[G4] Newcomer to G4 - query on hard disks

[Ronald Steinke]

On Dec 23, 2005, at 8:54 AM, Ian Piper wrote:

I have just purchased a dual 450 MHz G4 (I think it is called a Gigabit 
Ethernet model). I have a question about hard disk expansion and would 
appreciate any advice you could offer.

The machine has a 30 GB disk, located in drive bay 3. From the manual 
it seems that I can put two disks in this bay, and I can see the extra 
IDE and power cables to allow this. However, the manual also says that 
the G4 supports up to 3 internal drives. I can't see any IDE (or other 
for that matter) connectors in the other two drive bays, so how do I 
fit a third drive? Is it possible to put an internal hard drive in the 
bay where the zip drive would normally go (there is a second IDE bus 
with the DVD-ROM drive on it and a spare IDE connector)? If it were 
possible presumably I would have to set the DVD jumpers to slave and 
the disk's jumpers to master. I have a Mac Cube and I am pretty sure 
that it has one IDE bus, holding the disk and DVD-ROM, so on the face 
of it it should be possible. Has anyone done anything like this? 

Brief background - I would like to use the existing drive as a boot 
disk and add two RAID (mirrored) 120 GB disks to use the computer as a 
file server for my network.

Ian,

I have done extensive additions to my G4 Gbit model and have found the 
following information to be very helpful to install additional drives.

In the original configuration, you should have one drive located 
closest to the rear panel of the chassis. That is the bay that is 
nearest to the IDE ribbon coming from the motherboard. If you have the 
multiple hard drive mounting sled (it is a two level bracket shaped 
like a squared-off letter U with holes in the bottom and sides for 
screws to hold two hard drives). You should also have an IDE ribbon 
that has three connectors attached, one to go into the motherboard and 
the other two to go into the hard drives. The marked wire of the ribbon 
should go nearest the power socket of the drive ALWAYS!

The other two bays have flat mounting sleds and will allow you to 
install additional drives up to a total of four if you have the double 
drive sled already mounted with two drives. You will need to add a PCI 
ATA IDE controller card to provide the needed IDE bus connections for 
the third and fourth drives. Sonnet company makes a variety of models 
and you should get the best one you can afford with two bus sockets and 
the ribbons for the drives.

You will need to get a Y-splitter to give you the needed power 
connection plugs for all the drives. Your machine already has one power 
connection with two plugs on it which should be used with the double 
drive sled and a second power connection which only has one plug. That 
is where you will use the Y-splitter for the added power connections.

One problem that I encountered is the amount of power available from 
the power supply. When I put in my fourth drive, I found that it 
occasionally would not mount at startup. If I did a keyboard restart, 
the drive would appear and I could continue working. However, this 
caused me to worry about keeping the drive mounted while working, so I 
removed the two 40Gb drives I had and replaced them with a single 120Gb 
unit. I now have three drives installed in the chassis: one 80Gb (main 
drive), one 60Gb (for file backups), and one 120Gb (for games).

I do not recommend removing the Zip drive. I have made too much use of 
mine for transferring files to and from my office and home. I have no 
experience with RAID assemblies, so have no comment to make on that.

My final configuration is:

G4 Gbit Ethernet model
1GHz upgraded processor from Sonnet
1.5Gb RAM
Pioneer DVR-110 DL-DVD/RW
250Mb Zip
120Gb Western Digital hard drive in bay 1 (bottom of bracket as Master)
80Gb Western Digital hard drive in bay 1 (top of bracket as Slave)
60GB Maxtor hard drive in bay 2 (center bracket as Master)
All drives have OS-10.4.2 currently so I can boot from each as needed 
or desired.

I hope this gives you a better understanding of the expansion 
capabilities of your Mac.

Have a safe holiday season.