" Dear Joachim, Thank you for sending your Seagate E-mail inquiry.
We have discovered that if you disable write caching then it seems to solve the issue. There should be an option in your raid controller to turn that feature off. Please let me know if that solves your issue.
If you have any additional questions, please let me know.
Regards, Krista S.
Phone: 800-732-4283 (North America)
00.800.4.SEAGATE (Europe)
1 800 759 109 (Asia, Australia and New Zealand)
Web: www.seagate.com/support/index.html"

There's no hardware RAID controller in his G5 tower (nor the onboard Mac Pro SATA) and I'm leery that this would resolve the problem but if anyone knows of a way to disable write caching in OS X on internal drives, let me know. (IIRC it's enabled by default on internal drives w/OS X but not external drives. And then there's the actual drive's write caching...) And as mentioned previously, these drives also have issues with some external case/bridge boards.
I doubt it will help (with the root cause) but I asked Joachim if he'd also try turning off Spotlight indexing on the drives also (via Spotlight prefs/privacy setting), just as a test as he noted (naturally) increased activity on the drive/array often triggers crashes.

"Just installed a Western Digital Velociraptor WD3000HLFS SATA drive into my white (2006) 24" Core2Duo iMac w/2GB RAM. Others have commented that these drives are noiser, however my experience has been quite the opposite with complete silence even under heavy disk loading. (I think the iMac design should muffle most drive noise (compared to tower case designs). An earlier VR/iMac owner didn't mention any drive noise. But there were some drive noise complaints from pre-2008 Mac Pro owners IIRC (2008 Mac Pros have rubber isolators in the HD bays that should help a bit) - Oliver used an HD isolator in his (1st gen) Mac Pro to address that. (ref: How I "Silenced" a WD Raptor in a (1st gen) Mac Pro ).-Mike)

Boot time in Leopard 10.5.5 is greatly reduced, and the system is much 'snappier'.

Installation process was a little simpler than some of the walkthroughs that I've seen around the web, as there was less of the 'foil' to be removed/replaced once inside. It took around 15 minutes end to end, and gave me an opportunity to clean out some dust and get into the corners of the LCD to clean it properly.
Just make sure that you have some rubber cement handy for the temperature sensor to be re-applied to the drive.
-Scott"

I want to upgrade the HD in my AL (2007) iMac but I use it so much I keep putting it off. (And need to get some large suction cups at the hardware store to remove the display glass.) But I'm looking for much more capacity (i.e. a 1TB drive) and willing to give up some pure performance for 3x more storage space.

• AT&T to deliver iPhone tethering 'soon,' says CEO
• J.D. Power: iPhone tops in customer satisfaction
• Multiplayer Marathon for Charity
• How to stream music wirelessly (Apple how-to video on Airport Express setup)
• OS X Leopard One Year Later: 5 OS Lessons Learned (pcworld)
• Microsoft Haters, Mac Daddies and Linux Lovers
• Lotus Symphony 1.2b (beta) (with OS X 10.5/Intel-based Mac support)
• IBM Unveils Mac Support, Roadmap For Lotus Symphony
• Apple's iPod Genius Gets Fat Retirement Package (silicon alley insider)
• FourTrack Audio Recorder app for iPhone, iPod Touch
• Nisus Writer Pro 1.2
• DrawIt 3.7.2
• AudioLobe 3.4
• Apple Faces Lawsuit Over Defective PowerBook G4 (memory slot) (Apple had a Memory Slot Repair Extension Program for that but it ended on July 24, 2008.)
• Once Thought Safe, WPA Wi-Fi Encryption Is (partially) Cracked (Most routers also support WPA2, which hasn't been cracked they say)
• Intel Calls Core i7 ("Nehalem") World's Fastest, Sets Launch Date
• SanDisk claims new SSDs will dramatically raise speed (up to 100x), endurance
• Adobe Patches Acrobat, Acrobat Reader
• Report: Obama, McCain campaign computers were compromised by 'foreign entity'
• Boot Camp 2.0: Cannot install Windows Vista with LSI Logic 4GB HBA Fibre Channel card installed (Apple)
• Cisco doubles router speed with new processor
• Feature films coming to YouTube
• Speedy USB 3.0 spec to be unveiled
• Take your TV to-go with AT&T CruiseCast
• 40-MPG, 450-Horsepower Hydrogen Scorpion Unveiled (I want one...)