Can i only put 2 HD's into a G5? If so, that is a huuuuuuuge step backwards...(My dad needs storage for DV)
Got a tip for us?
Let us know
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.
G5 only 2 Drive Bays?
- Thread starter void
- Start date
- Sort by reaction score
Capt Underpants
macrumors 68030
Re: G5 only 2 Drive Bays?
Yes indeed that is true, however, you could get a firewire hard drive if it came down to it.
Yes indeed that is true, however, you could get a firewire hard drive if it came down to it.
e-coli
macrumors 68000
My guess is that the rumored "blackrider" is a sort of FW800 Raid.
Wait a few. Something nice might come down the pipe.
But hard drives are so big these days, having more than two is just...well...overkill for most people. Just remember, you have to back those things up at some point. You'll be burning DVD's all week.
Wait a few. Something nice might come down the pipe.
But hard drives are so big these days, having more than two is just...well...overkill for most people. Just remember, you have to back those things up at some point. You'll be burning DVD's all week.
Re: G5 only 2 Drive Bays?
How many drives do you want/need? 2 x 250 G seems like plenty to me. Someone else already mentioned plenty of alernatives, but I would think that you wouldn't even need those. Would you really need to have nearly 500 G on your drives at once? Wouldn't some (most) of that stuff get burned to DVD or CD regularly?
I don't think that this is a step backward at all, and I wouldn't cry about it.
How many drives do you want/need? 2 x 250 G seems like plenty to me. Someone else already mentioned plenty of alernatives, but I would think that you wouldn't even need those. Would you really need to have nearly 500 G on your drives at once? Wouldn't some (most) of that stuff get burned to DVD or CD regularly?
I don't think that this is a step backward at all, and I wouldn't cry about it.
MacAztec
macrumors 68040
Re: Re: Re: G5 only 2 Drive Bays?
How so? I have 1 80GB drive, and 1 35GB drive. My 80GB is for storage (Music/Movies). I havent even nearly filled it up. I have about 48 movies, and 6GB of Music! AND, I have like 15GB of Apps (.dmg, .sit) and games!
My dad bought a powermac g4 a while back for a business that was pretty much all DV editing and stuff. He had 4x 35GB IBM Drives in it. It was enough back then...
And, SATA is going to be at 500GB per drive next year, so 1TB of storage isnt going to be enough? Thats a LOT of video in uncompressed format. Get a DVD Burner, and burn your finished projects on DVDs. If they are too big, get an external LaCie drive, I believe they go up to 400GB.
How so? I have 1 80GB drive, and 1 35GB drive. My 80GB is for storage (Music/Movies). I havent even nearly filled it up. I have about 48 movies, and 6GB of Music! AND, I have like 15GB of Apps (.dmg, .sit) and games!
My dad bought a powermac g4 a while back for a business that was pretty much all DV editing and stuff. He had 4x 35GB IBM Drives in it. It was enough back then...
And, SATA is going to be at 500GB per drive next year, so 1TB of storage isnt going to be enough? Thats a LOT of video in uncompressed format. Get a DVD Burner, and burn your finished projects on DVDs. If they are too big, get an external LaCie drive, I believe they go up to 400GB.
patrick0brien
macrumors 68040
Re: Re: Re: G5 only 2 Drive Bays?
-iPC
For what?!? I mean 500GB - Oh say 50GB for your everyday stuff so that leaves you with 450GB for video - Yikes!
Thats more than 35 hours of video.
Are our standards a little high?
-iPC
For what?!? I mean 500GB - Oh say 50GB for your everyday stuff so that leaves you with 450GB for video - Yikes!
Thats more than 35 hours of video.
Are our standards a little high?
spercharged69
macrumors 6502a
I also agree it is a step backwards. I'm currently a PC user interested in purchasing a G5. Having two hard-drive spaces seems faily primative. I'm currently running a 4 drive RAID 0 array in my PC, plus a 2 drive RAID 1 array for my super-important stuff. And my case STILL has room for more drives. Also, only one optical drive seems stupid too. No disc to disc copying of anything. My current PC setup is like this:
5.25 Drive Bays:
CD-R Drive
DVD-R Drive
DVD-ROM Drive
Removable HD Caddy (My 'data bucket' for going to and from work)
3.5 Drive Bays:
Floppy Drive
Media Reader
AND the 6 Internal HD's on top of that.
