Internal Hard Drive Advice Required!

[pomme]

Hello!

I am very tempted to buy an internal hard-drive for my G4 Digital Audio PowerMac. I am looking at either a 120Gb or 160Gb drive. I spoke to one Mac reseller and he said that my mac has a restriction on the number of additional hard-disk space I can add. Is he right?

I hope not as I need to add as much space as I can afford.

Also, can you guys make any recommendations?

Thanks
Pomme

I currently have 60 Gb hard disk space.

 

[Badger]

Some older powermacs are limited to a maximum of 128 gb disks because of the ATA controller chip. Check a site like www.lowendmac.com for specific info about your model.

 

[Racing666]

the G3 B&W only has ATA-33...

 

[pomme]

Thanks for the information and the link. Having looked at the specifications, my current HD is a Ultra ATA/66.

I am really at a lost to know which hard-disk to buy! What do I need to look for in the specifications? I've looked on the dab.com website and some of the specifications have ATA-133. Could I install that or would it not be compatible?

Cheers!

Pomme

 

[macEfan]

If you can get an serial ATA controller card from http://macsales.com

Then you can add hundreds of Gigibits of space without having any problems.
(Serial ATA is faster thatn ATA anyway)

 

[Racing666]

i just went from the ultra2 scsi 9.1 gb in my B&W G3 450, to a Maxtor 60gb ATA on the onboard controller and i noticed a HUGE improvement in speed...i don't know how or why, but... i thought scsi was supposed to be faster than ata...guess not..i'm still going to eventually get a ATA133 card, if i can ever find one for $40-$50...$80-$100 is too much for me right now, and the onboard does fine for what i do now... sorry to hijack your post pomme..

 

[macEfan]

Don't get an ATA 133 get serial ATA. It is much faster and future hard drives will only be serial ATA

 

[Avalon]

the G3 B&W only has ATA-33...

The Digital Audio is a G4...

 

[Avalon]

Don't get an ATA 133 get serial ATA. It is much faster and future hard drives will only be serial ATA

Forget that...SerialATA is actually not that much faster than IDE, especially not in an old computer like the G4 Digital Audio...it's slow FSB would not bring more benefit than an ATA133 controller. And we are still far away from the point where SATA drives will totally replace IDE drives. Remember, PC's are still sold with RS232, Parallel and PS/2 ports, though nowadays nearly unnecessary...
Until then, his G4 would be good for the museum, it is already pretty old today...

To pomme (or Apple, in english ):
You can use an ATA133 drive on a ATA66 controller without any troubles, it's downwards compatible.
Though an ATA133 controller card would have two benefits: it would actually speed up drive access, and remove the limit of 128GB, if that limit is valid.

 

[pomme]

Hi Avalon

So, are you saying that I can buy a ATA-133 hard disk for my Digital Audio G4 if I install a ATA-133 controller card? However, if I don't install the controller card, I can still have the ATA-133 hard disk but with a limit of 128Gb capacity. Is the 128Gb limit an overall storage space or just for additional space (ie I currently have 60GB, can I add an additional 68 Gb or 128Gb)?

If I have got this right (boy, this is confusing !), with the ATA-133 controller card, I can install as much capacity as I can afford.

Apologies for all the questions, but I'm really don't want to make a mistake here.... and I don't have a clue about hard drives, ATA, IDE, SATA etc etc etc!

Thanks so much for your help

Manzana (Spanish for Apple according to google!)

 

[Badger]

Here's the Apple note for the 128 gb limit: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178. From this info and specs at Low End Mac (www.lowendmac.com) it seems your model is affected by this limit. However the 128 gb applies to the volume size not the size of the hard disk. So if you install a 200 gb disk it can be partitioned into say 120 & 80 gbs so you get full use of it. It also means that two hard disks on the same bus are treated independently and do not add together. So to try to simplify this for you: given your current setup you can keep your 60 gb disk and add another. If the new disk is larger than 128 gbs it should be partitioned so that each part is less than 128 gbs. You can use an ATA 133 on the system you have without a new controller card.

 

[Avalon]

Hi pomme (Aapel in Luxemburgish ),

Badger gave you the exact explanation. I have nothing to add to this.

 

[pomme]

Thanks guys for all the information. I will now look at an ATA-133 HD and not worry about a controller card for now.

This has made me understand this area a little bit more

Cheers!

Pomme - 苹果 Chinese for Apple - great in any language (apologies for being so cheesy!)

 

[pomme]

This is my last question... promise!

I'm running Mac OS 10.3.8 and will eventually move to Tiger once I've sorted myself out with a DVD-R...

Will I still need to worry about my G4 limits and partitions? I spoke to a Mac reseller today and she said that as I currently run Panther, it will recognise the drive and can quite happily allow a 250GB HD to be installed.

Is that right?

 

[Badger]

For the 250 gb HD: it will work with Tiger but you'll still have the 128 gb issue. The 128 gb limit is hardware related, the ATA cantroller chip, not because of the OS version. Just partition it and Bob's your uncle.

 

[pomme]

Cheers Badger!

Pomme