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G5 Tower SATA ultra ATA

Altemose said:
Ideally, you would use a SATA hard drive as the boot drive. The Seagate drive should automatically clock down to SATA I or can most likely be adjusted with a jumper. Since Bunnspecial states it will work, it will work.



Some people replace the IDE cable with one with two ports on it so they can connect both the optical drive and HDD at the same time.
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Some computer techs will tell you not to put a HDD and a ODD on the same IDE cable something about compatibility issues with the speed of the HDD vs speed of the ODD, However AS a computer tech, I have not experienced any problems doing this one any motherboard newer than Socket 754
 
MatthewLTL said:
Some computer techs will tell you not to put a HDD and a ODD on the same IDE cable something about compatibility issues with the speed of the HDD vs speed of the ODD, However AS a computer tech, I have not experienced any problems doing this one any motherboard newer than Socket 754
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While there is credibility to that statement in some configurations, we are speaking about G5s and not PCs.
 
Altemose said:
While there is credibility to that statement in some configurations, we are speaking about G5s and not PCs.
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G5s are PCs.

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MatthewLTL said:
Some computer techs will tell you not to put a HDD and a ODD on the same IDE cable something about compatibility issues with the speed of the HDD vs speed of the ODD, However AS a computer tech, I have not experienced any problems doing this one any motherboard newer than Socket 754
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ODDs are so slow it wouldn't saturate an ATA66 :p You would have more trouble with having two hard drives on the same bus, which is always done! :p
 
Thank you guys so much for all this expert help. I think for now I will just take the optical drive out, and put the IDE drive from my old G4 in, each of them one at a time, first to boot from, and also to retrieve data. Tell me, when I do this, is the drive in any danger when it sits in that port? Because it's smaller than an optical drive. Of course I won't move the tower around forcefully or anything, but still, isn't the bottom of an internal hard drive vulnerable? It won't have the kind of suspension it has in a normal HD port.
 
Christopher11 said:
Thank you guys so much for all this expert help. I think for now I will just take the optical drive out, and put the IDE drive from my old G4 in, each of them one at a time, first to boot from, and also to retrieve data. Tell me, when I do this, is the drive in any danger when it sits in that port? Because it's smaller than an optical drive. Of course I won't move the tower around forcefully or anything, but still, isn't the bottom of an internal hard drive vulnerable? It won't have the kind of suspension it has in a normal HD port.
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If it would be touching metal then you should put a plastic sheet or spacer between the drive and metal to prevent short-circuiting. If it would be touching plastic then it would be fine.
 
poiihy said:
If it would be touching metal then you should put a plastic sheet or spacer between the drive and metal to prevent short-circuiting. If it would be touching plastic then it would be fine.
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Or just put the drive in upside-down. That's what I did the couple times I connected an IDE drive in a PowerMac G5. Shouldn't hurt the drive.
 
redheeler said:
Or just put the drive in upside-down. That's what I did the couple times I connected an IDE drive in a PowerMac G5. Shouldn't hurt the drive.
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Yes thats what I often do, though sometimes it is hard to do that (especially with the ribbon cables).
 
Hi guys. I pulled both levers to the left to remove my optical drive from this G5. I disconnected the ribbon cable, but it still doesn't want to slide out. Maybe it's the first time it's been out and it's a little stuck? Can you suggest a way to proceed to get this thing out of there, so I can get the IDE drive in? Thanks so much for any replies.


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Try reaching around and pushing on the other side of it. There should be a cut-out in the metal support that will allow you to do this.

In my experience, they can take a bit of force to get started, but WILL come out.
 
Thank you guys. That worked fine; optical drive out. I'm going to plug in the IDE drive from my G4 MDD now and boot from it. I put it on a piece of bubble wrap, pictured below. Is that okay?

IDEbubblewrap.jpg
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I wouldn't want to leave it permanently that way, but I've done similar on plenty of occasions for a temporary drive installation.

If you intend for it to be permanent, I'd suggest getting a set of 5 1/4" adapter rails to allow the drive to be secured in the same as the Superdrive was. A long time ago-when computers had lots of 5 1/4" bays and not many 3 1/2" bay, almost every hard drive shipped with a set of them(I remember the "great deal" my dad got on a 250mb Maxtor for $200 back in 1992 having them in the box). They're still available for a few bucks, or free if an old computer tech will let you rummage through his(or her) junk drawer :)
 
Yes, that's a good idea, or maybe I could even coopt one of them from the G4, if it fits? I won't be using them after all.

Okay so no major worries just for the short term though, having it on bubble wrap? I'll be swapping out several drives in this spot from my old G4, to transfer data. Thanks.
 
I've never seen the rails I'm talking about used in a G4-the only use I could see for them would be to mount an IDE HDD in the optical bay.

You could probably fit the double drive bracket from one in the optical bay of the G5 if you wanted something a bit more secure. Honestly, though, as long as it's temporary and you're not going to be moving the computer around the way you have it set up is fine. I'd probably do something similar if I were doing what you're doing. It makes swapping drives out a lot faster.
 
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