Expanding my Quicksilver G4 dual 1 GHz - Hard drives

Hey Speed,

So, for those two internal drives, the specs are that they have to be: EIDE - Enhanced IDE or ATA and not SATA or Serial ATA because from what I understand you need a different set of controllers for them; yes?

Yes. Plus the cabling is completely different.

Also, does the second drive require it to have jumper settings to be a "slave" or do I not have to worry about that in the Mac world?

Generally that drive is set to "slave" and is placed on the middle connector.

I can readily see that I can install two internal EIDE drives in the standard slot area. Is there a size limitation on the internal drives?

This is from LEM about your machine:
http://www.lowendmac.com/ppc/quicksilver-2002-power-mac.html
"hard drive: 40/60/80 GB 7200 rpm UltraATA/66. Maximum IDE drive size is 128 GB without third-party support. See caution note below."
*Power Macs earlier than the 2002* Quicksilver models do not have built-in support for IDE hard drives with capacities over 128 GB. Without a third-party solution, larger drives can only be formatted to 128 GB in these models. There are three options (as noted on Accelerate Your Mac):

* Intech's ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver
* A PCI IDE card that supports big drives
* A FireWire enclosure that supports big drives

So that all seems to indicate that your machine has support for drives larger than 128. I would first run your serial number here:
http://www.chipmunk.nl/klantenservice/applemodel.html
and verify that it has the support.
Then I would buy from OWC:
http://www.macsales.com/
and talk to them about your exact situation. They are very knowledgeable and if things don't work out they support/take back what they sell you.
Richard

Message was edited by: spudnuty

Hello Speed Racer.

Since your dual 1GHz QS is a 2002 Quicksilver, it will recognise large hard drives (over 128 GB). Two 500 GB hard drives should work just fine. If both drives are of the same manufacture, you may jumper them both 'Cable Select'; if they are different, they may work better as master and slave. Use ATA or EIDE or P(for parallel) ATA: they're all the same, and what your QS came with. Newer drives will shew you the jumper positions on the drives; older drives sometimes leave you guessing (and looking up the jumper positions online).

If you use a controller card, you may use two more hard drives (or four more with two cards). You may now use ATA or SATA or even SCSI as long as you match the controller card to the drives. To jumper these drives, read the literature that accompanies the controller card.

HTH .... Jon