Power Mac G5 Dual 2.3 Ghz HD max upgrade

[tallpaul]

Model: M9591LL/A

Hi Guys,

I gave my 2006 G5 to my Dad primarily for storing itunes movies and tv shows to stream to Apple Tv(he's delighted with performance)

As the collection of his DVD rips grows i need to install a seconf hard drive into the empty bay(the first bay has a 7200rpm Seagate)

I had my eye on this WD caviar Green drive

http://www.storagereview.com/western_digital_caviar_green_3tb_review_wd30ezrsdtl

which has OSX 10.5 listed as supported, my only remaining question is will there be any hardware restriction or anything in the G5 that will make it unsuitable?

The reason why I started thingking about the WD Caviar green is that Macuprades.co.uk had the 2TB listed as an upgradable drive on their site.

Would the 3TB be too big?

many thanks

Paul

p.s. has anyone managed to fix to the sleep issue with Leopard? I have to leave it on all the time as the fans roar if it's woken up from sleep and needs to be shut down and restarted

 

[Nameci]

The issue with green drives is that they spin down after some time to save power. They are not good to be used for a boot drive, but as a data disk they are pretty much ok.

 

[tallpaul]

thanks for that, all the media will be on the WD green and I'll leave the OS on the 7200 seagate

any thoughts on whether 3tb is possible?

thanks

 

[MacHamster68]

thanks for that, all the media will be on the WD green and I'll leave the OS on the 7200 seagate

any thoughts on whether 3tb is possible?

thanks

you get even more inside a PowerMac G5 then just 3 TB

just needs some use of the empty space with a sonnet jive and you got 3 more S-ata harddrive spaces available , that should last a while to fill up

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/g5_jive.html

didnt know if you mean dual proccessor 2.3 or dual core 2.3 as they offer raid controllers too
2006 indicates a dual core , but was not 100%sure

 

[tallpaul]

you get even more inside a PowerMac G5 then just 3 TB

just needs some use of the empty space with a sonnet jive and you got 3 more S-ata harddrive spaces available , that should last a while to fill up

http://www.sonnettech.com/product/g5_jive.html

didnt know if you mean dual proccessor 2.3 or dual core 2.3 as they offer raid controllers too
2006 indicates a dual core , but was not 100%sure

it's a dual core 2.3 with two ethernet ports

Thanks for the advice

 

[MacHamster68]

it's a dual core 2.3 with two ethernet ports

Thanks for the advice

then its the same as mine
and mine is nearly full with the sonnet parts (jive and tempo x4i and nearly maxed out
i have over 9 TB inside 4 x2TB caviar blacks for storage 3 in the jive and 1 in the optibay ,and 2x 600gb velociraptors (one of them is my backup drive ) in the original harddrive bays , had 2 more velociraptors inside , but replaced them in favor of the 4 caviar blacks due to more storage and they are not that much slower in raid 0

i have a firewire external dvdrw if i need one , fits nice on top of the G5

but the caviar greens will do the job nicely if your Dad only need them for storage alone and they are cheaper too

and to your question about leopard ..i dont know , i use Tiger

 

[Nameci]

Sleep is working ok in Leopard, no worries.

 

[zen.state]

There will be an issue with any drive over 2TB on a PowerPC Mac. The Apple Partition Map format used for PowerPC Macs to boot from is limited to 2TB per drive.

My advice is keep the original drive as the boot disk and format the 3TB to GUID and use it just for storage.

 

[Jethryn Freyman]

There will be an issue with any drive over 2TB on a PowerPC Mac. The Apple Partition Map format used for PowerPC Macs to boot from is limited to 2TB per drive.

I did not know this, thanks for posting this.

Also, Caviar Green drives aren't suited to be a boot disk, they spin at around about 5,400 rpm. Good price/capacity ratio though.

 

[tallpaul]

There will be an issue with any drive over 2TB on a PowerPC Mac. The Apple Partition Map format used for PowerPC Macs to boot from is limited to 2TB per drive.

My advice is keep the original drive as the boot disk and format the 3TB to GUID and use it just for storage.

Thanks for that, makes sense in that 2TB was the biggest drive under the G5 listing on Macupdates.co.uk

If I leave the OS on the orginal Seagate 7200 rpm drive and then use a 3TB purely itunes movies etc.

Will that work?

 

[zen.state]

Thanks for that, makes sense in that 2TB was the biggest drive under the G5 listing on Macupdates.co.uk

If I leave the OS on the orginal Seagate 7200 rpm drive and then use a 3TB purely itunes movies etc.

Will that work?

After you install the drive boot up the Mac and then open "Disk Utility" in the utilities folder within the apps folder. Once it's open click on the drivein the list to the left then on the Partition tab and then click on how many partitions you want. Once you do this click on the "options" button at the bottom and select GUID as the partition format. Click on "Apply" and a few short moments later you should have a perfectly formatted 3TB HD. When you boot the Mac up it may very well auto ask you to format it which will open disk utility for you. The main thing is to make sure you use GUID.

If the drive still doesn't see the whole 3TB then the worst case scenario is to buy an external enclosure for $20-30. I have only ever used a Hitachi 3TB on a PowerPC Mac so far and it worked fine with GUID. The limitation is in the partition format itself and not in the PowerPC architecture so I don't see an issue. Both architectures can read both formats but PowerPC Macs like the G5 in question can only boot from an APM formatted drive.