[G4] Hard Drive questions...

[Rich Northouse]

Hi Rick,

I agree with Eric, SATA is the way to go. I think the drives are cheaper and
the performance better. There are two web sites that you might want to
explore -- Tigerdirect.com  and  Newegg.com .

Both sites are excellent and their delivery times are unbelievable. But you
can explore the two sites for SATA drives and controllers. I have a QS 2001
and I installed a SATA card and drives without much difficulty  -- hell man
-- we are working with Macs!!!!

But SATA is the way !! 

PS: There was a great deal of correspondence on this issue about 9 months,
perhaps a year ago. Check the archives.

Rich


-----Original Message-----
From: g4-bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
[mailto:g4-bounces at listserver.themacintoshguy.com] On Behalf Of Eric Smith
Sent: Monday, May 26, 2008 9:37 PM
To: A place to discuss Apple's G4 computers.
Subject: Re: [G4] Hard Drive questions...

Hi Rick,

In my opinion you would get much better disk performance if you went to a
SATA drive with 3 Gb/s transfer rate. This is often referred to as "SATA 2"
or "SATA II" but that is actually a misnomer. It is the same spec as the
original SATA drives, the only difference being double the transfer rate.

If I am correct, the QS 2002 uses UltraATA/66, meaning a 66 MB/s transfer
rate. Since SATA uses 8b10b encoding on the wire (i.e., each byte is
converted to 10-bit code), 3 Gb/s effectively means a transfer rate of 300
MB/s. Even if the QS 2002 uses ATA/133, that would still be less than half
the transfer rate of "SATA 2".

If you look for "SATA 2" - again that just means 3 Gb/s - make sure that
both the PCI controller card and the drive support the higher data transfer
rate. Having to buy a separate controller is an extra expense, but in my
opinion worth it for the extra speed.

You also definitely want a USB 2.0 card (should be available for cheap) if
you are going to make significant use of USB.

Eric S.

Rick wrote:
> This one is for Al Poulin... or anyone else who might want to chime in...
> 
> I've got a QS 2002 more or less load. It's got two to GB Hard drive 
> and a 120 GB external Hard Drive driven by USB and built by Western 
> Digital and serving as my TM more or less.
> 
> The first drive is all but max out and the second drive is a 
> intermediate back up / storage drive.
> 
> I was thinking out upgrading my first drive to something around 320 TO 
> 500 GB USED... Seniors usually have limited funds to spend on new hard 
> drives. The question is do I stay with the current formate ATA Bus or 
> jump up to a  SATA DRIVE AND CARD which mean a STATA Card and what else?
> Also what kind of  SATA? And what do I get out of such a upgrade?
> 
> Please anything else that might be useful to know before hand?
> 
> Al trust your having a fun filled holiday and surely your not reading 
> eMails today?
> 
> Later guys
> 
> Rick therepguy
> Houston
> ///////////////////
> 
> PS Yes I'm also  looking to upgrade the hard drive to a firewire... 
> cause the USB is as slow as can be... [GRIN] 
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> 
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