3.5-inch hard drives have capacities of up to 2TB, while 2.5-inch drives provide up to 500GB.
#BEST 3.5 HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC PRO#
Likewise, recent Apple desktops (the Intel iMac, Mac Pro, iMac G5, and Power Mac G5) use a 3.5-inch SATA drive (the Mac Pro uses a SATA II drive), while older desktops (the iMac G3 and G4, and the Power Mac G3/G4) use a 3.5-inch ATA/IDE drive. MacBooks, MacBook Pros, and Mac minis use a 2.5-inch SATA drive, while PowerBooks and iBooks use a 2.5-inch ATA/IDE drive-SATA and ATA interfaces are not interchangeable.
Western Digital Scorpio Black 250GB Drive Compatibility Get a hard drive that matches the physical dimensions and connection interface of your Mac.
#BEST 3.5 HARD DRIVE FOR IMAC SOFTWARE#
To ensure that nothing slips through the cracks (like your e-mail archive, bookmarks, fonts, and other important files), you might want to consider using drive-cloning software such as Bombich Software’s Carbon Copy Cloner ( ) or Shirt Pocket’s SuperDuper ( ), which easily and thoroughly duplicates your hard drive’s contents. You can use an external desktop hard drive, use a second Mac in FireWire target disk mode, or burn DVDs. Regardless of which Mac you have, if you decide to replace your current internal hard drive, you’ll need to copy all your current hard drive’s files onto another storage device before you do the switcheroo.