G3/G4 Hard Drive Question

I just bought a G3 that was upgraded to a G4. It has three small drives and would like help setting this up with a larger drive for the operating system and one additional drive. It has the SCSI cables, but I also have a ATA plug on the mother board. What will this unit run best on? The processor is 350 mhz.
Thanks,
New Guy

How has it been "upgraded to a G4"? With something like these? Processor Upgrades for your Apple PowerMac G3 Blue & White at OtherWorldComputing.com

According to Mactracker Mactracker - get info on any Mac 128 Gb is the largest capacity drive that can be used in a G3 tower, but I'm not certain about a SCSI drive. To quote everymac.com for this model "It can officially support two Ultra ATA/33 hard drives -- drives larger than 128 GB are not supported. It could be configured with Ultra2 SCSI drives".

As you can see from my specs, I have a G3 b/w 350 with two ATA drives, both are under 128 Gb. I would suggest to you that you stick with two ATA drives of 120 Gb each, or one of 120 and another of, perhaps 80 Gb, the larger one being for storage.

If your processor is 350 MHz, then Panther is probably the maximum OS you'd want to use. There are plenty of reports of people trying Tiger on their G3 iMacs, even the 500 and 600 MHz ones, and it is slow. G3's of 300 MHz or greater handle Panther okay. It doesn't matter what you do with a G3 (ie. other than a significant and expensive upgrade), the processor speed is always going to be the limiting factor.

Thanks for all the great info! I was planning on a 120 using the ATA hook up. Now when it comes to shopping for the drive I can use any of the leading brands? Does it need to be designed for a Mac system?
Thanks again,
David

Your going to have to format the drive for the OS your useing so you need the correct install dics that has the drive setup program on it.

Yodi said:

Thanks for all the great info! I was planning on a 120 using the ATA hook up. Now when it comes to shopping for the drive I can use any of the leading brands? Does it need to be designed for a Mac system?

Click to expand...

Hi David - to quote my own experience, the 80 Gb in my G3 b/w is a Seagate upgrade that came with the 2-hand machine, the 40 Gb is an IBM which I bought 2-hand online and reformatted HFS, and installed OS 9.2.2 from the CD I bought. Neither drive has given me one bit of bother.

So no, you don't need to buy a Mac-specific hard drive, not that one exists. [Apple uses a range of drive brands inside its machines.] The main suppliers of smaller drives are Hitachi, Samsung, Seagate and Western Digital. A quick search shows that, in this country at least, WD are the only ones making a 120 Gb 3.5" drive.

Smaller capacity drives are becoming increasingly expensive nowadays because there is so little demand for them, but if I were buying I'd get a Hitachi (IBM), even 2-hand. They're quiet and they run a bit cooler (not really an issue inside a tower). Others might recommend Seagate or WD.

Whatever, have a heap of fun with that G3/G4. They were darned good computers in their day, and are still robust and efficient.