How to hook up old imac Hd for extra storage on my G3 Tower

I have about 5 old imac 6 gig hard drives (yeah I know, 6 gig, but its just collecting dust) sitting around my house. I want to hook one up in my G3 tower for extra MP3 storage.

I have 2 HD cables inside my G3 tower, but when I hook up both hard drives my computer won't start, I get a folder with a question mark. Is there something I have to do with the jumpers on back the hard drives or something. Any input appreicated.

either switch both drives on one cable to cable select (or CS). or make sure your boot drive is set to primary or master and the other drive to secondary or slave.


edit: you could also get a usb or firewire enclosure and swap between some of these spare drives, or get more than one enclosure.

eric said:

either switch both drives on one cable to cable select (or CS). or make sure your boot drive is set to primary or master and the other drive to secondary or slave.


edit: you could also get a usb or firewire enclosure and swap between some of these spare drives, or get more than one enclosure.

Click to expand...

How to I set the hard drives as primary and bootable, does it have to do with the jumpers on back the HD.

The HD cases are a good idea, I may just go that route if I can't figure it out, thanks for the response.

On the back of the drive next to the ribbon connector are some jumper pins if you look at the case or maybe on the hard drive board you should see some labels for the jumpers. Depending on the manufacture it may be spelled out or the initials ms = master/single, cs = cable select, sl = slave. Eric suggests putting both drivers to cable select. If it works great. I don't really remember what mine are set at, but both my drives have a system on them so i can select the startup drive in system preferences. I assume the 6 gig drive will not be a start up drive. I think both of mine are on master (again not positive and to lazy to look)(I finally looked both are on cable select) so (disregard) if cable select doesn't work then try both on master. If you have a problem with finding the right pins the manufacture usually has specs on all their drives including pin set ups.

I forgot to ask are the G3 hard drives ide or scsi. I never owned a G3 so I really don't know but if it is like the legacy macs with a scsi drive you may need to set a jumper for an address. Again drive manufactures have that info on there sites.
This is all assuming that both your tower and your old imac use the same type of drive.

Thanks everyone, I will try the jumpers tonight. I did break down and buy a external HD case on ebay for $20 shipped. Although I have 2 more hard drvies to use, still want to use one internally if I can. I will keep everyone posted.

I'm a graphic artist, and just want to use the 6 gig for current projects and maybe the external HD for MP3's and such so I can hook it up to my car stereo that has a USB port

I am almost positive these g3 harddrives are IDE.

Thanks again.