replace a hard disk

Solution:

The new 2TB Sata drive has been replaced by a Western Digital hard drive.

Just in case others search and find this topic, in addition to the Western Digital Black (and Blue) drives, the Hitachi 7K drives work very well in a G5.

To reiterate:

• Seagate drives are problematic in the G5. A one-time "gold standard" for Macs should be avoided for use in a G5.
• Western Digital SATA 2 Black and Blue drives are plug and play out of the box.
• Western Digital SATA 3 Black and Blue drives are plug and play with use of a jumper on pins 5 and 6 of the drive to limit to SATA 2.
• Hitachi 7K SATA 2 and SATA 3 drives are plug and play out of the box.

Thanks for the support via the forum

I'm glad that you worked through to a solution.

I'm not having any issues, just want some advice about upgrading the hard drive in a computer I just got and it relates to this post...

It is a Quad 2.5 GHz G5 (I don't know if it's ecc or non-ecc. Since there is not HD in it, I can't boot it.)

I'm thinking of getting the following HD:

White Label (meaning generic, I guess) 1TB 16MB Cache 7200RPM SATA300

Two things I noticed in the Apple Spec Sheet that stood out to me:

1. "16MB memory buffer" and

2. "150-MBps Serial ATA controller"

I believe both of these are in regards to the drives, not necessarily what the machine will support. Basically I want to get the fastest 500 GB or 1TB drive I can get for the least amount of money (the drive is $75.) I've seen other drives with 32 and 64MB memory buffers—are those compatible? The drive I'm looking at has a data transfer rate of 300 MBps—does that just mean that it will run half as slow as it's capable of, since my machine would only support 150? The website selling the drive claims it's compatible with any Mac or PC with a SATA interface, but I've heard compatibility guarantees before. Can the drive that's "Drive A"/the boot drive be larger than 500 GB (ie 1TB)? it seems like people have had issues with that, but I'm guessing it has more to do with the drive (SATA 3 vs 2 or 1) and not the size. These might sound like stupid questions, but I have a G4 mirror door drive running 10.4 and I found out the hard way that it would not support a 250 GB HD without being partitioned. Two 500 GB drives is not the same thing as a 1TB drive...

Also, here's my intentions for the process of upgrading:

1. Install new hard drive into Bay A

2. Install current hard drive (with 10.4 installed) in Bay B

3. Boot 10.5 install from disk and do a clean install onto Drive A

4. Restart—boot from Drive A

5. Transfer all my files from Drive B to Drive A

6. Wipe Drive B—Continue to boot from and use Drive A as my main drive and Drive B as a junk drawer.

I've done this before when upgrading both the OS and the HD at the same time (seems like it's easier than backing everything up) but it's been many years. I'm I forgetting anything? Seems like I have to mess with the Master and Slave settings on the drives, but I don't remember... Thanks

DRIVE COMPATIBILITY

To reiterate:

• Seagate drives are problematic in the G5. A one-time "gold standard" for Macs should be avoided for use in a G5.
• Western Digital SATA 2 Black and Blue drives are plug and play out of the box.
• Western Digital SATA 3 Black and Blue drives are plug and play with use of a jumper on pins 5 and 6 of the drive to limit to SATA 2.
• Hitachi 7K SATA 2 and SATA 3 drives are plug and play out of the box.

Additionally, SSD drives may be used if they are SATA 3.0 Gbps drives (SATA rev. 2). SATA rev. 3 (6.0 Gbps) SSD drives will not negotiate with the G5 SATA controller.

1. "16MB memory buffer"

The size of the hard drive buffer, part of the hard drive.

Typically, the larger the better, though most can't tell the difference between 32 MB and 64 MB.

The spec listed for the Quad drive was simply that of the drives used at that time.

Nothing set in stone and nothing with regard to compatibility.

2. "150-MBps Serial ATA controller"

The SATA controller is part of the logic board and cannot be changed.

Data rates of the G5 are maxed at 1.5 Gbps. Faster drives (3 and 6 Gbps ony transfer at 1.5 Gbps due to thecontroller and the SATA bus.

Nothing can be done to change this.

Compatibility is as described above.

Two 500 GB drives is not the same thing as a 1TB drive...

The G5 has a single drive size limit of 2.2 TB.

Drives of 1 TB, 1.5 TB and 2 TB can be used as long as they fit my description of compatibility above.

I have a similar situation as the original poster, looking for a compatible drive for a Mid 2005 G5 Power Mac, and i was looking at a Seagate Constellation 1TB drive. The thing that puzzled me about the solution here is that the it included drives in which you had to replace or set jumper settings to create compatability. There are no jumper settings on a SATA drive that I am aware of, are there?

