2 Hard Drives in an eMac?

[76ShovelHead]

So I've had my eMac all apart for the past week in hopes of swapping the hard drive to a bigger one i have lying around.. Well, the CD ROM drive doesn't work anymore, so i decided to take it out today, and to my realization i found that the Optical drive has the exact same hook up as the Hard Drive does... So instead of putting the thing all back together just to take it all apart again, i was wondering will it work? will replacing the optical drive with a Hard Drive work? Thanks in advance

 

[chrismacguy]

So I've had my eMac all apart for the past week in hopes of swapping the hard drive to a bigger one i have lying around.. Well, the CD ROM drive doesn't work anymore, so i decided to take it out today, and to my realization i found that the Optical drive has the exact same hook up as the Hard Drive does... So instead of putting the thing all back together just to take it all apart again, i was wondering will it work? will replacing the optical drive with a Hard Drive work? Thanks in advance

If configured in the same master slave configuration it should work just fine - plenty of people with professional macs stick HDDs in the Optical Bay, so cant see why it wouldnt work on the iMac or eMac.

 

[666sheep]

It will work OK, but do not use it as boot drive. Optical drive is on ATA 33 controller, HDD is on ATA 100 (eMacs have 2 independent ATA controllers).

 

[OrangeSVTguy]

It will work OK, but do not use it as boot drive. Optical drive is on ATA 33 controller, HDD is on ATA 100 (eMacs have 2 independent ATA controllers).

Does the 100mhz bus support 2 drives like the Powermac G4's? Then he could install 2 7,200 rpm drives on the faster bus and setup a software RAID0 for best performance.

Otherwise using the slower ATA33 for a HDD would be fine if you are only using it as a storage device.

 

[Lord Blackadder]

I have definitely heard of people daisy-chaining several HDDs from the optical drive's ATA bus. Not sure how many drives the faster stock HDD bus can handle though.

It's also worth pointing out that more HDDs mean more stress on the stock power supply. I'm sure it could hande two HDDs, but I'm not sure if the PSU has the juice for more than that.

 

[California]

What kind of optical drive goes in an eMac?

Is it tray load or slot load?

 

[Intell]

eMac's use the PATA/IDE bus for their optical drives, they are full sized tray loading 3.5" desktop ones. The eMac can support four hard drives on it's PATA buses. Two on the optical and two on the HDD controller. The optical is ATA 33 and the HDD ATA 66 or 100, depending on the age of the eMac. You can use a faster, ATA 133, on the optical bus. But it'll be limited to ATA 33 speeds.

 

[cherry su]

eMac's use the PATA/IDE bus for their optical drives, they are full sized tray loading 3.5" desktop ones. The eMac can support four hard drives on it's PATA buses. Two on the optical and two on the HDD controller. The optical is ATA 33 and the HDD ATA 66 or 100, depending on the age of the eMac. You can use a faster, ATA 133, on the optical bus. But it'll be limited to ATA 33 speeds.

Desktop optical drives are 5.25". You might need a longer cable or a cable with 3 IDE connectors to daisy-chain from the ATA133 port.

 

[Intell]

Desktop optical drives are 5.25". You might need a longer cable or a cable with 3 IDE connectors to daisy-chain from the ATA133 port.

Opps, you're right, desktop drives are 5.25".

eMac's don't have ATA133, it was part of an example of what would happen if a faster drive was used in one.

 

[neoelectronaut]

Jeez. And I don't even have the guts to open up my eMac to get to the damn HDD to replace it (It's dead)

 

[Intell]

Jeez. And I don't even have the guts to open up my eMac to get to the damn HDD to replace it (It's dead)

The HDDs are pretty deep in them. Its a fun weekend project. Just make sure you have a anti-hernia plan in place.

 

[MacHamster68]

dont be afraid of taking the eMac apart , it sounds difficult , but actually is straightforward , just remember where all the screws inside have been, not that many to remember and hands away from the crt part ,as that crt holds a bit of a charge

there are adapters available to fit a 3.5 hdd in the optical 5.25 bay very cheap to find on ebay

i have 3 eMac's(1.42ghz) one is my ripper to get my entire dvd/cd collection on harddrives , and the other two have been converted with second harddrives in the optical bay so each of the 2 holds 2x750gb harddrives and acting as servers and for all the other tasks , one has a tv usb stick to record tv , and final cut in the other to cut out the tv ads ,while the ripper makes a backup of the finished film /tv show on dvd , just multitasking on a different level , but wasn't that apples slogan "think different"

 

[666sheep]

Does the 100mhz bus support 2 drives like the Powermac G4's? Then he could install 2 7,200 rpm drives on the faster bus and setup a software RAID0 for best performance.

Possibly, if it's dual channel controller. I've never tried that.
Some difficulties may happen with routing ATA ribbon from HDD bay to optical bay. HDD and optical drive (and their connectors) are on opposite sides of logic board. Much easier should be placing 2x 2.5" 7200 HDDs (with adapters) in HDD bay. In my 1.42 eMac I have 7200 WD BEKT (SATA with SATA->IDE adapter) in HDD bay and it's fast, much much faster than stock Seagate drive.
I imagine how fast would perform 2 of those in SW RAID 0 , but unfortunately I don't have second one to try.

The HDDs are pretty deep in them. Its a fun weekend project. Just make sure you have a anti-hernia plan in place.

Whole job shouldn't take more than half an hour. For the first time, 45 mins maybe

Update:
Leo Bodnar on his site confirmed that's possible to connect 2 drives to each IDE controller: http://www.lbodnar.dsl.pipex.com/eMac/eMac-upgrade.html

Another helpful (and well known) site with disassembly guide: http://www.wilko.com/emac/

 

[neoelectronaut]

I took it apart some time ago to replace the Superdrive which had died, and that was no problem, and a few months back I was going to tackle the HDD, but I got about halfway in before I got nervous that I wouldn't be able to get the damn thing back together.

It's something I'll have to get around to doing one day I guess, and if I ruin it, I ruin it, simple as that, not like the damn thing's worth much anyway.