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G5 Quad: Max HD size and interface speed?

R

RansomeW

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Mar 18, 2012
10
0
Santa Cruz Mountains, Ca
My trusty Quad Core G5 is running out of internal HD space again. Last year I upgraded to 2 2TBs SATA 3.0 Gb/s and they work great. I'm looking at the new Seagate 3 TB SATA 6.0 Gb/s drives, but wanted to confirm that there wasn't any limitation on the drive size or interface speed for this box running Mac OS X 10.5.8.

Thanks in advance.
 
Because the G5 had SATA I/1.5Gbps, you won't see any increase with a 6G drive. Only get that drive if it has jumpers to put it into 3G or 1.5G mode. Power Mac G5's have poor support for 6G drives and can't use them unless the drives are running at a legacy speed.
 
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Intell said:
Because the G5 had SATA I/1.5Gbps, you won't see any increase with a 6G drive. Only get that drive if it has jumpers to put it into 3G or 1.5G mode. Power Mac G5's have poor support for 6G drives and can't use them unless the drives are running at a legacy speed.
Click to expand...

OK, thanks, any limitation on drive size? Will I be able to use all 3 TB per drive?
 
I don't think it has any limitation that will prevent you from using 3TB drives in it.
 
PowerPC macs need Apple Partition Map formatted drives to boot from. APM is limited to 2TB per drive. The link that p4madeus provides ignores this fact just like Apple ignores PowerPC other than iTunes and thats only to sell more iOS devices.

You guys sent this guy to buy a drive that won't work. Well done. Thinking you know and actually knowing are very different things. It's partly his fault though as he relied on the word of people making guesses basically.

Links (since your guys take websites as gospel) to backup what I claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Partition_Map
"Because APM allows 32 bits worth of logical blocks, the size of an APM formated disk is limited to 2 TB"


http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.23/23.03/APMtoGPT/index.html
 
Could keep a 2TB disk to boot from and format a 3TB one with GUID to have one big partition.
 
Last edited:
Intell said:
Could keep a 2TB disk to boot from and format a 3TB one with GUID to have one big partition.
Click to expand...

You seem to just make stuff up as you go. Can't use 3TB on a PowerPC no matter what mapping you use. It's also impossible to have both APM and GUID on the same drive as it's the partition mapping itself.

Did you lose some bet where the loser has to act like a tech?
 
Read my post again. It's about having two drives in the PowerMac. One formatted with APM and 2Tb in size and the other drive formatted GUID and sized 3Tb.
 
Intell said:
Read my post again. It's about having two drives in the PowerMac. One formatted with APM and 2Tb in size and the other drive formatted GUID and sized 3Tb.
Click to expand...

Read mine again. You can't use 3TB drives on PowerPC no matter what partition mapping you use. Cannot use 3TB on a PowerPC mac no matter if it's SATA or USB or FW or whatever.

I'm sure you will keep telling him to buy one though.
 
After some futher reading I am happy to say, one can use 3Tb drives as a boot disk in a G5. But no single partition is allowed to be over 2.2 Tb and the system must be running 10.4.11 or 10.5.X. 3Tb drives when partitioned in GUID can be accessed in full over FireWire or USB on any Mac running 10.4.11 or newer. A simple solution to the OP's problem if the drives have already been purchased is to partition one of the drive into two 1.5Tb partitions and formats the other with GUID to be able to use the full size.
 
A friend of mine bought a 3TB WD Green drive and put it as the second drive for storage in his G5 PCI-X but he had to use a Sonnet/Seritek card to do so. Formatted it as GUID and put all his files on it.
 
I have setup 3TB drives on a couple of my clients G5 towers. One on internal SATA and one in a USB enclosure. Both worked fine with GUID in one partition.

Tetley is right about the 2 TB limit in APM but the limit ends there. It's not a PowerPC limit.. it's a APM limit.

People need to remember that reading a web site doesn't give you knowledge. It gives you empty facts that you cannot backup with real world experience. There are at least 3 people in this thread that don't get that.
 
Tetley said:
PowerPC macs need Apple Partition Map formatted drives to boot from. APM is limited to 2TB per drive. The link that p4madeus provides ignores this fact just like Apple ignores PowerPC other than iTunes and thats only to sell more iOS devices.

You guys sent this guy to buy a drive that won't work. Well done. Thinking you know and actually knowing are very different things. It's partly his fault though as he relied on the word of people making guesses basically.

Links (since your guys take websites as gospel) to backup what I claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Partition_Map
"Because APM allows 32 bits worth of logical blocks, the size of an APM formated disk is limited to 2 TB"


http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.23/23.03/APMtoGPT/index.html
Click to expand...

There's nothing wrong with correcting an incorrect statement, but have a little class and show some respect. These people are only trying to help. If anything, going around insulting people in order to raise your self worth is considerably worse than accidentally giving an incorrect specification limit for the Apple Partition Map drive scheme.
 
Tetley said:
PowerPC macs need Apple Partition Map formatted drives to boot from. APM is limited to 2TB per drive. The link that p4madeus provides ignores this fact just like Apple ignores PowerPC other than iTunes and thats only to sell more iOS devices.

You guys sent this guy to buy a drive that won't work. Well done. Thinking you know and actually knowing are very different things. It's partly his fault though as he relied on the word of people making guesses basically.

Links (since your guys take websites as gospel) to backup what I claim:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Apple_Partition_Map
"Because APM allows 32 bits worth of logical blocks, the size of an APM formated disk is limited to 2 TB"


http://www.mactech.com/articles/mactech/Vol.23/23.03/APMtoGPT/index.html
Click to expand...

Talking about things you think you know..
 
It works!

RansomeW said:
My trusty Quad Core G5 is running out of internal HD space again. Last year I upgraded to 2 2TBs SATA 3.0 Gb/s and they work great. I'm looking at the new Seagate 3 TB SATA 6.0 Gb/s drives, but wanted to confirm that there wasn't any limitation on the drive size or interface speed for this box running Mac OS X 10.5.8.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...

Just to test this out, I took a 6TB (Western Digital WD60EFRX) drive out of my NAS and into my Quad G5. It had no problems formatting it to APM (5.5TB usable) and booting from it. I don't plan to leave it in, but I just want to leave proof that larger hard drives do work and you can boot from them.
 

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Factually, that screenshot isn't possible. Just like having a screenshot of 10.6 running on a G3.
 
RansomeW said:
My trusty Quad Core G5 is running out of internal HD space again. Last year I upgraded to 2 2TBs SATA 3.0 Gb/s and they work great. I'm looking at the new Seagate 3 TB SATA 6.0 Gb/s drives, but wanted to confirm that there wasn't any limitation on the drive size or interface speed for this box running Mac OS X 10.5.8.

Thanks in advance.
Click to expand...
You'd need to partition the boot drive down to 1TB and then use the rest on another partition. I don't think PowerPC Macs can't boot from a drive larger than 1TB.
--Oh damn it seems I've walked into a gun fight whoops
 
Tetley said:
Read mine again. You can't use 3TB drives on PowerPC no matter what partition mapping you use. Cannot use 3TB on a PowerPC mac no matter if it's SATA or USB or FW or whatever.

I'm sure you will keep telling him to buy one though.
Click to expand...

Proof is in the pudding...

Picture 5.png


EDIT: Just realized this is a really old thread, apologies.
 
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