SATA Drive in eMac

[lastmile]

I picked up a couple of 1.42 GHz eMacs and want to turn one into a server. Has anyone had success replacing the PATA drive with a SATA one?

I'd like to add at least a 2 TB drive but I haven't figured out how to physically make it fit and am not sure a drive that big will be fully recognized (though I think it will).

I know a hard drive could be put in the optical drive bay but I'd rather keep the optical drive. And I don't really want to use an external hard drive - the idea is all-in-one...

Here's a pic of the type of PATA-SATA adapter I'm using. I haven't seen any that I think would be a better fit.

 

[Intell]

I think that adapter will fit. You should wait for a second opinion before buying it though.

 

[Phildo]

Get one of the adapters. I used one recently.

You can get them on eBay easily enough. Also check on Aliexpress.com

 

[zackkmac]

I have an adapter that looks exactly like that and I hate it. Any computer I use it with has problems booting, and when they can (which will be random), they are SLOW. It could be that mine is faulty, but it came from China and was extremely cheap (and it shows).

One other annoyance I really have with it is that the molex power connector on it is extremely tight and the male end always get stuck. Every time. And it takes nearly the amount of force required to break the controller just to pull the molex out.

My two cents: I do NOT recommend that controller.

Do a search for a JMicron IDE to SATA adapter. I bought one for around $6 on eBay for my Cube and it works VERY well and is much smaller. No complaints whatsoever. You can get them in Master or Slave configurations.

 

[lastmile]

Thanks. I just ordered a few of those for the eMacs and another project.

Ill post an update once they arrive and I try to putt everything back together.

 

[lastmile]

Wanted to report that the ATA-SATA worked great! I needed to cut away part of the tray holding the drive in order for it to fit but I just secured that side with a zip tie since I'd cut out the area where it screws down to the metal chassis holding the logicboard. I screwed up and bought slave rather than master adapters but they worked fine. I did two eMacs but one had been damaged when it was shipped to me so I gave up on that one. I installed 10.4 on the other with no problems and it seems to be running great. I used a spare hitachi 7200 RPM 1 TB drive.

I was going to give the eMac to my girlfriend to replace her ancient PC and to serve movies to her Apple TV. But I got a PC that I think I can turn I to a Hackintosh for her so I may end up selling the eMac.

Could it be used to save time machine backups over the network? Or with some other backup software? It's limited to 100 Mbps though. I assume the fastest wired networking the eMac is capable of would be using a USB 2.0 to Ethernet adapter.