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Quick Help needed. Hard drive requirements.

D

deadfrog

macrumors regular
Original poster
Hi,

Just wondering if someone could offer some quick advice. Want to get a new hard drive today. Was looking at the seagate 160gb SATA hd with 8 mb cache.. Are these any good and will it be ok in my g4 550dp powermac?

thanks
 
without meaning to sound ignorant, how would i find that out?

under my system profiler, pci/agp cards: all its got is my graphics card (128 rage pro)...

my current hard drive is Deskstar 40GV - IBM DTLA-305030 - 30.7GB - IDE ATA/100 - 512KB - 5400 rpm

cheers
 
hmmmm... so whats the difference? and what am i looking for? basically id really like to get one today...

thanks for all your help, is appreciated.

rich
 
deadfrog said:
hmmmm... so whats the difference? and what am i looking for? basically id really like to get one today...

thanks for all your help, is appreciated.

rich
Click to expand...
SATA is newer technology that PATA (Parallel ATA, or just ATA), and it won't work unless you have a G5-based Mac (which you don't) or a PowerMac G4 and a SATA PCI card (which you don't seem to have either). SATA implements data transfer in a different and much faster way than PATA - however, modern hard drives can't take full advantage of SATA's speed just yet.
 
cluthz said:
I would have bought a 120GB drive for your Powermac since it can't use more than 128GB (per physical HD). All drives over 128GB will be recognized as 128GB drives.
Click to expand...

ah....Good point.

I don't own this one, I only have a 120, but since the poster was looking for 160, I found that one.

You would need an ATA133 card to recognize any drive larger than 137GB.

So get this drive or one like it.

http://www.newegg.com/app/ViewProductDesc.asp?description=22-148-022&depa=1
 
kingjr3 said:
You would need an ATA133 card to recognize any drive larger than 137GB.
Click to expand...

I think bringing an old thread to life is better than starting a new one... or am I wrong?? 😕

Anywho.... I have a Seagate Barracuda ST3200822A 200GB Hard Drive (EIDE ATA-100, 7200 RPM, 8MB), but in an external USB 2.0 case... My G4 has a ATA/66 card (AGP model)....

Do I still need to install an ATA133 card??
 
Dopeyman said:
Can anyone confirm that I need the ATA/133 card to run and external drive?? TIA!
Click to expand...
For firewire or USB external drives, it doesn't matter what type of ATA controller the system has since it isn't talking to the external drives.

However, you really want a USB 2.0 card for your system, otherwise the drive will be molasses slow. Or even better, get a firewire external drive.
 
Thank you Bear for the reply.. Yeah, I purchased a 5 port (4 outside, 1 inside) 2.0 USB pci card...

I was just curious cause it just crashed about a week ago before reading this thread...
 
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