Installing New Hard Drive=Slow G4?

[jen1love1]

I'm new to the Mac. I recently installed a new 80G hard drive in my Power Mac G4 and installed only Panther on it. I did a full erase. Now, burning CD's are so much slooooower! Also, I can't load my Final Cut 3.0, the cd just ejects. I have no clue what I did wrong.

 

[bousozoku]

Did you change the file system to UFS (UNIX File System) by chance? It should be HFS+ for the majority of users and uses.

 

[Mechcozmo]

How fast does the drive spin? If you got a 4200 or a 5200 rpm drive then the hard drive is slower and cannot give data to the computer very fast. Most desktops have 7200rpm drives, laptops have 4200 or 5200. Some servers have 15,000rpm "Ultra-SCSI" drives that spin faster than you would believe!

 

[NusuniAdmin]

How fast does the drive spin? If you got a 4200 or a 5200 rpm drive then the hard drive is slower and cannot give data to the computer very fast. Most desktops have 7200rpm drives, laptops have 4200 or 5200. Some servers have 15,000rpm "Ultra-SCSI" drives that spin faster than you would believe!

amen to that, i have a 12k rpm scsi that came in my 8500 i bought off ebay and the thing sounds like a farggin airplane

 

[JFreak]

I'm new to the Mac. I recently installed a new 80G hard drive in my Power Mac G4 and installed only Panther on it. I did a full erase. Now, burning CD's are so much slooooower! Also, I can't load my Final Cut 3.0, the cd just ejects. I have no clue what I did wrong.

i guess you installed the secondary hard drive to the same buss with your cd drive? that might be your problem. either connect both hard drives to same buss with each other, or buy another ata buss for it - just leave the cd drive alone in its ata buss.

 

[tomf87]

i guess you installed the secondary hard drive to the same buss with your cd drive? that might be your problem. either connect both hard drives to same buss with each other, or buy another ata buss for it - just leave the cd drive alone in its ata buss.

Either that or you have master/slave conflicts. Make sure the device at the end of the cable is master and the device in the middle of the cable is slave. Or, put them both on CS (Cable Select).

 

[virividox]

i dont think sharing a bus should affect; just put it on cable select but check that you didnt get a slow spinning hd

 

[tomf87]

i dont think sharing a bus should affect; just put it on cable select but check that you didnt get a slow spinning hd

I doubt a slow spindle speed would affect the burning. A defective hard drive may cause it though, if the disk has to re-read sectors, however I would guess that this would cause bad CD writing, not just sluggishness.

Here's my theory. A 48x CD burning speed is roughly 7.2 MB/sec and a 52x burns at roughly 7.8 MB/sec. Check out the attached photos. One is from my internal 4200rpm drive (4200.jpg), one is from an external Maxtor 7200rpm connected via USB 2.0 to my PB (7200.jpg), and the last is from a Power Mac G4 533Mhz with an internal Maxtor 40GB 5400rpm (5400.jpg). The random reads seem really slow; they are slow enough to cause any burner to wait on the hard drive. However, since most files would be closer to sequential reads (I presume. Other notes welcome.) then all three drives would be fast enough to support a 48x CD burner.

 

[thedoc1111]

Is it just me or does 'CD Burning slowed down' and 'CDs just eject sounds like a co-incidental optical drive issue rather than the Hard Drive??

Try using a Firewire burner if you have access to one to see if the problems continue - my guess is that they won't.

Mike