G4 Power PC (800fw model) and HD's ?

[RayLee]

I am sorry, I am 100% sure the info is already here but I get hundreds of hits that are unrelated to my questions.

I have a G4 (firewire 800/gigbit model "mirrored doors") 2 gig ram....anyway I decided to replace my 2 160gig HD's with larger 300gig units, but I am unsure of what to buy....The 300gig Seagates seem to have a different cable system than my older units (old models say "Ultra ATA" the new ones I bought say Serial ATA)

Will these work with some new cables or sis I indeed get teh wrong units.

also how large can I go? will my Power PC G4 10.4.9 be able to "see" 300 gig drives?

thank you, I am sitting here screwdriver in hand waiting for your answer

 

[dtravis7]

Those are SATA (Serial ATA) drives. To use those with your machine you need a PCI SATA card that works with OSX. OWC has them. They are probably $70-$100. Your Mac takes IDE drives.

Does your MDD read the full capacity of the 160GB IDE drives you have in it now? If so it should work with a 300GB IDE. What is the CPU speed on that MDD tower?

All Mirror Drive Door (MDD) Macs should handle the larger hard drives.

 

[RayLee]

Thank you, but now I have a couple more questions, will the new drives/PCI SATA card be faster than my older 160's? both 7200 RPM the new ones have a 16mb catch vs. 8 if I remember correctly. (both are Seagate's)

If its going to be the same speed I could just toss the 300's in my Mac Pro and add an extra ultra ATA 160 to the G4 (I figured I would wait a bit to decide what size and configuration would be best for the new machine, but its an option now.

The G4 is a single 1 GHz Power PC, not the fastest but will be great for work, we shoot sports in JPG so even though they are 12 mega pixel cameras the files are pretty easy to deal with (storage is the big issue, I can shoot 4000 images in a weekend)

anything to look out fro i fI buy the card for the G4? compatibility issues with the Seagate's or anything?

thanks again
Ray

Those are SATA (Serial ATA) drives. To use those with your machine you need a PCI SATA card that works with OSX. OWC has them. They are probably $70-$100. Your Mac takes IDE drives.

Does your MDD read the full capacity of the 160GB IDE drives you have in it now? If so it should work with a 300GB IDE. What is the CPU speed on that MDD tower?

All Mirror Drive Door (MDD) Macs should handle the larger hard drives.

 

[dtravis7]

Performance wise I am not sure as I have not as yet used a SATA PCI card in my G4 PowerMac, but if all the drives are 7200 RPM I doubt it will be much faster if any. If it were ME, I would put those nice 300GB drives in the Mac Pro where they really will get maximum benefit and add another Ultra ATA to your MDD/

 

[RayLee]

Looks like I may just drop the 300's into the new system, so stay tuned for more elementary questions as I want to make the 300's mirror each other for an instant back up.

I think I will just get the largest ultra ATA's I can find for the G4, it will serve me well for many more years at the race track and will peel the paint from the under RAMed Imacs we are using now.

Kinda bummed, it looks like I can just stick the new drives in the new computer no cables or anything, not going to give me that "I did it myself feeling of satisfaction"

thank you for all your help
Ray

Performance wise I am not sure as I have not as yet used a SATA PCI card in my G4 PowerMac, but if all the drives are 7200 RPM I doubt it will be much faster if any. If it were ME, I would put those nice 300GB drives in the Mac Pro where they really will get maximum benefit and add another Ultra ATA to your MDD/