Help for a hard drive dummy

Hello! You should buy an internal ide/ata 7200 rpm drive 120 gigs in size. You can often pick these up at places like CompUSA and others for 30-5- bucks after rebate. Have you tried running from the install cd and using the repair disk function of disk utility on the ext drive? A drive spinning up and down may indicate one that's set to sleep (spin down) or a failing power supply. You could test the power supply theory by putting the hard drive from the ext case into the g4 as an internal. If you do you need to set the jumpers on the drive as either cable select or slave if used with the other internal drive. The drive in the ext case will be jumpered as the master drive like the smaller drive in your machine. Tom

Hi

It's up to you really but personally I'd go for an internal drive as they're cheaper and don't clutter up your desk.

The hard drives are considered customer installable parts and instructions, including a QuickTime movie, can be found here:

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=75312

You need a standard 3.5" IDE/ATA hard drive. Make sure it is ATA rather than SATA (serial ATA). Your computer supports drives upto 120GB. You could use a larger drive, but you wouldn't be able to make use of the full capacity.

Installation is fairly straight forward, just secure it to the drive bracket using four mounting screws and connect the ribbon and power cables. You'll also just need to check the jumpers on the back of the drive are set correctly before installation. There are two rows of pins, one above the other, and by moving the jumper block to the appropriate pair you can set the drive to master, slave or CS (cable select). If you're replacing the existing drive, it will need to be set to master. If you're adding a second drive, it will need to be set to slave. The drive should come with instructions or a sticker indicating which pair of pins is which.
Personally I'd be tempted to get a couple of internal drives to replace your existing 10GB and external 80GB.

I'm assuming you don't have a SCSI card installed and aren't currently using a SCSI drive.

I hope this helps.

Hi

It should work fine. I think your computer has an ATA/66 bus, but the drives are backwards compatible and I don't think it's even possible to buy an ATA/66 drive these days. Like you say you'll be limited to a capacity of around 128GB, so a 120GB drive may have been slightly better value. My drives are Seagate Barracudas and they seem quiet and reliable.

I have a similar question.

I bought a 200 GB hard drive a year or so ago (and have since thrown away the box). Recently one of my hard drives has been failing, so I wanna replace it. It is the drive in my ATA66 slot (I also have two good drives in my ATA100 slots). And this is a G4 dual MDD.

I don't know what kind of drive I have. Here's the info:

Western Digital
Enhanced IDE hard drive
Drive Parameters: LBA 390721968

Can I put this drive in my ATA66 slot? Will it overload or break anything?

Thanks in advance.

Dan,

you are fine, because, unlike the OP above, you have an MDD G4 that has large drive support on both IDE buses. (It gets confusing when older G4 questions require different help information).

I am buying WD Raptor, RE320GB, Caviar SE16s for my systems. Some for FW800, and some internal.

Just make sure to connect the cable correctly, the drive should ship with a jumper already set to Cable Select. Just partition the drive as needed.

I have a similar

My internal HD is a 18 gig scsi. I installed a second 36 gig SCSI internal drive, and I can only get it to show up when I restart the computer.

Is there anyway I can get both drives to show up at first bootup? Im using OSX Jaguar in a 400 mhz G4

Also My computer will not sleep since I installed OS 10.2 - any help with that would be appreciated as well!

Graphite G4 Mac OS X (10.2.x)

Graphite G4 Mac OS X (10.2.x)

I'm going to install a 250gig drive in my "sawtooth" and I need some help here, I know there is some software that allows the cpu to "see" the whole 250gigs and not just the 120gig limit, any pointers would be helpful.
Thanks

You should be starting your own thread, AND look in the other G4 section aimed at older models rather than MDDs.

The QS2002 and MDD can use 48-bit 137GB drives, older Macs need to use a controller. If you are booting from a CD/DVD, you won't be able to see or talk to the full drive, so get yourself a PCI controller. And, if you go that route, may as well go for SATA - ie, return and exchange the drive maybe.

Check the drive upgrade DB at
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com

Oy vey. I thought getting my puter back up on its legs would be as simple as installing a new HD. I got one with identical specs to the one that died one me (I assume that's what's messed up), physically installed it, powered up thinking I'd be able to install OSX and be on my way. I have no destination disks to install the OS to. switch is in the same position as the factory's drive, the cables were all put in the same spots, etc.

What am I doing wrong? Please help in layman's terms.

Did you initialize the new drive? Select "Disk Utility" from the "Utilities" menu of the install disk, select your had drive in the left column, click the "Erase" tab at the top of the window, and select Mac Extended Journaled" format.

hello! I was reading this post and i do have an internal scsi card installed for my zip and cd burner. Does this mean that i cant install an internal hard drive on this computer? It is a g4 350. my startup is full and i need to get a new one.If i do have to remove the scsi card, is there any way to use my zip and cd burner or will they need replaced with usb devices.appreciate the help. Also how large of a drive can i install and it all be usable.
Thanks
Greg

I just tried to install a Seagate drive last night. Bought the wrong one (200GB) so now am taking it back for a 120GB Ultra ATA. Have a 40GB now - followed all the instructions, but now the computer does not see the 40GB HD anymore - I went from a barely functional computer to a non-functional computer. I tried changing jumper positions on the pins, to no avail. I'm not even sure the HD is spinning. Tried using different power cables, in case I did anything to the one it was attached to when I removed it...

Help...

G4 Dual 500 MHz Mac OS X (10.4.8)

Re-check your jumper settings when you install the new drive. Your options are to either set both drives to Cable Select, or configure them as Master and Slave. The Master drive will go on the last physical connection of the ATA cable and the Slave on the connector spliced into the ATA cable. Boot from your OS Installer disc and use Disk Utility to format the NEW drive. Also use Disk Utility to repair the old disk and fix permissions while you're at it.

The Molex power connectors are very hard to bung up, but it is possible. Barring a problem in the power supply itself, you should be fine.

-Douggo