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How many HDDs can a PMG4 hold?

cantthinkofone

cantthinkofone

macrumors 65816
Original poster
Jul 25, 2004
1,285
0
Missouri, USA
Right now mine has 2 in it. But i think i saw sleds for two more drives. But how would you hook a IDE cable to them? Can you run them off the IDE cable for the CD drive?

I'd like to have another drive in it so i can do RAID with out shelling out the money for a controller card.
 
Depends on the version. PowerMacs comes with IDE support with 4 drives (1 used for optical), but may have holders for 4 or more drives.

Mine has 6 HD in it without modding, after removing the optical drive (3.5" to 5.25" adapter is needed). I use a SATA PCI card though.

You need to set the IDE drive to the proper jumper setting. I think the optical is master.
 
Your PowerMac shouldn't have a problem holding 3 or more drives. It is possible to connect extra drives to the CD-ROM cable, but I think that interface operates at a slower speed compared to where the main hard drives connect.
 
TDM21 said:
Your PowerMac shouldn't have a problem holding 3 or more drives. It is possible to connect extra drives to the CD-ROM cable, but I think that interface operates at a slower speed compared to where the main hard drives connect.
Click to expand...

The optical drive bus in Quicksilver and older G4 towers has a (theoretical maximum) transfer rate of 16.7MB/sec.
The optical drive bus in the G4 MDD has a maximum transfer rate of 33MB/sec.
 
What G4 do you have? The MDD has support for 4 IDE hard drives on 2 different buses and another bus for the 2 optical drives.

The quicksilver only had 2 buses and each only supports 2 IDE devices. Same goes for the older G4s too.

You can always buy PCI IDE/SATA controllers to add more HDDs internally. Might want to upgrade your PSU or upgrade/add more fans as the temps might rise a bit.
 
What about the PSU? It's only a 350watt correct? And it has a 20 pin connector? Are apple computer's PSUs the same as others? same pin out and all that?
 
cantthinkofone said:
What about the PSU? It's only a 350watt correct? And it has a 20 pin connector? Are apple computer's PSUs the same as others? same pin out and all that?
Click to expand...

I those had 340w or something? What's the model #? I think you might be fine with that though. But you may want to upgrade those fans or add a few if you plan on running more hard drives.
 
OrangeSVTguy said:
I those had 340w or something? What's the model #? I think you might be fine with that though. But you may want to upgrade those fans or add a few if you plan on running more hard drives.
Click to expand...

I don't know off hand. It's at home. The inside of the case seems to be fairly cool. I check the air coming out of the back every now and then and it's warm at the most. Usually fairly cool.
 
cantthinkofone said:
What about the PSU? It's only a 350watt correct? And it has a 20 pin connector? Are apple computer's PSUs the same as others? same pin out and all that?
Click to expand...

Sadly no, the PowerMac's power supply has a different pinout compared to the PC's ATX specification. To further add confusion, Apple changed the pinout on the G4 PowerMac everytime they released a new version. The PSU from the PCI, DA, GE, QS, and MDD are all different.

It is possible, however, to move the pins around on an ATX power connector and make one work with a G4 Powermac. I believe Xlr8yourmac.com has an article about doing the modification
 
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