Quad doubled it's boot drive

[eyoungren]

Ordered a WD Black 2TB HD off eBay last weekend. Turned out it's a WD RE Enterprise drive. Which is fine, because my 4TB HD is also a WD Enterprise drive.

It's got double the cache though (64 versus 32). And it's newer. Made in 2011 versus 2009 for my old Black.

So, now my boot drive is 2TB. I'm told that this is the max you can get if you want to boot off the drive so we're set there.

If anyone is interested…

 

[B S Magnet]

Ordered a WD Black 2TB HD off eBay last weekend. Turned out it's a WD RE Enterprise drive. Which is fine, because my 4TB HD is also a WD Enterprise drive.

It's got double the cache though (64 versus 32). And it's newer. Made in 2011 versus 2009 for my old Black.

So, now my boot drive is 2TB. I'm told that this is the max you can get if you want to boot off the drive so we're set there.

If anyone is interested…

Nice!

My DP 2.0 PCI-X 2 boots from an OWC 128GB SSD on one of the four SATA channels of a FirmTek 1V4 controller. Drive bays "A" and "B" use a matched pair of older 1TB WD Blacks in software RAID 1 with, I think, a 64MB cache and jumpers to slow them to SATA I (these contain old system images and software backups). Two of the 1V4 channels have a matched 3TB WD Green software RAID 1 with 64MB cache (these contain AV and reference media content), with the final channel running a solo 1TB WD Green 32MB cache (random junk). Via FW800, there's a WD My Book Duo running a matched pair of WD Blue 4TB in hardware RAID 1 (these contain professional, personal, and scholarly project files).

 

[Amethyst1]

So, now my boot drive is 2TB. I'm told that this is the max you can get if you want to boot off the drive so we're set there.

Apparently the Quad can boot from GPT drives, crushing the 2.2TB barrier imposed by APM: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/booting-a-guid-disk-on-powerpc-macs.2113689/#post-25959843

 

[B S Magnet]

Apparently the Quad can boot from GPT drives, crushing the 2.2TB barrier imposed by APM: https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/booting-a-guid-disk-on-powerpc-macs.2113689/#post-25959843

Interesting!

If this was a final rev open Firmware thing, then this would probably have made it to the DLSD PowerBooks.

I’ll test this hypothesis soon, as I’ll be swapping the 100GB OEM HDD to a 250GB SSD on my 17" DLSD in a few days.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Did it work ? I have a DLSD G4 Powerbook also.

 

[B S Magnet]

Did it work ? I have a DLSD G4 Powerbook also.

I will let you all know once all the parts arrive!

 

[B S Magnet]

Did it work ? I have a DLSD G4 Powerbook also.

Update:
I can definitively confirm that DLSD G4 PowerBooks, much like PCIe Power Mac G5s, are also able to see and boot from GPT/GUID-partitioned volumes.

This bore out with a new SSD I installed for my A1139 DLSD a short while ago, and as we speak, I'm writing this reply from said GPT-booted DLSD.

A screencap of what that more or less looks like:

 

[eyoungren]

You know. Thanks a lot guys.

I thought I'd maxxed this out. Now, apparently I will have to go in search of a larger hard drive at some point. No, I could have been dumb and happy believing my Mac was at it's limits, but then someone has to suggest booting off GUID formatted drives.

Sigh, wonder how expensive 8TB drives are…

 

[Amethyst1]

You know. Thanks a lot guys.

I thought I'd maxxed this out. Now, apparently I will have to go in search of a larger hard drive at some point. No, I could have been dumb and happy believing my Mac was at it's limits, but then someone has to suggest booting off GUID formatted drives.

Sigh, wonder how expensive 8TB drives are…

I gotta ask this... why not go for an SSD instead?

 

[eyoungren]

I gotta ask this... why not go for an SSD instead?

SSD's are far more expensive for the capacities I desire and considering what I do with my Quad, unnecessary. A spinner is quite fast enough.

That said, Addonics makes a PCI-e card (https://www.addonics.com/products/ad2m2nvmpx8.php) that allows for two M2 SSDs. I have an extra slot, but no extra money. One of these days I'll put that together and the Quad will have additional SSD storage.

EDIT: Uh, yeah. Addonics also sells this: https://www.addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2-a.php

Four mSATAs on one card. Makes a Quad a Quad I suppose.

 

[1042686]

Erik, I’d just lie & say I did it & then spend that money on pizza & beer instead.

 

[eyoungren]

Erik, I’d just lie & say I did it & then spend that money on pizza & beer instead.

Pizza maybe.

Beer? My wife would instantly know I'm lying! Half a beer and I'm sleepy. I usually only drink one if offered and I'm on a tear if I have one a year.

Yeah, cheap date my wife says.

 

[z970]

Update:
I can definitively confirm that DLSD G4 PowerBooks, much like PCIe Power Mac G5s, are also able to see and boot from GPT/GUID-partitioned volumes.

This bore out with a new SSD I installed for my A1139 DLSD a short while ago, and as we speak, I'm writing this reply from said GPT-booted DLSD.

A screencap of what that more or less looks like:

View attachment 831708

Were there any benefits to running GPT over APM, aside from capacity limit?

 

[Raging Dufus]

Beer? My wife would instantly know I'm lying! Half a beer and I'm sleepy.

