[G4] Much Ado About Harddrives

[Doug Burton]

On Jan 16, 2008, at 10:58 PM, Robert C. Buitron wrote:

> Doug Burton wrote:
>> On Jan 16, 2008, at 6:24 PM, Tony Gamble wrote:
>>> It'll be perfectly compatible... provided you also install a SATA  
>>> card to run it, such as this one:
>>>
>>> http://eshop.macsales.com/item/SIIG/SCSATM12/
>>>
>>> Once everything is plugged in, open up Disk Utility and format the  
>>> drive with the Mac OS Extended file system.
>>>
>>>
>>> Tony
>> <SNIP>
>> I just checked OWC's website dealing with SATA cards and I don't  
>> see one that will support 4 drives.  Do they make one for the Mac  
>> that will support 4 drives?  If I upgrade my DA file server to SATA  
>> as I have been planning to do, I need one that will support 4 large  
>> SATA drives.  Right now I have 4 IDE drives running off an Acard  
>> Ultra 133 ATA PCI card which supports 4 drives.  Besides the cable  
>> mess the Acard won't support Ultra ATA speeds and that was the main  
>> reason I upgraded my server to a DA.
>
> I've been following this thread about HDs as I'm considering buying  
> two external HDs for back-ups. Perhaps one or several of the experts  
> might chime in and offer an opinion or suggest where I might find  
> information that will help in the purchase decision.
>
> I have a G4 dual 1.25 GHz, 2GB of RAM (maximum), and 4 internal hard  
> drives, 2 of which are supported by an Acard Ultra 133 ATA PCI card.  
> My G4 is the mirrored drive (please bear with me as I don't know the  
> exact Mac descriptive names) with 400/800 FW.
>
> What would be the best kind of external hard drive (that's bootable)  
> - SATA or ATA, and would I need a another PCI card if I were to get  
> SATA? Or could I switch the internal HDs with the new SATAs,  
> installing the new SATAs in the G4 and using the old ATAs (300GB  
> each) as external?
>
> I use my machine primarily for image editing - photography - hence  
> the need for large storage media.
>
> Thanks, and BTW, I enjoy and appreciate all the information that's  
> exchanged on this forum.
>
> Rob

Much the same as I did for an external optical drive, I purchased a  
bare case from Geeks or Surpluscomputers, can't remember which one  
now, but it was a firewire/usb case and then bought a bare large ide  
drive to go inside of it.  I think I ended up with a 300 Gb external  
drive for less than $70 IIRC.  I like having the firewire/usb combo as  
I use it with all kinds of different computers and it helps to have  
both when dealing with both Macs and PCs.  HTH

Just a message from Doug...