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Internal hard drives (I feel silly)

Y

yellow bear

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Jan 4, 2006
28
0
Hi!
I desperately need some more space (internally) on my powermac dual thingy computer, Am I right in thinking that I need to buy an internal hard drive? do these all cater for mac and PC or do I need to buy one specially for a mac? I'm in the uk and I think I want to buy online (not many pute shops around here) any tips or suggestions on buying? any reccomendations?
Also how do I make the drive that I buy the one that everything boots from? is that easy?
Ive put internal drives in before under the guidance of my ex so I know I can do it, it's just the finer details that bother me.
Thanks so much!
Claire x
 
Firstly, what speed is your PowerMac G4?

Any PATA hard drive should work (current PATA hard drives include the ATA-100 and ATA-133 varieties). I'd stick with Seagate hard drives since they have a 5-year warranty. If you don't care about the warranty, then I would look for the best price. But really...any brand should work fine.

However, certain G4 models do not support hard drives over 137 gb in size without a bit of trickery. Only the "mirror drive door" model supports larger hard drives.
 
CPU Speed: 867 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB

Is that the speed my g4 is?

I have a mirror on the front, will i be ok with a big drive?

Thankyou by the way!

Claire x
 
If you're using Tiger, under system preferences there's a Startup disc icon, click on that and you can choose whatever drive attached to your computer that you want it to boot from. I think this startup disc icon is somewhere else in Panther (still in system preferences but buried in another folder). It should be very easy
 
yellow bear said:
CPU Speed: 867 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB

Is that the speed my g4 is?

I have a mirror on the front, will i be ok with a big drive?

Thankyou by the way!

Claire x
Click to expand...

As you already perfectly described it:

It is a "Mirror Drive Door" Power Mac G4 Dual 867 MHz.
This Mac has ATA/100 bus, so big PC/Mac ATA drives will work in it.

No hassle with Master / Slave, just keep the HD on CS (Cable Select), and then format it using Disk Utility.

EDIT: Here's nice info on your Mac:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/powermac_g4/stats/powermac_g4_867_dp_mdd.html
 
aquajet said:
However, certain G4 models do not support hard drives over 137 gb in size without a bit of trickery. Only the "mirror drive door" model supports larger hard drives.
Click to expand...
If it is a Quicksilver G4 (2002 model) it can accept a 137 GB or larger drive.
 
Thanks guys!


reberto: does having this mirror thingy mean i have a model newer than 2002? I dont really know whether i have the quicksilver model.

Just want to make really really sure b4 I buy!

Claire x
 
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