[G4] Much Ado About Harddrives

[Kathi Anderson]

Snip
pry into his stock of SD RAM and ATA harddrives.  He
had several new Western Digital SATA 250 GB HD's for
75 bucks a pop.  What a steal.  I thought I'd do some
research to see if the model is compatible for my
Sawtooth.  BTW, here's the model #: WD2500JS.  
I found some useful info at the following URL: 
http://wdc.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/wdc.cfg/php/enduser/std_adp.php?p_faqid=1343
&p_created=1112716146

snip

Howdy...
You might look up your Mac in Low End Mac. I just went there and put
"Sawtooth" in the the search box and came up with some info for your
machine. 

"hard drive: 10/20/27 GB 7200 rpm Ultra ATA/66 on 400/450/500 MHz models.
Maximum IDE drive size is 128 GB without third-party support. See How big a
hard drive can I put in my iMac, eMac, or Power Mac? for three options"

Now I have purchased two Macs recently and they came without any hard drive
or Ram. I picked them up cheap that way. Anyway, in looking for a hard
drive, don't get thrown off by whether it is PC or Mac. Don't matter. And an
Ultra ATA is the same as SATA. And you don't have to worry about getting a
hard drive that is too big. Sometimes the bigger ones are cheaper than the
smaller ones. All that happens is that the Mac won't recognize anything over
128mg. That doesn't mean that a 250 or 500 mg drive won't work, all it means
is that you will only be able to access 128 mg of it. This doesn't apply if
you have a Mac as new as or newer than a MDD. Those will access larger
drives.

One more thing. The /66 part is the speed of the hard drive. I am not sure
is you can put a /100 in a machine designed for /66. I think it might, but I
am not sure. Someone else can weigh in on this part. I think it might be the
same story as the 128 mg limit.

The info on the link you provided is useful for the installation part, so
you know how to set the jumpers for master or slave. All the Hard Drives I
have seen come with the jumper settings right on the drive or in the box,
but the website info is more detailed.

Hope this helps.

Kathi