Largest Hard Drive in a G4 PowerMac?

[sinecurea]

Hi Folks,
I'm looking to put a hard drive in G4 PowerMac 867Mhz. The machine would have been bought circa 2003.
It's running OS X Server 10.2.
I'm looking at a 300Gb hard drive.

What would be the restrictions in this case?

Cheers!

 

[JesterJJZ]

I know the earlier model G4 systems could only read to 128GB but I think you're ok. I'll let someone else chime in to verify. Otherwise you can always get a card that will allow you to connection the larger drives, PATA or SATA.

Is it the Mirrored Door model or the Quicksilver?

 

[Blue Velvet]

G4 PowerMacs of that vintage can only read the first 128Gb or so of the hard drive. To use a larger drive, you'll have to put a PCI ATA or SATA card in there, which is something I've had to do with a few old Macs at work to keep them going.

I would recommend a Sonnet SATA card to keep both the drive and machine vaguely useful for another few years. I've just purchased one of these:
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_serial_ata.html

...for a 733QS G4 that I'm setting up as a home server. Bear in mind that this card has connections for two drives but only comes with one set of SATA data and power connectors.

 

[sinecurea]

Thanks for the replies,
It's this model here:
http://www.apple-history.com/?page=gallery&model=g4_mirror

 

[Sherman Homan]

You are in luck with the mirror door G4, it doesn't have the 128 gig limit of its older siblings. However, Blue Velvet has the right way to go with the Sonnet SATA card, it is just plain faster.

 

[TyleRomeo]

Hi Folks,
I'm looking to put a hard drive in G4 PowerMac 867Mhz. The machine would have been bought circa 2003.
It's running OS X Server 10.2.
I'm looking at a 300Gb hard drive.

What would be the restrictions in this case?

Cheers!

You can put in drives larger than 128GB, I have a couple of 750GB seagate 7200.10's inside, over 2 TB in total and MDD has no problems handling it all.