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Power Mac G4 'Quicksilver' 2002 and large hard drives

Right on I feel good about the purchase, thanks.

Ok one more question, I'm starting to feel like I'm bothering you now. When I get it all installed, because I'm planning to use my new SATA drive alone, do I just take out the old drive and boot holding down C button and install osx on the new drive? Will it be recognized?

Or do I have to keep the old IDE in, format the new drive as journaled, install on the new drive while running my existing os, set boot sequence to new drive then take out IDE?

Or maybe neither way will work?

Thanks again, I think thats all I need to know for now :)
 
Deville said:
Right on I feel good about the purchase, thanks.

Ok one more question, I'm starting to feel like I'm bothering you now. When I get it all installed, because I'm planning to use my new SATA drive alone, do I just take out the old drive and boot holding down C button and install osx on the new drive? Will it be recognized?

Or do I have to keep the old IDE in, format the new drive as journaled, install on the new drive while running my existing os, set boot sequence to new drive then take out IDE?

Or maybe neither way will work?

Thanks again, I think thats all I need to know for now :)
Click to expand...


getting me to talk about computers is the easy part... getting me to shut up is much harder! happy to help, plus i'm an ex VON 2PO'er...

either way (old one in, or out and boot from 'c') would work. the sonnet card and the drive attached show up just like the internal (original) drive.

i'd pull the old drive, install the card and new drive, and then use the boot from 'c' option to load the new system myself.

the only other idea i can throw out is that if you are happy with the system/software you have on the old drive right now (running good, no problems, etc) then you could power down, install the card and new drive and 'clone' (make an exact copy) onto the new drive. power down one more time to remove the old drive, and then off you go except faster!

for clone software, i like superduper, but i know lots of people like carbon copy cloner as well. either should do the trick.
 
4JNA said:
getting me to talk about computers is the easy part... getting me to shut up is much harder! happy to help, plus i'm an ex VON 2PO'er...

either way (old one in, or out and boot from 'c') would work. the sonnet card and the drive attached show up just like the internal (original) drive.

i'd pull the old drive, install the card and new drive, and then use the boot from 'c' option to load the new system myself.

the only other idea i can throw out is that if you are happy with the system/software you have on the old drive right now (running good, no problems, etc) then you could power down, install the card and new drive and 'clone' (make an exact copy) onto the new drive. power down one more time to remove the old drive, and then off you go except faster!

for clone software, i like superduper, but i know lots of people like carbon copy cloner as well. either should do the trick.
Click to expand...

Cool, if your going to live up here BC is the place to do it. Thanks, again. Maybe I'll leave the old one in and use it with time machine for my photos and music, only about 60gb worth. or maybe I'll buy 2 500gb SATA one for running the mac and the other for time machine and then I can time machine the entire system.

Although I am really tempted to just go buy a new imac, was looking at them today while looking at HD's, almost bought one but $1800 is a little steep this close to xmas lol. And really, for what I do, music, photos, videos, email and internet this G4 is all I really need for now.

Also, now that openoffice.org finally has ppc support there is nothing I cant do on here that I need to.
 
Ok, my pci controller will be here tomorrow. I already mounted my 2 500gb SATA drives so now it's just a matter of plugging them in when the card comes. I decided to leave in the old IDE drive in, didn't see much point in pulling it since there was lots of room for the 2 new drives and this way I have another boot drive if I ever need it.

My questions are,
1 - Is it going to work, or will it mess things up running the old IDE with two new SATA drives. ( keeping in mind the old IDE is strictly for an emergency boot if I ever need to. )

2 - Would I have to set the old IDE to slave, or could I leave it as a master?

3 - I dont think I have ever owned a SATA drive so this may seem like a simple question for anyone with a computer newer then 2004, but how do I set the jumper on the SATA drives, or do I even need to? They have pins but no little jumper thingy like my IDE drive does. I want to use one 500gb for the main system operations and the other 500gb for a time machine backup.

Thanks!
 
4JNA said:
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.
Click to expand...

In the real world a hard drive won't soak a SATA 150 bus, so it doesn't matter that much. If you're going with SSDs then you're at much higher risk of soaking the bus and really want SATA 300.

(Soaking the bus refers to the bus being fully saturated with data and becoming the bottleneck. The bottleneck will most likely be the mechanical shortcomings of the drive.)
 
Got the card in and hooked up to 2 500gb SATA drives, it's running smooth, pretty noticeable difference. I had to use Carbon copy though because the osx installer would not recognize the drive. Thanks again for all the help.
 
Ok, now there is a problem. When ever the computer goes to sleep and I wake it up it freezes. The only solution I found is to do a hard restart, anyone know what to do?

I realize I could set it to never sleep, but I don't really want that. I also read about rolling back the firmware, but I'm not sure. Any ideas?
 
There is another way to overcome the 128GB limit, other than software-hacking or installing PCI-cards! Apple reports

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 already 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.

PS: I am cross-posting, 'cause this is still not familiar to most people and it saves one from buying expensive PCI-cards or messing up your computer by hacking or buying several 120GB drives, which are priced high on EBay, because many people do not know this and there are Win-people who have the LBA45 problem, still.
 
Let me make it clear as there are many ill informed posts in this thread.

The first Quicksilver which came in 2001 and every Mac tower ever made before it DO NOT support drives larger than 128MB in the onboard ATA chipset.

