G5 Quad: Max HD size and interface speed?

[jbarley]

Proof is in the pudding...

I notice that in your screenshot Disk Utility shows only 1 HDD, and that one is partitioned using the Guid partition table.
So how did you manage to get a PPC G5 to boot from a Guid partition?

 

[rawweb]

I notice that in your screenshot Disk Utility shows only 1 HDD, and that one is partitioned using the Guid partition table.
So how did you manage to get a PPC G5 to boot from a Guid partition?

I'll be honest, it might be dumb luck. I used to have it as the second large media drive with an ssd boot volume. Decided to repurpose the ssd for another use and copied it's volume onto the 3tb machine in my Mac Pro. Put this back in the G5 and never put a second thought to it because it worked.

 

[jbarley]

I'll be honest, it might be dumb luck. I used to have it as the second large media drive with an ssd boot volume. Decided to repurpose the ssd for another use and copied it's volume onto the 3tb machine in my Mac Pro. Put this back in the G5 and never put a second thought to it because it worked.

mmm!

 

[reukiodo]

I'll be honest, it might be dumb luck. I used to have it as the second large media drive with an ssd boot volume. Decided to repurpose the ssd for another use and copied it's volume onto the 3tb machine in my Mac Pro. Put this back in the G5 and never put a second thought to it because it worked.

Well, I didn't want to be one of those guys, so I tried to duplicate that process (partition GUID a 320GB drive, diskutil copy a APM boot volume over) and what do you know, the PMG5Q actually booted from a GUID partitioned drive! This makes me curious if Apple was developing and testing GUID on the PM series prior to the Intel switch. I think it's pretty well-known that the Intel Macs can boot from APM drives (at least earlier Intel Macs), though I think rawweb just discovered something quite interesting in the reverse: Power Macs booting GUID drives!

Unfortunately all my other Power Macs are 2003 and earlier (I like booting OS9), so none of them have SATA. I think my next step is to try booting with a GUID firewire drive.

Does anyone have an early G5 Mac that can try this? I'm interested to see how far back this goes...

EDIT: Though it is intersting that the PMG5Q doesn't let you pick it as a boot drive, at least in the Startup Disk chooser...

 

[reukiodo]

Unfortunately all my other Power Macs are 2003 and earlier (I like booting OS9), so none of them have SATA. I think my next step is to try booting with a GUID firewire drive.

So I pulled the GUID SATA drive from the PMG5Q and put it in an external enclosure (that I've used previously with APM drives, so I know it boots) but the PMG5Q would not boot from it. Nothing showed up in the Alt/Option startup either. Since the same enclosure had USB, I tried with USB also, without success. There goes the easy way of testing older Macs...

When I put the GUID SATA drive back inside the PMG5Q on the native SATA bus and booted, it did show up in the Alt/Option startup and I could boot from it, but still not listed in the Startup Disk preferences...

I think next is to find a spare PATA drive that I can set up the same for my 2003 Macs...