[G4] two 500 gb drives

Eric Smith eric-s-smith at comcast.net
Tue May 6 08:14:20 PDT 2008


Al Poulin wrote:
> 
> On May 6, 2008, at 10:13 AM, <thekirkline1941 at verizon.net> wrote:
>> A while ago, I purchased two Seagate 500gb Barracuda internal hard 
>> drives for my G4 Quicksilver (800 mhz). I had hoped to install both 
>> and use them as automatic backups to the original 40 gb drive. I also 
>> purchased the required PCI card in order that they would be recognized 
>> to their full capacity. The problem I have run into is that there is 
>> only one extra power supply cord P5 available. Question: how do I 
>> connect both drives in order to use them as
> 
> I would put one of them into an external Firewire box.  Make it 
> bootable.  Keep it off line except when backing up, and maybe place in 
> some other location for extra safety.
> 
> A bad power hit, or lightning strike, or house fire could ruin any 
> internal drive.  And why have it spinning whenever the G4 is running?

There are a couple reasons that internal might be better. Most important,
Firewire is slower. It is even slower than the ATA/66 built in to the
Quicksilver. But since he bought a PCI controller chances are it is
ATA/133, which will be considerably faster than Firewire 400. Also,
there's just the hassle of an extra box taking up a port and a power
connection, and the firewire enclosure is an extra expense.

But wouldn't three internal drives mean extra mounting hardware?
My suggestion would be that with two 500 GB drives, the 40 GB is
superfluous. Just mount the two 500's internally and run them off of
the PCI controller.

Eric

> By the way, I ran an extra, internal Seagate Barracuda 40GB in my 
> QuickSilver 733.  Just a compromise on cost, but not the best thing to 
> do.  The Seagate ended up being my main drive, and the original IBM 
> drive was the backup only because I did not like to hear the IBM heads 
> clattering.
> 
> Al Poulin
> 
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