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Power Mac G4 'Quicksilver' 2002 and large hard drives

edesignuk

edesignuk

Moderator emeritus
Original poster
Mar 25, 2002
19,232
2
London, England
My dad has my old Power Mac G4 'Quicksilver' from 2002 (dual 1GHz). He's run out of room on the 120GB drives currently installed and I need to find the best way to give him more space.

I was aware of the 128GB limit of the older Power Mac's (and this is why I went 2 x 120GB a couple of years back).

Now I'm wondering if the 128GB limit actually applies to this Mac, because of this:
In 2002, Apple adopted a newer IDE controller with the QuickSilver '2002' model that made use of 48-bit addressing, thus alleviating the 128GB barrier and allowing the use of IDE drives in excess of 250GBs+. If you own one of the following Power Macintosh models, you're free to roam the storage prairie with no restraints;

Power Macintosh G4 - QuickSilver '2002' (800MHz, 933MHz, Dual 1GHz)
Power Macintosh G4 - MDD '2002' (Dual 867MHz, Dual 1GHz, Dual 1.25GHz)
Power Macintosh G4 - MDD '2003' (Single 1GHz, Dual 1.25GHz, Dual 1.42GHz)
Click to expand...
This gives me some confidence but I don't want to just take their word for it and have my dad go buy drives he can't use.

So, does anyone know if drives larger than 128GB will work in a 2002 Quicksilver (without need need for additional controllers)? Has anyone done it?

Thanks.
 
you will need a pci card to use larger drives.

I would recommend getting a SATA card to take advantage of sata speeds and drive availability.

You can get the

FirmTek SeriTek/1S2
or the
SoNNeT TSATA PCI SATA Controller Card
for about the same price

You will probably need to downgrade the firmware tho, The latest firmware causes sleep problems with G4s.
 
I have an older Sawtooth with a 250GB hard drive. It is running Ubuntu now and I found no hard drive restraints because of hardware. If there is a limit on the size of the hard drive, it will be OS related. But I doubt it.

I don't see any reason why a second drive, IDE controlled or USB, cannot be added.

I ran out of space on a mini so I added a USB drive. Copied the photo and iTunes data to the USB drive, deleted it from the original hard drive, and created a link to it ( copied data ) from the original hard drive. I just had to remember to turn on the USB drive before accessing iTunes and iPhoto.
 
product26 said:
you will need a pci card to use larger drives.
Click to expand...
I appreciate your reply, but given my source, and the other responses to this thread stating this isn't the case, do you have anything to back up your reply? Not trying to get funny with you, just want to be sure. Thanks.
 
edesignuk said:
My dad has my old Power Mac G4 'Quicksilver' from 2002 (dual 1GHz). He's run out of room on the 120GB drives currently installed and I need to find the best way to give him more space.

I was aware of the 128GB limit of the older Power Mac's (and this is why I went 2 x 120GB a couple of years back).
Click to expand...

I've got a 2001 733 MHz Quicksilver, and when I checked it, that was the last model with the 128 GB limit (which would be a 137 GB limit nowadays). The 2002 ones should be fine with larger drives.

And you could always go for an external FireWire drive.
 
TXbug said:
I have an older Sawtooth with a 250GB hard drive. It is running Ubuntu now and I found no hard drive restraints because of hardware. If there is a limit on the size of the hard drive, it will be OS related. But I doubt it.

I don't see any reason why a second drive, IDE controlled or USB, cannot be added.

I ran out of space on a mini so I added a USB drive. Copied the photo and iTunes data to the USB drive, deleted it from the original hard drive, and created a link to it ( copied data ) from the original hard drive. I just had to remember to turn on the USB drive before accessing iTunes and iPhoto.
Click to expand...

You have a 250GB internal ATA or a external drive?
My old Sawtooth have a 160GB HD that shows up as 128GB.
(It also have a 80GB and a 120GB, that are ofc working normally).

It have no troubles using larger Firewire drives tho.
 
My G4 DA is using a 250 GB HD

..with no troubles, seeing and using the full drive.
Although there is a limitation of 128GB on this computer, there are 3 party extensions that allow for larger drives that you can find by doing a search. Cannot remember the name right now but you will find it +instructions if you search.
Also with a proper ATA controller card I believe that you could install bigger drives without using the mentioned extension.

If you use it on FireWire or USB, there should be no problem at all no matter the size. It is if you use it internally that you would need to use a controller card or add software support for 128+GB. This applies to DA and earlier.

