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Will G5 iMac recognize 500GB drive?
- Thread starter 8thMan
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Just today i got a new Mac Pro and removed the stock 250GB hard drive and replaced it with a 750GB one. After install the hard drive you have to boot from a cd (hold down "C" when restarting) and erase the new hard drive as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Last step is installing the OS X, should not take more then 2 hours.
I went to my store and found an old gaming PC i had with 20GB of hard disk space
. I used to use that like 4 years ago and 20GB was more then enough, its strange to say that while typing on a Mac Pro with 2 750GB hard drives and 2 1TB externals.The only problems with larger HDDs that I know of are with old ATA controllers which only handle up to ~127gb or something, however all G5 iMacs have SATA HDDs, and I'm quite sure all SATA controllers can handle well beyond 500gb.
So long and short of it: You're fine, and even better, you have one of those 'easy to open' iMacs unlike the current generation. Hopefully tuesday's iMacs will at least give easy access to the HDD...
So long and short of it: You're fine, and even better, you have one of those 'easy to open' iMacs unlike the current generation. Hopefully tuesday's iMacs will at least give easy access to the HDD...
How was an 8mb hard drive ever adequate......
it would be much easier to get an external hard drive.....
Nah, externals are more expensive, slower and less convenient, not to mention another thing laying around taking up space. Using the old 80gb drive in an enclosure to backup your more important files is a good idea, but it's not so hard to clone the old drive over, or just use the opportunity to have a nice clean OS install.
All the isight iMacs have that design, including the last G5s.
That's what I was thinking. New fat internal HDD, clean OS install, put the old HDD in an external enclosure, and just pull off whatever old files I want to save.
That would work, right?
Yeah, my understanding is that the first two revisions of the iMac G5 (the rev. A, I think, is what the OP has, and also the rev. B / "Ambient Light Sensor" model, which I have
) have much nicer layouts inside than any iMac after that. Not that that many iMac owners actually open their iMacs.
You might want to make sure that if you have AppleCare that it's expired. If you open the iMac yourself you void any warranty you have on it.
Yeah, my understanding is that the first two revisions of the iMac G5 (the rev. A, I think, is what the OP has, and also the rev. B / "Ambient Light Sensor" model, which I have
They even had DIY repairs for many parts: http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86812
Really? That seems ridiculous. You mean if I add memory or an Airport card I void the warranty??
Beaten to it.
The manuals discuss to some extent (although they can be vague at times) what things are user serviceable. They seem to imply fairly strongly that replacing the HD on a pre-iSight iMac G5 is not considered a warranty killer.I just replaced the stock 160 GB HDD in my iMac G5 with a SATA Seagate 500 GB.
One thing of note that drove me crazy for almost a half hour. When you first install the drive and are trying to install the OS, Disk Utility will recognize the drive, but won't let you use it for the installation. It took me a bit, but then I remembered to reformat the drive for HFS, it was MS-DOS formatted out of the box. After that it was a breeze.
One thing of note that drove me crazy for almost a half hour. When you first install the drive and are trying to install the OS, Disk Utility will recognize the drive, but won't let you use it for the installation. It took me a bit, but then I remembered to reformat the drive for HFS, it was MS-DOS formatted out of the box. After that it was a breeze.
Just today i got a new Mac Pro and removed the stock 250GB hard drive and replaced it with a 750GB one. After install the hard drive you have to boot from a cd (hold down "C" when restarting) and erase the new hard drive as "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)". Last step is installing the OS X, should not take more then 2 hours.
I went to my store and found an old gaming PC i had with 20GB of hard disk space
Hmm, and I remember Jobs pointing out that you could put up to 1TB in the MacPros last year at the WWDC keynote.