switching out system hd for a new (larger) one
 

Hello.
I have a question about switching my "factory" hard drive out for one with more space. I have a single 450 processor G4 tower, with a 10 gig hd. I would like to upgrade the 10 gig hd, but was wondering if it would be hard to do. If not, what exactly would I have to do? I am not real tech-savvy, so please "dumb down" the directions if they are technical.

Thank you all for your time and help.
-brian

You can have 2 drives in there simultaneously. You will need to make sure that the new drive is set to "slave", there should be a diagram on the drive for the jumper settings. Pop it in your machine and hook it up. Boot. Log in as Root. Download and install Carbon Copy Cloner, run said software to clone your old drive into your new one. Shutdown, take out both drives. Set your new drive from "slave" to "master" and plunk it back in your Mac. Boot up. Now everything that was on your old hard drive is on your new, larger, hard drive.

thank you very much!

I am planning on adding another internal hard drive (80 or 120 gb) pretty soon. I was wondering what type (I think the one that came in it originally is a Ultra ATA/66) of HD will I need? If there are any places you recommend to buy from (best prices, good service, etc), please reply with any links or information.

thank you.

i usually keep an eye on pricewatch for the best deals on hardware. of course lowest price usually infers least service. if you need the service and support, i'd buy locally so you have someone to talk to.

also, the bigger catalog houses (cdw, macmall, macconnection, et al) have decent support/service over the phone. but, they probably wont be any cheaper than compusa or best buy.

as far as which drive you need, any EIDE drive currently being sold will work fine.

one suggestion: two components i *never* go generic on are harddrive and memory. go with a name brand (i like maxtor and seagate drives--but i dont wanna start a flame war) --and make sure its new....no refurbs.

good luck.

[edit] one thing i forgot to mention. pay the extra $$$ for a faster drive (get a 7200rpm drive rather than a 5400rpm drive.) it does make a difference.

I have been shopping h/d in ads in the back of computer mags and find that there are better prices in the local Office(Depot/Max) shops or CompUSA. In fact if you live near an OfficeMax store, they have a Western Digital 160GB h/d on sale (this week) for $79 after rebate. That's a heck of a deal! It's 7200 rpm drive too.

Another price point...if you live near a Fry's Electronics they often have great h/d deals too. This week I saw an ad for a Hitachi (or was it a Toshiba?) 180GB h/d for $69 after rebate and is a 7200 rmp drive, but as cudaboy says...make sure it's not a refurbished unit. I don't think it is, but it did say it was limited to supply on hand which probably means they are all gone already. But they have great sales all the time.

Drive size vs. controller
 

As has been posted elsewhere on this board, some older (and by the specs your machine will probably be in this category) machines cannot access large drives beyond 120Gb. Realistically, unless you're into digital video or have downloaded every MP3 on the planet you don't need one this big.

Yellow's advice will allow you to completely replace the smaller drive, but you can just plug in the new drive as slave, screw it down, close the case and go. Move your home folder to the new drive and you're finished. Plenty of advantages to having multiple drives in one box.

Other comments about 7200 vs 5400 rpm drives are correct - they're faster. But for others reading this post who own an iMac, stick with the slower drives. 7200rpm drives run hotter as well, and may give you cooling problems in iMacs.

Wow, I hadn't realized that. Where does Apple say what models are limited? I checked my machine's spec's but it doesn't say. I have the G4 DA model with 533Mhz dual processors.

the 137gb limitation is a function of 32bit addressing, which is safe to assume all but the newest (in the past 12 months) computers have.

suffice to say, you are pretty well confined to using a 120GB hd or smaller--unless you get an external firewire drive. the bridges on those can handle 48bit addressing.

just stick to EIDE and you'll be fine. the serial ata drives are the 48 bit monsters you'll have trouble with.

Unless you buy a new PCI ATA card, which will handle the larger disks, I believe?

ATA, Serial ATA, IDE, EIDE...differences
 

Thanks for the clarification on h/d size limits in Macs. Strange that the Apple specs don't tell you this anywhere.