One would think, with all the caffeine in your system, it would take at least a six-pack or so to shut you down

 

[eyoungren]

One would think, with all the caffeine in your system, it would take at least a six-pack or so to shut you down

Ahhhh, drug tolerance. Blame that on years and years of soda and then getting addicted to coffee. I can drink coffee or soda and go right to sleep.

 

[B S Magnet]

SSD's are far more expensive for the capacities I desire and considering what I do with my Quad, unnecessary. A spinner is quite fast enough.

That said, Addonics makes a PCI-e card (https://www.addonics.com/products/ad2m2nvmpx8.php) that allows for two M2 SSDs. I have an extra slot, but no extra money. One of these days I'll put that together and the Quad will have additional SSD storage.

EDIT: Uh, yeah. Addonics also sells this: https://www.addonics.com/products/ad4mspx2-a.php

Four mSATAs on one card. Makes a Quad a Quad I suppose.

I mean, yes, if you're aiming for a boot volume which has a high volume capacity, then definitely wait for however long it may be to find a 2.2+TB SSD solution at a reasonable cost. It ought to happen at some point. It needn’t be an Ultimate Goal, however, which your Quad G5 should have for sole sake of your knowing “it can do this obscure thing which we long thought wasn’t possible with Power PCs.” Same goes for your PowerBook G4 17".

Spoiler: tl;dr:

I followed a different path many years ago when I converted an early-2011 MBP with a second internal drive, making the boot-up drive a then-spendy 120GB SSD (something my student loan helped cover), and moving the /Users directory to the OEM HDD in a second slot (where the optical drive was). I still have the original Superdrive and the external USB case for those decreasingly frequent times I need to burn a thing. The really useful thing was I did have an HDD in there fail once, but the system didn’t freeze on me (the volume simply vanished as the system stayed up and running), and it afforded me a means to retrieve the fortnight’s worth of data which hasn’t been backed up elsewhere.

As with you, I don’t have much money to spend on gear. At all. Much of what I own are things which were given to me by folks who no longer had a use for them. And that gear which I do purchase is usually for long-term data conservation methods, such as RAID 1 redundancies for data I cannot lose (enter that FirmTek SeriTek 1V4 PCI card solution for my older-than-PCIe G5; the 1V4 was pretty inexpensive used and it’s afforded me a stable way to boot from SATA drives which were factory-rated at higher than SATA I/1.5Gbps speeds without having to look for jumpers).

As for this PowerBook G4 SSD conversion, the entire thing (250GB NGFF m.2 SSD + m.2-to-IDE adapter) amounted to ~USD$51, all-in, to basically boost overall responsiveness by 25%, much greater data reliability, and a reduction of heat and power consumption for basically the rest of its operating life. The near-flawless PB itself was a chance find at ~$63USD, and the CardBus dual-band wireless-N router was another USD$8. Basically, USD$125 for a modernized DLSD 17" in excellent shape is a lot of money for me, but I also know I’ll be using this setup for quite some time to come.

Go with what works best and go with what you can afford, but there’s no need to deprive oneself from really affordable performance boosts because the large size of a boot volume in solid-state form isn’t affordably available right now.
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Were there any benefits to running GPT over APM, aside from capacity limit?

To be honest, I haven’t tried cloning the same HDD volume to the SSD as APM-partitioned. As soon as I verified that it could boot in GPT (verbose, always!) as if it was no big thing, I decided to leave it, as-is. I mean, I could, but I doubt it makes any meaningful difference. Boot times have dropped maybe 7–8 seconds initially (less significant than when I did similar with the clamshell 466 a year ago), and I’ll probably time future boots once everything has settled down a bit more.

One noteworthy footnote: that clamshell 466 and this PowerBook G4 were previously running with the same Hitachi IDE 7200rpm 100GB HDD — the former being what I added to it in 2007 and the latter being an OEM BTO/CTO by the original buyer.

 

[bunnspecial]

Live partitioning!

 

[eyoungren]

Go with what works best and go with what you can afford, but there’s no need to deprive oneself from really affordable performance boosts because the large size of a boot volume in solid-state form isn’t affordably available right now.

And that is the crux here. I don't really 'need' a performance boost on my Quad. Boot times aren't really relevant for me as all of my computers (Mac/PC) are left on 24/7 and uptimes are measured in months. The larger HD in my Quad is mainly used for storage and is accessed by all my other Macs for specific things.

The Quad itself is mainly used for web browsing, word processing and off and on design. Whatever boost I get from an SSD isn't going to be measurable I think in light of the 16GB of ram and the 2GB virtual memory disk I have out of that already.

Even on my 1Ghz 17" PB the mSATA I have in there hasn't pushed T4Fx performance much and that's pretty much all I use that Mac for.

I don't deny the benefits of an SSD, I just don't see an advantge for certain Macs I own until a certain storage capacity is affordable.

If I were doing other things that might be different.

 

[LightBulbFun]

its worth noting those mSATA cards are not bootable in PCIe G5s

they would only work in Leopard as non bootable storage devices

luckily the G5 Quad can boot from GPT drives, so if @eyoungren wanted to use a 4TB drive or such as his boot drive he can do so

 

[Amethyst1]

Put in two 14TB drives and be done with it

 

[eyoungren]

Put in two 14TB drives and be done with it

I can afford free with free shipping. Where do I find those?