Newbie ?s about buying new HD for MDD G4

[dilletantepp]

I would like to add a second HD to my MDD G4. I would like to put in a 160 GB HD, but i am a little confused about bus rates.

I understand the G4 has two buses: ATA/100 and ATA/66. The few 160 GB HDs I've looked at are ATA/133s.

Do I have to look for an ATA/100 HD or can I use an ATA/133 HD without worry?

Any advice would be appreciated.

Thanks

 

[Bear]

You can put an ATA/133 drive on the slower buses. It's just that if you had an ATA/133 bus, you would in theory get faster data transfers.

I have an ATA/133 drive in an MDD on the ATA/66 bus.

In reality, drives can't transfer data as fast as the ATA/133 interface, so you'r enot losing much if anything by connecting it to the ATA/66 bus and probably losing nothing if you connect it to the ATA/100 bus.
Since you only have one drive, you will gain the best performance by putting this drive on the empty ATA bus.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Don't forget the fact that > 120 GB drives are only recognized by ATA 100 + busses.
If you connect a 160 GB drive to a ATA 66 bus, only 128 GB will be usable.

 

[Bear]

Don't forget the fact that > 120 GB drives are only recognized by ATA 100 + busses.
If you connect a 160 GB drive to a ATA 66 bus, only 128 GB will be usable.

Not true!It depends on other things besides the speed of the bus. I have an MDD/FW800 and both the ATA/66 and ATA/100 interfaces can handle the larger drives. I have a 250GB on the ATA/66 bus.

The MDD/FW800 could be ordered with drives up to 180GB. The original MDD had an option of up to 120GB drives. The updated MDD (MDD 2003) which was only peripheral differences over the original MDD came with an option to order it with 160GB drives. And a document I just found says all the MDD models support ATA-6 which means they're not limited to 127 GB.

[The above paragraph contains information available on the Apple website.]

The issue is you have two things you have to look at. ATA bus speed and ATA specification that the controller was designed to. ATA-5 controllers are limited to 127GB. ATA-6 has a much larger limit.

 

[ChrisFromCanada]

And just to help clarify I have a 200 GB HD fully recognized in a quicksilver.

 

[MacsRgr8]

Not true!It depends on other things besides the speed of the bus. I have an MDD/FW800 and both the ATA/66 and ATA/100 interfaces can handle the larger drives. I have a 250GB on the ATA/66 bus.

Tnx for the info, I never knew that!

So there are different "types" of ATA/66 busses out there.
Crap.... that just makes matters more complicated

 

[raddsigns]

Same here, running a MDD Dual 867 and I have all for internal drive slots used with the following, a 60GB running OSX, and a 160 GB on the other ATA100 buss, on the 2 ATA66 buss I am running two 250 GB drives.

I have read that if a PCI ATA100 card were installed it would help with the drives on the ATA66 buss, however it has not been a problem for me yet, so I've not looked into it too seriously.

 

[spaceballl]

Hey hey don't be so hard on yourself! The fact is that ata66/100/133 are all pin compatible. So the hard drive, regardless of what kind it is, will fit just fine in your computer. That's good news .

It's not hard to do the install... You can either use a ghosting program to copy all the old data to the new one or you can just take the old one out and do a fresh install (switch the harddrives, reboot, hold down C upon boot to have the Mac OS X install disk boot up).

You MAY have some issues with the huge drive support, but I think you'll be fine. I think most older ATA interfaces can take firmware updates to support larger drives, but on that note, Apple doesn't mess with firmware as much as they do in the PC world so you're probably just going to keep the firmware you have.

But like really... 128gb... 160gb... Either way you've got a big drive.

I'm not sure if you know how to install the actual drive... you probably do, but in case you don't, you just unscrew the old one, put the new one with the same screws. There are two cables you plug in: a 4 pin power cord and and an ATA ribbon. A hard drive swap, especially on a desktop, shouldn't be too tough. Go for it and report back! We'll help you out with it.

-kevin

 

[cluthz]

And just to help clarify I have a 200 GB HD fully recognized in a quicksilver.

There are a few QuikSilvers that have a newer ata controller chipsets than the other models, therefore you'll able to notice more than 128 GB. Apple claims that only MDDs are compatible with larger drives. You either have one of the QSs that has a 48-bit controller, or you have a PCI ATA controller.

(The controller needs 48-bits adressing to see more than 128 GB per disk.)