I have problems with h/d ads...they rarely tell you what type of drive they are.
My understanding is that IDE and ATA are nearly or close enough to be considered the same. Is Serial ATA different or the same thing as ATA? Is EIDE and IDE the same?

Can anyone specify the differences?

yellow...does that mean the drive would need to be external? Or do these PCI ATA cards allow for internal hookup?

How does the addressing work if it exceeds the bit width to address? If it is time modulated (hi addr first, then lo addr) wouldn't that slow the performance of the disk read/writes?

In a G4 (tower), the PCI cards go inside, and you can attach a cable to the internal card to another internal disk.
I think (stress think, hopefully I'm not misleading you) that if you get a PCI ATA card, you won't have troubles with disk size limits. The OS isn't limited by disk size, as OS X (Jaguar+) will handle up to 8 terabytes. The limits might be in the Mac's ROMs, but I thought that having a newer ATA card this could be avoided. I hope someone can chime in and say yea or nay to this so I don't mislead you further.

typically 'ATA' refers to 'parallel ATA'. only now that serial is an option is there the need to specifiy the word 'serial'. note that few see the need to specify parallel tho...so if you see just 'ATA' you should assume they mean parallel.

it is kinda odd...people say WWI and WWII even tho during WWI it was just called 'the great war'...but, i digress.

as far as IDE==EIDE==ATA==SATA????

IDE (integrated drive electronics) is an interface. EIDE is the 'enhanced' version (capable of addressing disks larger that 8GB--a result of the same math that limits ATA to 137GB, i.e. 16bit addressing w/ IDE, 32bit addressing with EIDE and now 48bit addressing with SATA)

ATA/SATA is just the ANSI (standards board) accepted name for the same thing--Advanced Technology Attachment). Serial being shown as SATA or Parallel as just ATA --see rant above. but, theyre all the same animal.

hmm, i don't think a SATA drive is not going to work on an ATA card...

http://tech-report.com/reviews/2003q...o/index.x?pg=1

[posted prior to seeing MervTormel's posting above, which answers only some of my questions below...]

Thanks cudaboy_71. That helps alot!
Not being from the PC world, I'm more used to SCSI but with the G3/G4/G5 models including IDE/ATA drives it has forced me to try to get adjusted.

So does SATA require a completely different connector type compared with (P)ATA?
If so then a G4 can accept an IDE, EIDE, and ATA drive but not a SATA unless you get that PCI card adapter? And if EIDE/ATA are limited in architecture to 137GB drives, then all drives shown as greater in size than that (160GB, 180GB, 200GB, etc) must all be SATA drives? Am I understanding this correctly?

So basically modern Mac processors are not limited to 137GB drives but the implemented peripheral address/bus architecture they use (EIDE/ATA) does. Hence the PCI cards can get around this by providing the SATA connection?

that's about the 'size' of it ;)

[edit]
sorry...i was just referring to IDE being another name for ATA...ATA being the ANSI accepted acronym for IDE. SATA will not work on an IDE board (there are adapter boards available)

Ok I want to make sure I'm getting this correctly. I bought a Western Digital 160 GB HD to use with the ADS Technologies PYRO 1394 Drive Kit: SEE PRODUCT SPECS HERE

The reason I got this was I needed extra HD space, and I didn't know it was possible to mount another internal HD inside the tower. Should I be able to install the 160 GB HD into the tower and have it work? From what I have read in the previous posts, I can not because of the HD is over 137 GB. Am I correct? I need more HD space, as I am running out of it, and need it in order to do work.

Another issue I have is either the ADS Pyro 1394 drive is crapping out, or there is something wrong with the 160 HD I have in there. Once in a while, the HD will click, and my system will lock up. I tried to plug the drive into the tower, right above the current 10 gig HD, and it said it could not "mount" the 160 gig HD. So, could I get a 120 GB drive (for example), and mount that, and have no problems?


I am running os X.2, with my g4 single 450. Could someone help me out please? Thanks.