To get anywhere near the functionality, storage space, or versitility of my PC the G5 is going to have to have a jungle of stuff connected via firewire and USB... when everything is internal on my PC, reducing clutter about 10 fold. Not to mention the added costs of expensive external devices. 🙄
I don't know.... I mean, I like the G5, but if apple is going to make all the hardware proprietary they should at least have the courtesy to allow for a little room to expand. The G5 seems more like an appliance than a computer. To the people saying "Hook up an Xserve via the Fiber Channel: Why should I have to buy THOUSANDS of dollars in hardware to have a RAID array when on a PC you can have completely integrated RAID for nothing more than the cost of the drives plus around $100 for a decent RAID card?
This is my biggest beef about the G5 right now :\
5.25 Drive Bays:
CD-R Drive
DVD-R Drive
DVD-ROM Drive
Removable HD Caddy (My 'data bucket' for going to and from work)
3.5 Drive Bays:
Floppy Drive
Media Reader
AND the 6 Internal HD's on top of that.
To get anywhere near the functionality, storage space, or versitility of my PC the G5 is going to have to have a jungle of stuff connected via firewire and USB... when everything is internal on my PC, reducing clutter about 10 fold. Not to mention the added costs of expensive external devices. 🙄
I don't know.... I mean, I like the G5, but if apple is going to make all the hardware proprietary they should at least have the courtesy to allow for a little room to expand. The G5 seems more like an appliance than a computer. To the people saying "Hook up an Xserve via the Fiber Channel: Why should I have to buy THOUSANDS of dollars in hardware to have a RAID array when on a PC you can have completely integrated RAID for nothing more than the cost of the drives plus around $100 for a decent RAID card?
This is my biggest beef about the G5 right now :\
I agree with io_burn about the G5 being more like an appliance than a computer. I heard that it will be a combo food dehydrator, smootie machine, and toaster oven. Oh wait, it does none of these...
In fact, it is nothing like an appliance.
I am a film student and do tons of DV editing and feel that if you are serious into DV editing then you will be accustomed to using firewire hard disks. 500GB is tons of space. In fact, if you have this much DV on your system you are really wasting resources. Name your tapes properly and keep your project files. Then if you have to side project something for a few months it only takes an hour to recapture the video. There is nothing worse than a hard drive filled with 100s of GB of DV. Ugh.
In fact, it is nothing like an appliance.
I am a film student and do tons of DV editing and feel that if you are serious into DV editing then you will be accustomed to using firewire hard disks. 500GB is tons of space. In fact, if you have this much DV on your system you are really wasting resources. Name your tapes properly and keep your project files. Then if you have to side project something for a few months it only takes an hour to recapture the video. There is nothing worse than a hard drive filled with 100s of GB of DV. Ugh.
spercharged69
macrumors 6502a
Whereby 'appliance' I mean like a network appliance such as a Firewall or a VPN that you can upgrade to a very low set minimum due to hardware expansion restrictions, perhaps more memory, or a WiFi card... but it does what it does, and is what it is without being able to be much more than that. ...Not like a blender.
The limited internal expansion capabilities of the G5 make it seem fairly similar to one of the firewalls we have in our datacenter at work. The firewall does its job, and does it well... As would the G5. But because of the expansion restrictions it will never be more than that.
I'd rather the G5 case be taller, or wider, or ANYTHING to allow even a reasonable amount of internal expansion. Expecting everyone who wants more space, or more optical drives, or more anything to buy external stuff to clutter your desk is ridiculous.
But that's just from a PC user's perspective, I suppose... So take it as a grain of salt. I'm just used to going out, buying another HD and plopping it in. Rather than going out, buying another HD, buy another hub to plug it in, wrestle through the jungle of cords to do so, then stack it on top the plethora of other crap plugged in to my computer. 😱
The limited internal expansion capabilities of the G5 make it seem fairly similar to one of the firewalls we have in our datacenter at work. The firewall does its job, and does it well... As would the G5. But because of the expansion restrictions it will never be more than that.
I'd rather the G5 case be taller, or wider, or ANYTHING to allow even a reasonable amount of internal expansion. Expecting everyone who wants more space, or more optical drives, or more anything to buy external stuff to clutter your desk is ridiculous.