But with YOUR computer, you need not to care about this as it does support bigger drives. It is a later model than the DA and support is built in already in the HW.
 
you're clear to go big.

edesignuk said:
So, does anyone know if drives larger than 128GB will work in a 2002 Quicksilver (without need need for additional controllers)? Has anyone done it?
Click to expand...

yes, i've done it and your quote about the new controller was correct. the 2001 quicksilver had the 128gb limit, and the 2002 quicksilver had the newer controller without the 128gb limit. i have owned both.

that said, if your dad is going to keep and use the machine awhile, going with a pci SATA controller and a large/fast disk would be a nice upgrade and a good use of money. i've done that with both of mine (2001/2002) and it makes a HUGE difference in the speed of the system. the cost of a large IDE is usually more than the same size SATA drive, so the additional cost of the card is the only additional money for the upgrade. either way, best of luck.
 
Well, just in case anyone is still wondering, MY 867 QS has never had any issues whatsoever with a 200GB drive that is connected to the internal controller & used as a back-up/maintenance/storage drive.

For the sheer speeeed however, I do use a SIIG pci SATA controller w/ 2x 160GB Raptors in a raid as my main drives.....it IS way faster and also neveranottaproblemo in over 4 years ! :)
 
It does work.

I'm using a G4 867 Quicksilver 2002 until my iMac i7 comes in.

I took the old 40GB Seagate out and swapped it with a 320GB Seagate IDE drive I had lying around.

PowerMac3,5
867MHz G4
 
I know this thread is old, but maybe this additional info will help someone searching for it later, so I would like to share a link with you:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2544?viewlocale=en_US

I am German and I do not know whether I have understood everything under this link, but as far as I got it, it says:

There are to ways:

1. you have a mac that allready supports drives larger than 128GB (or 137GB respectively), which is Macs from until June 2002. (Beware there are some Quicksilver Models that do support it and some don't, due to Apple using other parts in one model it seems.)

2. If not:
a) install an OS X, higher than 10.2 and you can utilize a bigger harddrive
b) For OS 9 Users, they should use OS 9.2.2 and make partitions of not more than 200GB each. (Example, if you have a 320GB HDD make one with 200GB and one with 120GB)

(if you have lets say OS 9.2.1 installed and use a 160GB HDD it will use the drive, but somewhen it will write out of the 128GB space and the drive will get problems. (concerning the last point I got an answer from hitachi, they confirmed that the computer will somewhen start writing in places over the 128GB and will get problems including not booting, corrupted data). You will not notice that in the beginning of use.
 
product26 said:
you will need a pci card to use larger drives.

I would recommend getting a SATA card to take advantage of sata speeds and drive availability.

You can get the

FirmTek SeriTek/1S2
or the
SoNNeT TSATA PCI SATA Controller Card
for about the same price

You will probably need to downgrade the firmware tho, The latest firmware causes sleep problems with G4s.
Click to expand...

I'm confused, I have the identical mac as the original posters dad so I need to know this as well. What is all this about a controller card? Why cant I just buy a HD and slap it in? Where does the controller card go, in one of the slots?
Thanks
 
4JNA said:
the 2002 quicksilver had the newer controller without the 128gb limit.

that said, if your dad is going to keep and use the machine awhile, going with a pci SATA controller and a large/fast disk would be a nice upgrade and a good use of money.
Click to expand...

Now I'm more confused, first you said the 2002 QS has no 128gb limit, but then say we still need a pci SATA controller? If there is no limit, why do we need the SATA controller? Sorry if I seem dumb on the subject, I just don't get what the controller is for.

Thanks
 
'want' not 'need'

Deville said:
Now I'm more confused, first you said the 2002 QS has no 128gb limit, but then say we still need a pci SATA controller? If there is no limit, why do we need the SATA controller? Sorry if I seem dumb on the subject, I just don't get what the controller is for.

Thanks
Click to expand...

no problem. i didn't say you 'need' the SATA pci controller, it was only a recommendation based on personal experience. the difference in using the system with the faster drive/controller is dramatic and very noticeable.

the controller is for using a newer/faster/bigger/cheaper SATA drive with the system, as the Quicksilver (2001/2002) only came with the older IDE connections on the logic board.

the older IDE drives are more expensive when it comes to large capacity, only go up to 750gb that i'm aware of (or have used myself) and transfer data at a much slower speed (133).

the newer SATA drives are less expensive, are available off the shelf up to 2tb (2000gb) at the moment, and transfer data at a much higher speed (300).

best of luck.
 
