[G4] Options for adding disk space to Power Mac G4?

[Ben Smith]

> Date: Mon, 14 Jan 2008 19:40:41 -0800
> From: Eric Smith <eric-s-smith at comcast.net>
> Subject: [G4] Options for adding disk space to Power Mac G4?
> To: g4 at listserver.themacintoshguy.com
> Message-ID: <478C2B39.2050803 at comcast.net>
> Content-Type: text/plain; charset=ISO-8859-1; format=flowed
> 
> I have a Power Mac G4 ("Sawtooth" model) with these attributes:
> 1.0 GHz CPU (Sonnet upgrade)
> 1.3 GB RAM
> USB 2.0 card
> 2 internal ATA drives:
>   - 20 GB drive w/ two partitions, one has OS 9.2.2 and the other
>     has 10.4.11
>   - 57 GB drive at this time mainly holds iTunes database
>     (~18 GB and growing slowly)
> 
> I want to install Leopard on this system, just because it's the
> latest and greatest and I want to play with it, and also to try
> out Time Machine. I would do an initial install and not disturb
> the contents of the 20 GB drive. My options as I see it are:
> 
<SNIP>
> 5. Add another internal drive to the system. Unfortunately here,
> two ATA drives is the maximum. Another drive would require a PCI
> controller card for ATA/133, SATA, or SCSI, and probably some
> mounting brackets, etc. While this would offer the best performance
> it is definitely the most expensive option, and there's still that
> 128 GB limit.
> 

This option would be the best in the long run, either an ATA/133 card, 
or for future compatibility and speed a SATA card, ensure you get one 
that is bootable, then replace both your existing HDD's with one or 2 
300-500GB HDD's this will give you plenty of speed and space (the 128GB 
limit does not affect PCI cards (or current Firewire HDD's)).
If you fitted a SATA card with a 300GB HDD (currently the best price per 
GB appears to be around 300-500GB) then you could put one of the old 
HDD's in a firewire case, or just connect them one at a time to the old 
IDE bus and use CCC to copy the data to the new drive(s).
As far as power consumption and heat go, new drives tend to be more 
efficient than older ones, so the power consumption (and therefore heat) 
should be the same or lower than your old ones.
For partitioning I would suggest something like 10GB for 9.2.2 and 10GB 
for 10.4.x then 100GB for 10.5.x with the rest for iTunes and photos etc 
  (if you are just using 1 HDD) or copy everything to the 300GB, ditch 
the 20GB and use the 57GB as a test HDD to play with 10.5.x
You don't say what graphics card you have, Leopard flies with a good 
card, but crawls with a poor one, I use a 9800 that I re-flashed from a 
PC, this fully supports core image and QE.
Ben.
NB I run dual 300GB 10000 rpm drives in my MDD with no problems.

(MDD dual 1GHZ, 2GB ram, Radeon-9800Pro, 2x 300GB-10000RPM IDE, 1X 160GB 
IDE, 1x Pioneer DVR111, 1x Pioneer DVR112, 9.2.2, 10.4.11, 10.5.2 BT 
voyager 1040 802.11g PCI wireless (seen as Airport extreme by OSX), 4 
port 'Generic' USB2 card, 19" Widescreen LCD, iSight, Bluetooth etc)