Hello all,

I have a MDD G4 2x 1.25ghz. I'm looking at a larger hard drive for it. But I plan on going much bigger (eg: either 500gb or 750gb). Now given these are much larger than the comp originally shipped with (120gb) am I going to have any issues?

I know there was an issue with the Quicksilver G4's maxing out at 128gb and I know there is a workaround for them. While my MDD G4 can go above 128gb I wanted to know is there is another limit higher up for my machine. Has anyone put a 750gb HD in a G4?

They are so cheap these days im planning on replacing the two 250gb drives with some much larger ones.

Also, while there is noway to know for sure without more model information. Anyone know the same for a Pentium 4 2.4ghz HT? Using a gigabyte motherboard, IDE only.

This thread a while ago will help you out

Installing a HDD in a G4 MDD

(and specifically the post from kim jong il that this link points to)

You should be alright if you are putting the drive on the ATA100 bus (the one your current drive is probably connected to, mounted vertically at the back of the machine behind the big fan). I threw a 160GB in my parents MDD and it saw all of it, can't say I can see them needing 750GB just yet though! Good luck mate
- Bez

EDIT: beaten! and with the wrong ATA bus speed <hides in corner>

Thanks for the prompt replies. Confirms my thoughts.

Dog Knight

Try looking here xlr8yourmac

Try searching the HDD database, It will have all the answers you could ever need.

Mark

I guess one of the answers is that large drive support (48 bit addressing) should equal 144 petabytes which is an absurdly large number (and isn't even remotely fully supported). The reality is that this total capacity is limited by a couple of factors.

Two articles that are worth reading from the Apple knowledge base (the second link is the most interesting as that provides limits in capacity AND the number of files that can be stored):

Macintosh: Using 128 GB or Larger ATA Hard Drives
Mac OS X: Mac OS Extended format (HFS Plus) volume and file limits

I have a 750 and a 500, both Seagates, in my MDD G4 2x1.0GHz, both on the ATA 100 bus (mounted vertically at rear) I moved the original 80 onto the ATA 66 bus. (mounted horizontally at the front). I just had to buy another IDE cable to connect into the ATA 66 motherboard socket.

Make sure the drives are set to cable select. Most have a diagramme showing which pins to put the jumper on for Master, Slave or CS modes. If you put a master set drive into the first connector, the end one won't be seen. A Master always needs to be on the end of the cable. I screwed this up with the optical drives when I put a second one in, and had to pull it out and reset to CS. All is well now.

As thebag says above, xlr8yourmac has plenty of info in the drive database.

Thanks for that post Jim. Sometimes all the theory in the world just isn't the same without a practical example of it actually working.

Anyone put a SATA card in one of these?

I've a 1Ghz MDD that is being tooled up as a TM server.

Hmm... better search, I think I asked this a while.. ago...

EDIT: I did, with regard to G5s : PM G5 with SATA card?

Anyone know what the go would be in an MDD?

Id rather spend on SATA drives than older IDE drivers, i think

al

I've seen a SATA 1 PCI card advertised. Only internal ports too. Only seen SATA 2 as PCI Express.
I guess the PCI bus speed has something to do with it.

I figured adding a large ATA 100 drive was the most economic thing to do with mine.

Even if you upgrade later, you can always buy an external IDE case and whack the drive on a FW or USB port. It will be better than buying a PCI SATA card which isn't compatible with the latest mac towers, let alone the fact that you are likely to upgrade to a mac with no card slots.

Thanks a million. Great to ehar someone else has actually done it. While this is currently my primary machine, I intend to keep it even down the track when I upgrade for a server. With the ability to throw 4 hard drives in it and with gigabit ethernet, it will do the job nicely.

Currently sitting in it is a 200gb, 180gb, 160gb and a 40gb :P

2^63 - 2^31 = 9,223,372,034,707,292,160, which is just under 8 exabytes (EB). One exabyte is roughly equivalent to one million terabytes.

Dammit, and I wanted 10 Exabytes.