Multiple hard drive issues with Power Mac G4

Question

takjuju1 Author

Level 1

8 points

Multiple hard drive issues with Power Mac G4

Power Mac G4 fw800

PowerPC CPU (obviously)

700MB RAM (plans to upgrade to 2GB)

Storage Capacity is the issue

OSX 10.5.8

So first off I have 3 IDE Hard Drives, and I'd like to use all three at once.

BUT

I have this strange issue....

On the power mac g4 fw800 there's two hard drive racks, one towards the back that you have to unscrew stuff to get to, and

the other is towards the front and much easier to get to. Also the back one is made faster than the front one. These racks allow

for use of up to 4 hard drives. But it only lets me use 1 hard drive in each rack!

Like if I plug both IDE ribbon cables into the front rack, it won't see either. but if I just have 1, it'll see that one.

And the same issue happens with the back!

Am I doing something wrong?? The power cable works, so its not that. it seems to be an issue with the IDE ribbon!!

Please help. It'd be REALLY convenient to be able to use all three as both have a lot of my dad's stuff from when he was in art school...

Posted on May 28, 2015 8:24 PM

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Answer 1

Jeff

Level 6

12,058 points

May 28, 2015 11:50 PM in response to takjuju1

Because your G4 supports it, it's easier to set each hard drive's configuration jumper to "CS" (Cable Select). The label on the drive should indicate the necessary pins, over which to place the plastic jumper/shunt. If all of the drives are currently set to "Master" or "Single," you'll have that type of problem. You can still configure one drive as Master (last connector on cable) and the other drive as Slave (middle connector) on an individual ribbon cable, but computers that support Cable Select make it easier for system builders. Just set each configuration jumper to "CS" and you'll have no issues related to where the drive is connected to the ribbon cable. This applies to the optical drives as well.

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Answer 2

takjuju1 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 29, 2015 4:43 AM in response to Jeff

I set them all to CS and then plugged two into the back and one into the front. I turned it on and it gives me a blinking folder with the

finder icon and then it blinks and then shows a question mark...

Could the Ribbon connectors be faulty?

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Answer 3

takjuju1 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 29, 2015 5:04 AM in response to takjuju1

Sorry for double post but...

In the back I set the operating system hard drive as master and the other as slave, and in the front I set the single hard drive in the front as master, and booted it up.

Now it shows the finder thing for about 2 seconds then shows the apple logo and begins booting normally.. and its not seeing the slave drive, just the master

drive in the back and the master drive in the front

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Answer 4

takjuju1 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 29, 2015 5:16 AM in response to Jeff

Ok! I got it working completely now!

SOLUTION:

I set the main operating system drive in the very back of the back rack with it set to MASTER, and then the old operating system drive right in front of it

set to CABLE SELECT, and then the single front drive to MASTER. Although I don't think that front drive really matters as its the only drive on that

IDE ribbon..

Thanks Jeff!

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Answer 5

May 30, 2015 9:08 AM in response to takjuju1

takjuju1 wrote:

Storage Capacity is the issue

Then get a PCI SATA expansion card a a new SATA drive large enough to back up all that stuff and a molex to SATA drive power adapter. Not sure how much longer you plan to use the machine, if such an investment makes sense for you.

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Answer 6

takjuju1 Author

Level 1

8 points

May 30, 2015 5:32 PM in response to Glen Doggett

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16815124020

So like this??

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Answer 7