[Nico_from_Paris]

Dear all,

In a previous thread I described my problems with my iMac G5 (first gen.) who was soooo slow to boot and the pleasure I had to contemplate the beautiful beach ball while all my apps freeze. At the stage, your usefull advice was "dying HDD, I'd rather backup".

I bought an external usb2 HDD (Iomega 320 Gb) and managed after quite a struggle (do try to back up your User folder with freezing apps) to save data to the external HDD.
I erased the internal HDD (copying zeros) and re-installed Tiger, restored my data and downloaded again all my third parties freeware apps.

Everything went well for a week, weather was fine, up for new adventures !!

Unfortunately, this was only a temporary recovery, the beach ball poped up again. Let's go back to the fight, Disk Utility did not managed to repair the internal HDD (underlying task indicates an error and repair was stopped). Was unable to backup data at this stage (no big deal, a couple of new music files, a couple of photos, a bunch of emails). Erased the HDD again, ran Apple Hardware Test, nothing found, installed Tiger again, recovered old data again and .... beach ball and freezing apps again ...

Does it mean that my internal HDD has finally passed away ? Is it worth an excessive use of intensive medication ? Is there a way to have a "Rise and Walk !!" kind of cure ? (it has been done by a famous one in the far past, hasn't it).

I plan buying a new internal HDD and replace it myself, it looks like I can do that myself since it is a first gen. iMac. Is there anything I should be careful about when I buy and replace the internal HDD ?
I have read on forums that Western Digital HDD are worth the price. I would buy a 300 or so internal HDD and then carbon-copy it (using prosoft data backup software I will also buy) to make a alternative startup disk for the future (internal 300 Gb disk and external 320 Gb disk shall do it).

Is the proper internal HDD I shall buy, a 2'5 disk or a 3'5 disk ?

Many thanks for your advice and condolences

[SpecMode]

The iMac uses 3.5" HDDs.

[Nico_from_Paris]

thanks

[GladToBeHere]

Glad you saved your data first.