4JNA said:
no problem. i didn't say you 'need' the SATA pci controller, it was only a recommendation based on personal experience. the difference in using the system with the faster drive/controller is dramatic and very noticeable.

the controller is for using a newer/faster/bigger/cheaper SATA drive with the system, as the Quicksilver (2001/2002) only came with the older IDE connections on the logic board.

the older IDE drives are more expensive when it comes to large capacity, only go up to 750gb that i'm aware of (or have used myself) and transfer data at a much slower speed (133).

the newer SATA drives are less expensive, are available off the shelf up to 2tb (2000gb) at the moment, and transfer data at a much higher speed (300).

best of luck.
Click to expand...

Oh, ok I get it now it's just so I can use a SATA drive rather then IDE. Perfect thanks for your help! This is gonna be sweet my new GE ti4600 video card is on the way and I think I'm going to go pick up a new SATA drive and controller today, I love this old mac :)
 
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Maybe I jumped the gun getting excited about a new SATA drive, I called the only 2 places in town that could help me and neither could get me a pci controller.

Would someone please show me a link on ebay, or anywhere of the SATA pci controller I need? I dont even know what to look for. I found this one, but will it work?

http://cgi.ebay.ca/2-SATA-II-Contro...ultDomain_2&hash=item5640be83e2#ht_2229wt_877

Also what are the plugs on the front for?

Thanks.
 
just say no to eSATA, PCI-X, PCI-E

Deville said:
Maybe I jumped the gun getting excited about a new SATA drive, I called the only 2 places in town that could help me and neither could get me a pci controller.

Would someone please show me a link on ebay, or anywhere of the SATA pci controller I need? I dont even know what to look for. I found this one, but will it work?

http://cgi.ebay.ca/2-SATA-II-Contro...ultDomain_2&hash=item5640be83e2#ht_2229wt_877

Also what are the plugs on the front for?

Thanks.
Click to expand...

going by the .ca in the link, you must be in Canada eh?

two problems with the card you linked... you can only use PCI in a QS, and not PCI-X or PCI-E. different connections, won't work. also, the card you linked was an 'eSATA' or external connection card. you need an 'internal' connector card if you want the drives to be inside the case.

THIS type of card is just for reference what you are looking for. not me, no connection to the auction, no recommendation to buy this card.

dealing with a reputable dealer like OWC who ships to CA might be a better deal even though it might cost more. or, maybe see if a local shop can find something similar now you know what to look for. best of luck.

EDIT: yeah, the sonnet card you just picked would work great, and the spec page says 'boots from any attached drive' so you should be good to go.

just for reference, if you look, that card is a SATA I (one) which can transfer at speeds of 150. the newer SATA II (two) cards are the ones that transfer at speed of 300. you can use a new SATA 300 disk with the older SATA 150 card, it just won't transfer data as fast, everything else works just the same.
 
Last edited:
4JNA said:
going by the .ca in the link, you must be in Canada eh?

two problems with the card you linked... you can only use PCI in a QS, and not PCI-X or PCI-E. different connections, won't work. also, the card you linked was an 'eSATA' or external connection card. you need an 'internal' connector card if you want the drives to be inside the case.

THIS type of card is just for reference what you are looking for. not me, no connection to the auction, no recommendation to buy this card.

dealing with a reputable dealer like OWC who ships to CA might be a better deal even though it might cost more. or, maybe see if a local shop can find something similar now you know what to look for. best of luck.

EDIT: yeah, the sonnet card you just picked would work great, and the spec page says 'boots from any attached drive' so you should be good to go.
Click to expand...

Yes in Canada eh, I'm going to order one right now eh, I'm sure I could find a used one cheaper but I prefer new. Thanks again for all your help.

Cheers!
 
I just noticed what you said about SATA 1 vs SATA 2 and the one I ordered is SATA 1.

I wish I seen that sooner cause I would have rather had a SATA 2 but the only one that site had that I seen was $200, and I wouldn't have paid that anyway, I would rather upgrade to a newer computer. Do you think I'll still notice a speed difference with the SATA 1 compared to my original IDE?
 
Deville said:
I just noticed what you said about SATA 1 vs SATA 2 and the one I ordered is SATA 1.

I wish I seen that sooner cause I would have rather had a SATA 2 but the only one that site had that I seen was $200, and I wouldn't have paid that anyway, I would rather upgrade to a newer computer. Do you think I'll still notice a speed difference with the SATA 1 compared to my original IDE?
Click to expand...


yeah, big difference between the original onboard and a new card/drive. faster boot, apps open really quick, good stuff.

for what it's worth, i don't think i've ever used a straight PCI (not -x, -e) card that was SATA II. i know the one from hong kong i linked said SATA 300, but who knows if it is or works or whatever. i've used several sonnet cards like the one you linked, and several 'acard' versions that look just the same and they have all worked really well. fast is good! best of luck.
 
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