Apple Xserve G5

JayS90 said:

Hi guys,

I have a friend who managed to get hold of 4 rack mounted Apple Xserve G5's (dual processor, no HD) and is offering to sell me one for £100.

My question is; what can I do with one (I know, stupid question!) and is it worth it?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

It's basically a PowerMac G5 in a fancy case.

JayS90 said:

Hi guys,

I have a friend who managed to get hold of 4 rack mounted Apple Xserve G5's (dual processor, no HD) and is offering to sell me one for £100.

My question is; what can I do with one (I know, stupid question!) and is it worth it?

Thanks!

Click to expand...

Do you mean that it has no external hard drives or that it has no hard drives at all? The Xserve G5 is a 1U rack-mounted server. It defeats the purpose if the computer has no hard drives. I have found an Xserve G5 without hard drive modules for US$151. With the hard drives installed, they go for as much as US$1000. That said, many naïve users think that the Xserve is a more powerful desktop and want to use it that way. This is a mistake. The Xserve is not put to its best use as a desktop computer. It is noisy, power hungry, and not particularly fast by today's standards.

Xserve G5 were released in January 6, 2004.

They use Serial ATA hard drive. If it comes with trays then it's easy to get it to work. Trays are expensive if they are missing trays.

Like all server products (except Mac mini Server), they are loud. If you got a closet or basement you can put it in and want to play with a 2004 computer, then maybe.

I use a dual G4 PowerMac as home server for all files, but that's not as loud as a server.

I just contacted OWC on finding drives for the Apple Xserve G5 2006.
They told me that the system is picky about drives so it sounds like theyve had issues with past sales.
They told me to contact Apple.
I really would like to use this old one for offsite back-up.
Loading it up with 2 or 3 1TB (or more) would be best.
Anyone have tips?

mBox said:

I just contacted OWC on finding drives for the Apple Xserve G5 2006.
They told me that the system is picky about drives so it sounds like theyve had issues with past sales.
They told me to contact Apple.
I really would like to use this old one for offsite back-up.
Loading it up with 2 or 3 1TB (or more) would be best.
Anyone have tips?

Click to expand...

I've had no problems using Western Digital Caviar Black drives in any Xserve.

mus0r said:

I've had no problems using Western Digital Caviar Black drives in any Xserve.

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Really? Even as old as the 2006 G5? Can you give me a model number, Ill take my chances with your input

mBox said:

Really? Even as old as the 2006 G5? Can you give me a model number, Ill take my chances with your input

Click to expand...

Any Xserve. I've replaced drives in G4 Xserves through 2008 Xserves and never bought one of the Apple branded drives.

Just go to macsales.com and find a Caviar Black.

Drives

Did you find drives that work? WD Caviar Black 2G SATAII drive does not.

Hard drive for G5

Use hitachi 2 tb drives they will work.

onecajun said:

Use hitachi 2 tb drives they will work.

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Thanks! Do they require any jumper settings? SATA150 drives? Do you know a model number? I've tried 10 different drives Deskstar, WD Caviar, Maxtor, Hitachi, IBM, Seagate. I also tried to install and boot off of a firewire enclosure and the installation of 10.4.3 finished but I couldn't boot or select the drives in startup disk. Tried FireWire 400 & 800 enclosures, even an old Apple Firmware IDE Deskstar in the enclosure with no success. I appreciate the help, toughest Mac I've ever had.

I dropped in 2x Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM SATAIII drives into my dual G5 Xserve with no drama.

The drives were instantly recognised and I now have them in a RAID 0 config for streaming media to my HTPCs.

Drive set me back $118 AUD each from MWave.

Shaydy said:

I dropped in 2x Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM SATAIII drives into my dual G5 Xserve with no drama.

The drives were instantly recognised and I now have them in a RAID 0 config for streaming media to my HTPCs.

Drive set me back $118 AUD each from MWave.

Click to expand...

Thanks