The next two Quicksilver models (2002 and 2002ED) and every Mac tower made after them DO support larger than 128MB drives.

To find out exactly which one you have just look in the system profiler.
 
Cox Orange said:
Did you read this? http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2544?viewlocale=en_US

I am not a native speaker, so I maybe get it totally wrong what apple says. Please read it and then explain to me, what apple is actually saying.

Thanks!
Click to expand...

That Apple info page notes that you need 10.2+ to use drives bigger than 128GB. It doesn't remove the 128MB limitation from the first Quicksilver back. It clearly states you need 10.2 plus a Mac that supports larger drives.

The problem is a hardware limitation. Period. You can use software or open firmware hacks to allow the mounting of large non-boot drives but the boot disk itself is still limited to 128GB. This is certainly not the greatest situation to put your data in though. These haxies for no-boot drives can easily cause data corruption.

If people need lots of storage in a pre 2002 Quicksilver Mac then I strongly recommend you just nip it in the bud and buy a SATA PCI card. The cheap price of all the large and fast drives now is worth it alone.

Even a Mac that supports large IDE drives should upgrade to SATA. The only IDE drives I see anymore are 80 or 160GB and cost up to $60 because of the small market. You can buy 1TB SATA drives that would also be much faster for as low as $55 or 60.
 
Last edited:
zen.state said:
You can use software or open firmware hacks to allow the mounting of large non-boot drives but the boot disk itself is still limited to 128GB.
Click to expand...

OF hack works for boot drives too. At least in Cube. I used 160GB HDD in my Cube without troubles and data loss. But, TBH, never filled this drive above 128GB.
 
666sheep said:
OF hack works for boot drives too. At least in Cube. I used 160GB HDD in my Cube without troubles and data loss. But, TBH, never filled this drive above 128GB.
Click to expand...

Looks like Brian above also uses bigger drives on his Sawtooth. Is the bootable drive option a new thing? Last I looked into this type of hack (maybe 2004) it noted in a few places that it would only work for non-boot. I have never been much of a sw hack type guy. I will do hardware hacks all day long but prefer to leave every character of code on my system as pure as possible. I guess OF is a hardware hack though..

SATA is still a better option if you want anything above a couple hundred GB. Much cheaper per GB.
 
ok, thank you! I will try to get a big drive though, just to be really sure if my iMac G3 can see it under Tiger or not :) (not saying you are wrong! I am just saying I want to be really really sure, that it does not work).

By the way I won't use these hacks, because I am to anxious I'd harm my system. :)

On your post, that there are only 80 and 160GB IDE Drives... WD has them on their official site with up to 500GB (3,5 caviar blue, with 7200rpm though blue!). (The biggest IDE drive ever produced was a Seagate with 750GB, it is on EBay sometimes for 50-100eur. I would not buy Seagates personally, by the way, just out of personal lack of trust in Seagate products, this is only my opinion, others may have had more luck).
The biggest 2,5" IDE drive by the way is a WD 320GB (WD3200BEVE), the second biggest is a Samsung 160GB.
 
With the Intech Hi-Cap driver you can boot from larger drives, but you need to partition them with the bootable partition 1st and no bigger than 128GB. But, I think it's best to leave the system on a 128GB or smaller drive.
 
Orange:

For a system like an iMac or any other Mac with no PCI or expandability then this haxie is your only option to have larger drives. Some users here are happy with how it works so try it.

Re: Drive sizes. I know they still make 500GB IDE but all I ever see in computer stores IDE-wise anymore is 80-160. Boxed or OEM. There just simply isn't much of an IDE market anymore outside of optical drives.
 
zen.state said:
Orange:

(...)
Re: Drive sizes. I know they still make 500GB IDE but all I ever see in computer stores IDE-wise anymore is 80-160. Boxed or OEM. There just simply isn't much of an IDE market anymore outside of optical drives.
Click to expand...

I agree about the low market demands. But the rest seems to be different over here. In real stores (physical ones) they don't have them here, too, but online there are many European shops, that have them and of course there is EBay.de. I myself am actually a bit astonished, why there are so many new or 1 year old 500GB IDE drives on Ebay, even sealed ones. (I assume most sealed ones are from an RMA exchange).
 
zen.state said:
Orange:

For a system like an iMac or any other Mac with no PCI or expandability then this haxie is your only option to have larger drives. Some users here are happy with how it works so try it.
Click to expand...

I come back here, because I got another idea. The info (from at least Hitachi) was not to use a 160GB drive in a 128GB-limit- Mac, because it will somewhen write relevant system data in places where it can't excess them and the Computer will then get problems (data corruption or even not starting).

So what about partitioning 128GB off (in another Mac) and fill the extra space completely with junk, lets say jpeg files. Wouldn't that prevent from writing data, where it can't be read? (I admit that winning +8 GB compared to installing a 120GB drive is not worth it.)
 
Cox Orange said:
The info (from at least Hitachi) was not to use a 160GB drive in a 128GB-limit- Mac, because it will somewhen write relevant system data in places where it can't excess them and the Computer will then get problems (data corruption or even not starting).
Click to expand...

If it is formatted in a 128GB limit Mac, it will be OK (it will only format and use what it can "see").
The problem is if it's formatted in a non-limited Mac, then installed in the limited one.
 
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