You should be able to install the 160, you just can't use all of it. And make a few partitions when you format it - couple of 10Gb parts for OS installs and a big one for user data.

Are you plugging the drive into the same cable as the existing one? setting the jumpers correctly for master and slave?

Drives will occasionally make a couple of loud clicks as they adjust their internal temperature, but it shouldn't freeze your system. You have a good opportunity here to make a clean system install, I'd do that if I were you.

I have no problem with not using all of the 160 gig drive. I just don't know how. If someone could walk me through it-step by step- that would be great. I am using the same cable as the existing one, not the same plug. I don't know how to set the jumpers correctly either. I'm sorry for my ignorance. I just don't know the interals of computers.

when the drive clicks, it clicks repeatedly. over and over again, like it is trying to read the drive, but can't. I bought a 80 gig drive to install internally. I am going to try to attempt it with the info that you all have provided me above. If there are any other directions I should know, please email me at: brianyohn23@hotmail.com

thank you all for your help!:D

The label on the top of the drive will tell you how to set the jumpers. Your old drive you leave alone, the new drive needs one jumper across the 'slave' pins. Takes about 10 seconds after you pull the drive out. Detailed instructions with photos are available on the drive manufacturers website.

Disk Utility will handle all your partitioning and formatting, including dealing with the excess space. In short, you do the normal stuff and the excess just disappears.

Your old drive is sick and dying. Install a clean system on the new drive, copy any extra applications over to it in the Finder and copy your old Users folder over the new one. Be sure to do this last step while logged into the new system, and you will have to turn permissions off on the old drive.

Remove your old drive and you will have an attractive paperweight for your desk.

Thank you all for your help. Like I said in my last post, I bought a 80 gig HD (western digital) yesterday. I first copied all the information from my 160 gig drive to the new 80 gig drive. Then, I used the carbon copy cloner (like yellow said) to copy all files from my old original 10 gig to the 160 gig drive. I took out the 10, replaced it with the 160 (master), and made the 80 gig the slave drive. Thank you all for all of your help. I now sort-of understand how hard drives work. :D I can impress my friends with my new hard drive lingo!!! I'm kidding.

Software/Firmware for large capacity drives
 

There is a utility from a company called Intech that will allow older macs running OS 10.2.x and higher to use all of the HD space on an internal drive over 128GB

search Intech

I've been using Speedtools to use the remaining 62GB of my 200GB drive on my B/W from OS 9 only. It's pleasing to see that they finally developed a Kernel Extension to allow OS X to access and use this partition. Do note though, you must partition the drive! Since the extension doesn't load until after the Kernel boots, anything above 128GB won't be accessible until then. Also, if you boot a CD or other drive that doesn't have the extension, a partition map indicating a partition over the 128GB limit will appear wrong and data errors will occur.

The site above does have a tech note about this, but it's a little flawed IMO. They suggest reformatting a drive (of course, backing up first) and creating one partition of 127.99GB and the remainder to a second partition. When I setup my 200GB drive, what I did was format it normally with Disk Utility creating a partition map as if the drive were only 137GB (128GB based on 1024). Then I booted into OS 9, updated the driver with Speedtools, enabling the full capacity. Then I just added the remaining space to an OS 9 only partition. This guarantees that the first partition will always work without the extension at it's maximum capacity.

What, I'm saying is that if you already have a drive >137GB, formated at the current limit, install the Speedtools from OS 9 first to fix the partition table. Then add the extension in X. You should not need to reformat. Note: This size limit only exists on Macs prior to the Mirrored Door Mac, so they are capable of booting into OS 9.

For what it's worth, I'm installing a third HD on my Sawtooth. It's a new pulled Seagate 160 and I'll install it on a Sonnet Tempo ATA 133 PCI card which allows larger hard drives to be used. Plus you can set up multiple Masters rather than Master/Slave arrangements.

Here's the Sonnet Tempo info...
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html

Here's the size barrier info...
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/size_limits.html

Well… Sort of… You are still only allow one Master per port (cable) and any second drive on the port would have to be set to Slave. That's just the way ATA works…