But that's just from a PC user's perspective, I suppose... So take it as a grain of salt. I'm just used to going out, buying another HD and plopping it in. Rather than going out, buying another HD, buy another hub to plug it in, wrestle through the jungle of cords to do so, then stack it on top the plethora of other crap plugged in to my computer. 😱
bennetsaysargh
macrumors 68020
i would love to have 1 500Gb HD non the less 2. hard drive space shouldn't be an issue for that, unless if you jump around from project to project. i honestly can't live with a 40GB HD. i need more space for editing my soon to be shot DV footage.
io_burn, I agree with you on this point. At the current time I only own a 17" PB with external firewire harddrives to edit video with on FCP. I used to run a PC with 4 internal harddrives, and know where you are coming from.
The thing I need to always remember is that when you buy from Apple you sacrifice a little bit of customability for a lot of reliability. I am far from a techy, but space is kept to a minimum in the G5 case to allow the Star Trek cooling system to do its thang thang. In the PC world if you have a problem, you just go buy a new case and cram ten different things in it.
The thing I need to always remember is that when you buy from Apple you sacrifice a little bit of customability for a lot of reliability. I am far from a techy, but space is kept to a minimum in the G5 case to allow the Star Trek cooling system to do its thang thang. In the PC world if you have a problem, you just go buy a new case and cram ten different things in it.
Don't get me wrong, 40GB is not adequate. I think that 120GB is sufficient for most people's use (including small scale video editing, meaning short films) and the G5 comes stock with 160GB. I would advise you to make a number of short films versus a feature, especially if it is the first thing you are going to be producing. In school there is a good saying: don't shoot until you are prepared to finish.
Daveman Deluxe
macrumors 68000
I suspect that there's a good reason there are only two drive slots in the G5.
For the average user (who probably won' get a G5 anyway) 500 GB is more than enough for a lifetime (then again, that's what they said about 10 MB hard disks in 1985). For the prosumers, 500 GB should be adequate, and it's not difficult to archive old project files. Not only that, but there's FireWire 800 to hook up more hard disks. For the REAL professionals, there's fibre-channel to hook up to an Xserve RAID.
My two bits.
For the average user (who probably won' get a G5 anyway) 500 GB is more than enough for a lifetime (then again, that's what they said about 10 MB hard disks in 1985). For the prosumers, 500 GB should be adequate, and it's not difficult to archive old project files. Not only that, but there's FireWire 800 to hook up more hard disks. For the REAL professionals, there's fibre-channel to hook up to an Xserve RAID.
My two bits.
I have 1.25 tb of space on my MDD, thas a lot, i know...but its mine and i want it! The fact that the G5 only has 2 bays is not a dealbreaker, but is unfortunate.
bennetsaysargh
macrumors 68020
patrick0brien
macrumors 68040
spercharged69
macrumors 6502a
iJon
macrumors 604
it really does suck. apple made the case bigger and they still cant fit it all in there. they went from 4 bays to 2 and 2 cd bays to 1. i was starting to get excited when the MDD's came out, now we are back at square one. and all this talk about fw800 and all that. sure you can do it and its nice, but what about when you need to take your powermac somewhere, it really sucks gathering all those drives and firewire cables. i know for me i would never use 500 GB, but i know video professions who edit HD TV and all other formats and they want all the storage they can get.
iJon
iJon
Its not backedup!!!
Its mostly DVDr that I burn off, then add more, and burn those off too.
The rest is Mp3s that if i ever lost, id die of 6 simultaneous heartattacks.
4 drives in the box, 2 dual external firewire dealies. 8 possible HDs, not to mention the singleHD enclosure that I have ( would make 9bays). i may start archiving my mp3s to dvd soon as blueray is out n about 🙂
Its mostly DVDr that I burn off, then add more, and burn those off too.
The rest is Mp3s that if i ever lost, id die of 6 simultaneous heartattacks.
4 drives in the box, 2 dual external firewire dealies. 8 possible HDs, not to mention the singleHD enclosure that I have ( would make 9bays). i may start archiving my mp3s to dvd soon as blueray is out n about 🙂
daveL
macrumors 68020
First of all, RAID 5 is the last thing you would use for write intensive i/o. This is especially true is you are doing host-based RAID, i.e. no hardware RAID controller that offloads the parity calculations.
Secondly, RAID 5 will *not* protect you from a double failure, so backups are still required.
CrackedButter
macrumors 68040
If hard drives were any bigger then we would have more storage, its only because HD manufactures havn't made a single drive bigger than 300GB. I'm sure if they had bigger hd's we would have more space.
Uh, yeah, enlightening point. "I'm sure if they had bigger hd's we would have more space." I guess that is how it works huh?
