[G4] Much Ado About Harddrives

[Doug Burton]

On Jan 16, 2008, at 9:16 PM, John Niven wrote:

> Just wondering...
>
> How do you get 4 drives in a DA? Do you use the dual
> disk carrier, plus the other two single positions?
>
> I tried that once with 4 SCSI drives (small but
> available :-). Maybe a coincidence, but the bottom one
> on the dual carrier failed not long after. I think it
> got too hot. Maybe modern SATA drives will be cooler,
> but I thought you should watch out for that.
>
> John

Actually I have 5 PATA drives (2 data drives + 2 backup drives + 1 OS  
drive)  in there now.  There are 3 spaces to mount HD carriers in the  
bottom of the case and I have 2 drives on each end slot and one in the  
middle slot.  As I said, the cable situation with IDE drives is a  
nightmare, but they fit in that way just fine.  The computer itself is  
in an unheated part of my house so over-heating has not been a  
problem.  The computer has been operating in this present mode since  
early last summer.  I have central A/C in the house so it doesn't get  
warm in the summer either.  The whole reason I switched to a DA for my  
file server was to get the gig ethernet and faster bus speed.  I  
thought the Ultra 133 PATA card would be just fine, but OWC and Acard  
has not been able to get it to work at Ultra speed.  I had to use  
older 40 pin-40 conductor cables to even get the drives recognized.   
The increased SATA speed will hopefully fix that problem and the  
smaller cables are just icing on the cake!

Just a message from Doug...