Good question, I've never seen jumpers on a Western Digital or Seagate sata hard drive. I guess it's possible when they 1st came out? Possibly an internet search may tell...

http://www.welovemacs.com/doinetojumys.html

If you are talking external drive assemblies, No, there are no jumpers on the external drive housing.

On the bare drive, as pictured in the illustration that I posted at bthe beginning of this thread, there are pins for jumping various configurations.

All bare drives of the major makers have pins for jumpers, each with there own use (or not).

Hitachi jumper pins are factory use only.

Jumper Settings (PDF) - Western Digital

Jumper settings for Seagate SATA hard drives.

Excellent post! Myself never picked up on them with sata. When running two ide hard drives I'd have to set one to master and the other to slave. Sata it didn't matter.

Yup, came across a video on YouTube today that showed the jumper settings for 1.5 vs. 3 Gbs. I had not noticed those before. I wonder if the original poster of this thread had a drive that just did not support 1.5Gbs, as many newer drives do not have this option. Also wondered if he formatted it with Apple Partition Map for PPC vs. GUID for Intel. Very interesting. Always something new to learn. Thanks!

Oh, can you list the reason why Seagate sata drives are problematic in PPC Macs? I had already ordered one and its on the way, so I may need to return it.

Continued firmware issues. They never put any emphasis on fixing old firmware issues with PPC Macs. The focus is Intel.

Though the issues were supposed to have been remedied, issues with Seagates and PPC Macs were still reported.

People who try to use the "Green" drives, especially, have problems.

This, however, is true with any make green drive when used internally. The main issue is loss of communication with the drive after it has spun down. Many find that a restart is the only way to get communication going again.

Well I can see where that would make sense, especially on the green drives. I think most of those are 5900 rpm, which I would never put in a server environment for anything other than maybe an external backup drive. Certianly not internally on a Mac Pro/PowerMac. The one I have coming is a Constellation series enterprise class, so maybe it will be ok. Thanks again for the info!

Think Different! 90 percent of the world did! Because and maybe unfortunately, the windows operating system was far superior to Apple. A simple thing as replacing a hard drive or video card shouldn't even be a issue.

Personally I don't drink, but I usually advise people who do to just stay away from the computer at those times. At least just turn it off before you start drinking in case you black out and don't realize what your doing till you sober up. That would be best practice I would think.

A simple thing as replacing a hard drive or video card shouldn't even be a issue.

It's not that simple in a WinPC either. There is always the logic board chipset, SATA controller chipset and OS version to consider, Then, one must be sure to have the correct driver installed as well as choose drives that have the proper firmware version, or update them to the proper version..... hoping the maker got it right.

The Seagate firmware issues affected Win machines as well.....

Don't worry, it's all going to get "easy".

No local drive, all cloud based.

Then, when the cloud crashes, things like SuperStorm Sandy will look like a slightly blustery day in comparison.......

japamac -

Once again, thank you for your fine post and contribution to this discussion. Drivers, especially have always been a huge problem and time consuming annoyance on the Windows platform, whereas that problem has been virtually non existant on the Mac OS.

When facing technical challenges with hardware/software, of course it is never as easy and simple on Windows PC's either. I have worked extensively on both platforms, over the past 20 years, and I can tell you that many, many times PC's are much more backward and far less well thought out, with convoluted instructions in many cases, with regards to their implementation of technology, upgrades, installations, or otherwise, than has been the case with the Mac platform. For instance that whole "Plug and Play" technology phrase which MS adopted from watching Apple's amazing accomplishments with regard to implementing solutions which allowed 3rd party products to work both quickly and easily with any Mac, is still pretty much a huge joke on the Windows platform, vs its being largely still quite true on Mac OS where it has been this way for many, many years. This is one reason why the phrase "More Mac Like" has been used very heavily by Microsoft, and countless third party vendors, with each new major Windows operating system release over the years, even if and when it did not live up to its promise time and again. MS is well known by everyone in the industry for their implementation of exaggerated claims, and FUD as sales tools . You never hear the phrase "More Windows Like", just "More Mac Like". On either platform, when you are looking at converging technologies, which are constantly changing, trying to fit old with new, there can many times, but not always, be challenges which need to be overcome. Sometimes you have to be a bit of a McGuyver to make them work.

No, the guy (Jacumba?) was obviously intoxicated, or, if not, he is certainly just an obnoxious troll out to flame on the Apple Discussion Forums. I for one would like to keep this community clean and friendly. Lets not 'feed the troll' but instead just do the appropriate thing and report him. He belongs somewhere else, like on the Yahoo boards where there are more like his own kind. I have not found the mechanism for reporting abuse to 'Apple Discussions' on these boards, since the need arises so rarely....but that task is on my short list of items to do today.