G4 Dual 450 Gigabit HD Size Limit Question

klt


Joined
Apr 20, 2008
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Trying to upgrade to new, larger IDE hard drive in this G4 running OS X 10.3. - This one is pretty old and has begun to make more noise than it should. I understand I can go up to 10.4-Tiger but want to upgrade the hard drive 1st.

I understand there is a limit to the size of the hard drive this computer will recognize. I also remember reading something about a driver for sale that would remove this existing limit.

Has anyone heard of this driver? If so, does it work? Any suggestions about how to accomplish the happy installation of a larger hard drive are appreciated.
 
Joined
Nov 25, 2005
Messages
282
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Singapore
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook Air 11" (2012), Macbook Pro 15" (Early 2008), Mac Mini i5 (2012)
I can offer an alternative, however it'll cost a little more. I used to have the same model, and I ended up throwing a SATA controller card, and a 250gb SATA hard drive in it (or maybe 2, can't remember). Got a nice little performance boost and didn't have to worry about drivers, it just worked. Just throwing that out there.
 
Joined
Jan 31, 2008
Messages
375
Reaction score
8
Points
18
Location
Chicago
Your Mac's Specs
2.53 Intel Core Duo Mac Mini; 4g RAM; 350g HD, OS 10.6.3
quick question about this. when you get a new controller card, does it automatically recognize your existing, formatted drives? or do you have to back it all up, reformat and then rebuild? im looking to do this as a summer project. thanks in advance.
 
Joined
Nov 25, 2005
Messages
282
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Singapore
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook Air 11" (2012), Macbook Pro 15" (Early 2008), Mac Mini i5 (2012)
quick question about this. when you get a new controller card, does it automatically recognize your existing, formatted drives? or do you have to back it all up, reformat and then rebuild? im looking to do this as a summer project. thanks in advance.

Your old drives will work just fine, the controller card will simply let you add whatever SATA card you want. Personally, I like to put the faster sata drive as a boot drive, then keep an IDE drive for extra storage, but thats up to you.

Make sure you buy a mac compatible controller card of course.
 
Joined
Jan 31, 2008
Messages
375
Reaction score
8
Points
18
Location
Chicago
Your Mac's Specs
2.53 Intel Core Duo Mac Mini; 4g RAM; 350g HD, OS 10.6.3
excellent thanks.
 
Joined
Oct 22, 2007
Messages
8,967
Reaction score
287
Points
83
Location
London
Your Mac's Specs
Mac Mini Core i7 2012 | White 2009 MacBook 2 Ghz | 733 Mhz G4 Quicksilver
Another alternative is to put a 120 gig drive in the G4 (near the upper limit it will recognise) and run the OS and apps off that

Avenger2SER rightly said that a SATA controller will give you bigger drives, I hope he can help but I could only find quite expensive mac compatible cards

A cheaper route is to install a cheap PCI USB 2 card and this will give you access to any size external USB drive. I have kept my smallish 80 gig internal drive but all my music and movies are on an external USB 2 500 gig drive.

But if Avenger2SER's advice points you to an affordable SATA solution - go with that
 
Joined
Jan 31, 2008
Messages
375
Reaction score
8
Points
18
Location
Chicago
Your Mac's Specs
2.53 Intel Core Duo Mac Mini; 4g RAM; 350g HD, OS 10.6.3
yeah, my problem is that i have an internal 250g but i didnt realize that it would only recognize 128 or whatever when i bought it. so i just want to get an IDE controller card so it will recognize the entire drive.
 
Joined
Nov 25, 2005
Messages
282
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Singapore
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook Air 11" (2012), Macbook Pro 15" (Early 2008), Mac Mini i5 (2012)
Well I got a good deal on the one in my old G4 on ebay if I remember correctly, and the SATA drive was free. I have one more SATA card available if anyone is interested, I just pulled it out of my dead B&W G3.
 
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
25,564
Reaction score
486
Points
83
Location
Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Do your homework carefully before investing in a controller card and SATA particularly the alleged speed hump as SATA are reportedly not so much faster than your IDE 100 ATA 7200 RPM HDD.

Check out this link for SATA and PATA, formerly IDE:-

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f7/whats-sata-speed-108829/
 
Joined
Nov 25, 2005
Messages
282
Reaction score
3
Points
18
Location
Singapore
Your Mac's Specs
Macbook Air 11" (2012), Macbook Pro 15" (Early 2008), Mac Mini i5 (2012)
Do your homework carefully before investing in a controller card and SATA particularly the alleged speed hump as SATA are reportedly not so much faster than your IDE 100 ATA 7200 RPM HDD.

Check out this link for SATA and PATA, formerly IDE:-

http://club.cdfreaks.com/f7/whats-sata-speed-108829/

I paired mine to a 10k rpm raptor drive at the time, and I noticed a nice speed difference. You may be right about 7200rpm drives however, I never used one of these with my g4
 
Joined
Nov 28, 2007
Messages
25,564
Reaction score
486
Points
83
Location
Blue Mountains NSW Australia
Your Mac's Specs
Silver M1 iMac 512/16/8/8 macOS 11.6
Now that would be a speed increase with a Raptor which is 33% faster than the 7,200 RPM drive and 100% faster than an old 5,400RPM approximately.
 
OP
klt

klt


Joined
Apr 20, 2008
Messages
12
Reaction score
0
Points
1
Thanks to everyone for the very useful information. Steep learning curve for me, but I am happy to wade back into the Mac pond after many years away. Different world for sure which is a very good thing.
Just to confirm: My G4 Gigabit 450DP running 10.3 (soon to be 10.4), 1.5GB memory, without an additional controller card can only see a max of 120GB HD. No one said anything about some sort of driver that would allow the existing set up to see a larger HD. Looks like I need to save up for at controller card - SATA looks like the best way to go.
Again, I very much appreciate all of the help, input, etc.
 
Joined
Apr 9, 2008
Messages
67
Reaction score
0
Points
6
I had posted here about a month ago. I wanted to upgrade my G4 Sawtooth from the 2 - 10GB drives that were installed.

I was informed that the G4 Sawtooth could not handle a drive larger than a 120GB. BUT.... I could piggy-back 2 - 120GB's, which is exactly what I did.

They work just fine. Just make sure to move those little toggle switches around on the back of the drive, or you'll wonder why only one is reading or none at all. LOL (which is what happened to me until I had seen the switches on my old drives).
 

Shop Amazon


Shop for your Apple, Mac, iPhone and other computer products on Amazon.
We are a participant in the Amazon Services LLC Associates Program, an affiliate program designed to provide a means for us to earn fees by linking to Amazon and affiliated sites.
Top