SATA HDD in PowerBook G4?

Which model Powerbook do you have?

I had an aluminium 15 inch PB. bought a couple of adapters to do just ths, none fit.

abtekk said:

15" Titanium. 2002 model.

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I don't think titanium Powerbooks have enough room for one in the hard drive bay. You could remove the optical drive and put an optibay in it that has a SATA adapter integrated with it.

I gotta chime in her and say that I too purchased a few adapters and none fit actually two of the 3 were thicker that the laptop itself so I eventually said forget it and removed the optical drive.I even had to modify the adapter I got.(this is on the alum. Version)

Maybe its out of budget but I bought an mSata dapter and a 32 GB SSD.

That is a wonderful performer and if the machine dies, the msata SSD can go somewhere else. Only 50 dlls for both, so close to a SATA HDD. But size is to say the least, limited.

SATA Possible as an optical drive replacement

If you buy an optical drive mount kit (powerbookmedic.com) you can mount a pata drive through either the normal internal interface or firewire.

You can have an internal SATA drive with this, but it will mount as a firewire drive.

beboptrumpet said:

If you buy an optical drive mount kit (powerbookmedic.com) you can mount a pata drive through either the normal internal interface or firewire.

You can have an internal SATA drive with this, but it will mount as a firewire drive.

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Optibay adapters interface using the Powerbook's PATA bus, not the FireWire bus. You can get one that has a SATA adapter in it as well that will take a SATA drive and adapt it for use with the Powerbook's PATA bus. Those don't mount as a FireWire drive, they mount like a regular internal hard drive.

But isn't the optical drive ATA connection (where the optibay with the SATA adapter will go) slower than the HDD ATA connection?

Cox Orange said:

But isn't the optical drive ATA connection (where the optibay with the SATA adapter will go) slower than the HDD ATA connection?

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I think it's the same for aluminum Powerbooks. May also be the same for titanium Powerbooks as well.

Hm, everymac.com does not give detailed info. It mentions that the HDD is ATA-66 (ATA5) for the Ti Books.
Would it be thinkable that the Books had faster optical drive ATA-connectors, when PowerMac G4s of the same time had ATA3 (with 16MB/s throughput like ATA2) for optical drives (HDD ATA-66)?

Possibly. I know for my Ti book, the hard drive and optical drive share the same ATA/66 bus. On my 12" Powerbook they're on two different buses. It could be that the AL books have a slower optical bus than the ATA/100.

After doing some research I've found out how to determine the optical bus speeds in Powerbook G4s and other PowerPC Macs. Look at what extensions are loaded via System Profiler. AppleKauaiATA is the extension for Apple's ATA/100 controller codenamed Kauai. AppleKeyLargo is the extension for Apple's ATA/33/66 controller codenamed KeyLargo. It can run at either ATA/33 or ATA/66 depending if the ATA cable is 40 or 80 wires. In G3 Macs, it's always 40 wires and will still run only at ATA/33 speeds with a 80 wire cable. In most (all?) G4's with KeyLargo, it runs at ATA/66 when used with a 80 wire cable.

If your Powerbook has both extensions loaded, then the HDD bus is ATA/100 via Kauai and the ODD is ATA/66 via KeyLargo. If you only see one of the extensions listed, then both drives run at the speed supported by the controller.

you are superb!