[G4] Internal Hard Drive compatibility for AGP

[JayB]

Well of course it just blows me away how helpful you guys are.  I've  
posed maybe 4 questions here over the last year and gotten solid,  
considered advice.  Thanks.

The reason I want to replace one of the drives (maybe both if cheap  
enough without losing speed) is, I think one may be about to crater.   
I'm running OS 9 on one and Panther on the other.  I've seen some  
unexplained slowing of the performance (although it's only at 1/2   
capacity) and a few times when running under the Panther drive, the  
OS 9 drive failed to show up on the desktop.  I've run disk utility  
and Tech Tool Deluxe.  I'll be dropping the OS 9 soon, but I like  
having the ability to go back to old software that I don't think I  
can upgrade or export (I've been running my photo biz on Macs since  
''87).

So, I was thinking I should just spend $50 and replace the suspect  
drive (or both).  I just didn't think I could simply order any old  
IDE drive from Dealmac and plug and play.  Will I need to buy a  
different ribbon for that option?

~And more importantly (I use this machine for retouching on Photoshop  
CS), is there going to be a drop in performance moving from the 7200  
SCSI drive to an IDE?  Perhaps this is a basic question, but I'm not  
familiar with either the terminology or differences in drives and  
controllers.

Thanks again,

~Jay




On Jan 3, 2007, at 5:57 PM, John Niven wrote:

> Jay,
>
> You can fit three drives to your G4 so there is no
> need to lose one.
>
> As you have spent money on a CPU upgrade (not my first
> choice), you should upgrade your disk(s). There are
> two factors 1) rotational speed and 2) data transfer
> rate.
>
> The motherboards built-in interface is only ATA33
> which is slow by todays standards though modern,
> faster drives will be backwards compatable. You will
> be limited to 128Gb even if the drive is bigger.
> However, it's still an advantage to have a high
> rotational speed. Make sure it's 7200rpm. It will
> "feel" more responsive.
>
> So you could add a third 128Gb for the cost of the
> drive and a ribbon cable.
>
> Are you using OSX? If you are, you should use the disk
> utility to create a RAID 0 (stripe) array with your
> two 18G drives, and then put your OS on that array.
> You get what appears to be a 36Gb drive that is ~
> double the speed and free!
>
> Next up the investment scale you can add a Sonnet
> Serial ATA PCI card to hook up a >128Gb SATA drive.
> This works very well for me with a Maxtor 250Gb SATA
> drive providing the mass storage.
>
> However you can also just rip out your current scsi
> devices and use the one SATA drive - I get comparable
> read/write times between my SATA drive and a striped
> pair of U160 SCSI drives that run from a ATTO UL3D pci
> card.
>
> Don't buy an Airport card, buy a wireless G PCI card.
> I have one by Belkin that works with OSX out the box.
> You might be running out of PCI slots now ... :-)
>
> John
>
> --- JayB <FromJay at joimail.com> wrote:
>
>> I've looked back through 6 mos of archive and read
>> the specs at
>> 'lowendmac.com' but still don't feel l have
>> confidence in knowing
>> what I can buy to upgrade the internal drives in my
>> G4/500 AGP
>> (upgraded to an Sonnet ST 1ghtz).  It has factory
>> 2x18 Ultra2 SCSI /
>> Dual card drives.
>>
>> My question is- can I buy pretty much any IDE drive
>> to replace one or
>> both the internals?  I know about the 128mb max.
>> But I just want to
>> upgrade (cheaply) to larger drives without suffering
>> speed (I thought
>> the 7200 ultras were supposed to be the fastest).
>> Specific
>> suggestions and sources would be much appreciated.
>>
>> Also, are airport cards for older g4s like mine
>> available?  (since I
>> have a wireless router already in use for my
>> laptop).
>>
>> Thanks in advance,
>>
>> ~Jay
>
>
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