URGENT. 400/500 GB drives in slot loading G4 Xserve with 10.3.9

Bump.

I'm here looking for the answer to this same question. I have a 500 gig module just delivered today, but I was caught off guard by the "requires 10.4.2" sticker on it.

I'm not willing to 'just do it' when it comes to our production file server.... I just want to know what happens if I put this drive in a G4 slot loader with 10.2.8?

Anyone know?

Thanks,
Steve.

Bob and Steve-

I have not personally tried this.

I would imagine that Apple knows what they are talking about with reference to which hardware works correctly under which system software.

If you have a module, why not plug it in and see what happens? I can't imagine that you would fry it beyond repair if it were simply a software issue.

But that is very easy for me to suggest to do on YOUR system (;>)

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

I / we could easily answer this question in 60 seconds.... but I'm not willing to gamble in case something dreadfully awful occurs from doing it.

I put a 250 gig ADM in this same xserve with no repercussions, it addresses a 460 gig RAID 5 on an ATTO SCSI card, and 2 LaCie 500 gig Big Disks over FW800, so I can't guess what about this drive in the same size range requires nothing less than 10.4.2. (Except Apple's desire to get me to buy a new Server 10.4 license?)

Dreadfully awful? Interesting concept.

I guess unless it involves loss of life or limb I get neither overly concerned nor worried. However, I can both appreciate and respect the caution.

The only restriction I can think of might be in firmware, but I do not know for sure. One would think that the power and signal conections would be the same. I would think that ony firmware/software compatibility or lack thereof will cause a problem.

Certainly someone has tried this. Hopefully that person will respond.

Luck-

-DaddyPaycheck

Well, I'm now officially that someone. 🙂

After asking my Apple rep (they can be a handy thing to have), who checked with Apple engineers for me, they couldn't come up with a solid reason that it wouldn't work, just that it might not be fully tested or functional under < 10.4.2.

So it's now in my 10.2.8 machine, and I just copied 58 gigs of files to it. It's working just fine. It talks to Server Admin just as it should too.

This server went down for about 20 hours last week due to a spontaneiously bad SCSI cable, I just didn't want to take it out again by doing something the box warned me I shouldn't expect to work....

Lucky!

I had the gut feeling that it wouldn't start any major fires or anything, and you have confirmed said suspicion.

Funny that they would do that, but perhaps some people do fall for it. Thanks for taking the initiative to call.

-DaddyPaycheck