[G4] Hard drive installation problem

[Kenneth Smith]

Harry,

I didn't install any card;  I simply installed the new drive per an  
instructional video that I found on the OWC site where I purchased  
the drive.  The unused wide cable that was provided under the  
mounting tray had two sets of connections to accommodate installation  
of two drives in the tray.  I put the drive in the tray, replaced the  
tray, installed one set of the cable connections, inserted the OS X  
disk, selected the new drive to install OS X, installed the OS,  
selected the new drive as the startup disk, rebooted, formatted the  
other two old disks, and other than the formatting issue and the  
slightly longer startup, everything has been working fine.

Thanks again, Kenneth/Floy

On Nov 27, 2007, at 10:34 AM, Harry Freeman wrote:

> Greetings Kenneth ( + )!( + )
>
> This is very good news, your solution may have something to do with  
> what I read about those drives (more than likely somewhere in the  
> IDE control) could protect data. What I read from Hitachi was that  
> you needed a special WINTEL program to remove those protection  
> schemes. However I didn't think that the protection would be in  
> effect when the drive were installed in a Mac.
>
> My question, and I don't remember is you have already said but when  
> when you installed the SATA drive did you install a SATA control  
> card or did you use a SATA to ATA converter and then connect that  
> to the ribbon cable that Apple provided for the front drive bays.  
> If you installed a SATA PCI control card then it should make any  
> difference whether the drive is in the front bay or the back.
>
> If you have "Xbench" run the application to find out how fast your  
> drives are responding. If the drives (180 Gb) in the rear bays are  
> responding faster then you may want to swap their positions.
>
> Congratulation on your solution.
>
> Best regards,
> ============================================
>
> On Nov 27, 2007, at 4:50 AM, Kenneth Smith wrote:
>
>> Ok Ron, Rich, Tom, Harry, S. Kennedy, Kathi, and Dan (I hope I  
>> didn't leave anybody out), give yourselves a tentative pat on the  
>> back;  I think I have resolved my problem.  I hope this post  
>> reveals something new and interesting to someone among you.  My  
>> problem appears to have been a formatting issue.  You may recall  
>> that I had two 180 GB IBM hard drives that came on my, mirrored  
>> door, 1.42 gh computer, and one drive had OS X on it.  The two  
>> drives were in the rear mounting tray.  I installed a new 750 GB  
>> Seagate Barracuda, Serial ATA hard drive, in the lower front  
>> tray.  I installed OS X on the new drive and formatted both the  
>> IBM drives.  I made one IBM drive a backup and the other a place  
>> for media storage. The problem I presented to you guys was that  
>> both the old drives were now showing that they were about 72 %  
>> full, when they were supposed to be formatted and "empty."  Due to  
>> my limited technical knowledge, I thought one erase by the OS X  
>> disk utility erased the drive.  After I looked farther and  
>> discovered the options for more thorough erasing, I picked the "7- 
>> pass" option and now both disks appear to be showing the accurate  
>> capacity and functioning normally.
>>
>> Thanks to all of your information and suggestions, and the  
>> research that I did as a result, I had a major learning  
>> experience.  I learned that the technology of my mirrored door G4  
>> represented a significant technical plug-and-play milestone by  
>> Apple toward rendering insignificant the master/slave jumper  
>> settings.  I also learned that the new serial ATA drives were  
>> manufactured to accommodate the new plug and play technology.   
>> There seems to be a consensus of information that connections for  
>> drives mounted in the front tray make the G4 operate a little  
>> slower than the rear tray connections.  Mine now seems a little  
>> slower.  My new question is this:  If I move the 750 GB Seagate,  
>> with the OS on it, from the front to the rear tray, and move one  
>> of the rear IBM drives in the rear tray to the front,  will my  
>> computer still recognize the Seagate as my startup disk, and boot  
>> up, or will there just be a smoky hole in the ground where my  
>> computer was?
>>
>>
>> On Nov 25, 2007, at 8:29 AM, C D T wrote:
>>
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