Can Older G4 Power Mac "Read" Large Hard Drives?

I have an older G4 Power Mac (400 MHz) and have outgrown the original hard drive. I'm interested in purchasing and installing a second, larger hard drive. I've heard from a computer tech at a local Mac store that my older Mac G4 cannot "read" or accommodate a hard drive larger than 80 GB. I've looked for any information for this subject on Google, but so far nothing. I would appreciate any kind of information on this subject from someone who knows about this.

The standard 400MHz Mac can handle uop to 128GB HDD. For over that size you would have to install a PCI Controller Card such as this:-

(*) ACard PCI ATA/133 Hard Drive Controller... (AEC-6280M) at OWC

Personally I would look for a MDD 1.25GHz Dual Processor model for not much more than the price of a PCI card and they can take larger drive sizes.

SATA is also an option, but unfortunately, few companies make Mac-compatible PCI cards. Those that do gouge you like crazy. You can get a generic SATA or IDE card for $15-$20, but there's no way of knowing if it'll work on a Mac (especially an older Power Mac G4).

It's better to either get a newer machine capable of using large drives or to buy an external hard drive case.

My G4 has that limit as well, I investigated the ATA and SATA cards, but frankly they were too expensive (I thought I would be better off saving the money for a new Mac)

One low cost option is to buy a USB 2 PCI card (10 -15 bucks) and attach a USB 2 external drive.

The USB 2 card will not have the 128 gig limit of the G4s ATA bus, and you can free uploads of space on your internal start-up drive by moving movies and music onto the external drive

For louishen suggestion you will need to buy and install a USB2 PCI card. The generic ones usually work and if you PM me will pass on a Hong Kong dealer who sells USB2 cards that work well in G4 towers. Also machines with PCI cards can have sleep problems.

PPC machines will not boot from a USB2 external drive. If you want the external drive bootable use Firewire.