Recommendation for PPC G5 primary drive replacement

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Level 1

9 points

Recommendation for PPC G5 primary drive replacement

Hi. I've got a late 2005 Dual 2.3 GHz PowerPC G5 w/ 4 GB RAM installed and am currently running 10.4.11. I've got the original 250 GB primary HD plus a 2nd internal drive installed and one external for backup, both of which are 750 GB WD Black Caviar.

This evening, while bringing my G5 out of Sleep mode I heard some noticeable clicking I've never heard before. Although my desktop did reappear, when I tried to launch Disk Utility, I got the spinning beach ball and no other keys had any effect. Had to do a manual shutdown from the front of the computer. I was then able to boot up as usual and run Disk Utility which showed nothing wrong. Also ran Disk Warrior and an old version of Tech Tool Deluxe which revealed no problems. My G5 is quiet and running smoothly as ever but I suspect the primary drive (which is the original 250 GB 7200 RPM) may be showing signs of wear and I would like to replace it before it actually fails.

Does it make sense to invest in an SSD drive for a machine this old (a 480GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD at OWC is just under $400) and will an SSD boot drive be compatible with the internal and external drives (750 GB Black Caviar) I already have in my configuration? I use my G5 for photo/video editing and digital audio recording. Can I really expect my applications to run dramatically faster if they're installed along w/ my OS on an SSD drive? I'm also planning to create two bootable partitions on the new primary HD (one for Tiger and one for Leopard).

Thanks for any feedback.

Jack

Final Cut Pro 6, Mac OS X (10.4.11)

Posted on Dec 10, 2013 10:16 PM

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Answer 1

kaz-k

Level 8

49,068 points

Dec 11, 2013 12:00 AM in response to stopmotion

As far As I know, latest SATA-3 SSD doesn't support SATA-1 PowerMac G5.

You need to find SATA-2 SSD.

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Answer 2

stopmotion Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 11, 2013 7:26 PM in response to kaz-k

Thanks for your reply. According to the OWC site both the 240 GB and 480 GB Mercury Electra 3G SSD 2.5" Serial_ATA drives are compatible w/ all PowerMac G5 models. If that's true will I see enough of a dramatic improvement in speed to make the investment worthwhile?

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Answer 3

BDAqua

Level 10

239,177 points

Dec 12, 2013 11:24 AM in response to stopmotion

Hi, I don't think Tiger/10.4 uses VM nearly as much as any later OSX version, so you could see much improved startup & App launches, & if FCP uses Disk Caches to do it's work, it'll vastly improve there also.

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Answer 4

stopmotion Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 12, 2013 4:27 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for the feedback, BDAqua. I did more research in the digital audio recording and video editing forums and it does seem an "iffy" proposition, whether or not I'll see a significant improvement in performance from installing an SSD drive as my boot drive in a PPC G5. Contacted OWC and they thought I'd be better off saving a few bucks and getting another hard drive instead of an SSD.

So I'm thinking of getting a 2 TB WD Black Caviar, set it up as a backup and switch my current 750 GB WD Black Caviar being used as backup to be my new boot drive (I'm figuring I should see some improvement in performance over the original boot drive that came w/ the G5). Then I'll have two 750 GB HDs internally (one boot, one for a scratch disk) and the 2 TB as backup. Sound like a viable solution?

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Answer 5

BDAqua

Level 10

239,177 points

Dec 12, 2013 4:36 PM in response to stopmotion

Yes, sounds good, my G5 quad has 2 650 GB Caviar Blacks in Raid Zero configuration to boot 10.4.11 from, while much faster at reading/writing big or numerous files, in operation it's not all that different than booting 10.5.8 off a FW/800 drive, considering 10.5.8 is actually slower than 10.4.11 when booted from like drives.

I think one surer way to tell is to check Pageouts after hours of doing your normal work...

That's cumlative since last bootup, so if you don't have a large amount, an SSD won't help much at all for other than boot or file R/Ws. 🙂

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Answer 6

stopmotion Author

Level 1

9 points

Dec 12, 2013 6:20 PM in response to BDAqua

Thanks for all the info. Very helpful. One note: I'm also planning to divide the new 750 GB internal boot drive into two bootable partitions, one for Tiger and one for Leopard so I can at least be a little more up to date and upgrade my sound recording app which requires the newer OS. I'm figuring a 300 GB partition for Tiger and the other 450 GB for Leopard.

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