Help me pick a harddrive

I believe the Powermac G4's do not accept SATA drives without adding a SATA PCI card to add the capabilities.

The best way to use internal SATA drives is to get a PCI card. That's what I do on my 667MHz G4. I'm running a 400GB WD of of a SIIG 4 channel SATA card. Works like a dream. You want to avoid using USB to SATA converters, as it will kill your performance. If you still have an ATA channel open, you can just add in another ATA drive. When you say "split 60+60/DVD-RAM config" do you mean you have 2 hard drives and a DVD-RAM? The stock Mac 60GB drives, while fine in their time, are 4-5 years old, and today's drives far outperform them. I view the 120GB WD special drives as the bottom end of the AV drive spec. If you have two 60's, ditch one, and get a 500 GB ATA drive. Or, you can get a 2 channel internal/2 channel external SATA PCI card, and have all of the options you'll ever need for storage. I'd steer clear of external USB storage, as Apple's firewire is a more robust strategy, particularly if you want to add more than one drive.

So, what are your priorities?

Price: ditch one 60GB and get a 500 GB ATA drive.
Performance: get a SATA PCI card and drive
Flexibility/max storage: get an internal/external SATA PCI card
Portability: get external firewire

There are always tradeoffs. I spec out int/ext drives of all sizes and interfaces/enclosures for video, audio and graphic artists. So if you get a little more specific, I'll drop back and give you a more specific recommendation if you want.

You can get a SATA card starting at $50 new. As to going back to ATA...well you bought a computer that only offers support for that for internal storage. While great machines, the G4's have their inherent limitations. They are great machines to build on.


Correct. There are drivers available. i.e. Intech Speed Tools .


Then you need to get a SATA card, go firewire, or go USB. In that order of robustness.


Yes, for one drive. But the SATA card gives you more options/flexibility. Firewire is extensible and daisy-chainable, and you can build nice 2-drive striped RAIDs if you need performance.


While you can buy on eBay, a new SATA PCI is only $50, and you know what you get. Your PCI card needs to be Mac-specific. I like to buy many of my peripherals from OWC (I'm not affiliated, just a satisfied customer). They have many bundles, bare drives, enclosure kits, and PCI cards. You can get a 500GB SATA drive and SATA PCI for $199.

Or you can look around for the best drive prices, and get an external enclosure and build your own (that's what I do). There are many options. You can get single, dual, triple or quad interface enclosures for any mix of interfaces you might use.

Well, the PC is probably a lot newer than the Mac, too, then if it includes onboard SATA. The 1.5Gbps on the SATA PCI is more than adequate for the bandwidth of a single SATA drive, so unless you are going to add more than one drive, or run a RAID, then it is fine. So, if I were you, I'd decide if what you want to do with the Mac is worth investing a little money in it, or if you are happy with the PC. You haven't mentioned, though, what you will be using the drive for, so it's really hard to offer much more here.

Dave, I have a 450Mhz G4 that I use for the same purpose. I have a 20GB drive for the OS and a 120GB ATA drive for the HD stuff. I have added a Gigabit ethernet card to speed up transfers to my PC. I would also suggest getting a USB 2.0 PCI card so you can hook up external HDDs to the G4.

Why do you need USB? The G4 has Firewire -- you can add as many external Firewire drives as you want.

I was about to ask the same question. I have an iMac, what external drives are good with my Mac. And second I just got the program FotoMagico and it tells me I have low video memory. What is that mean?......

Definitely go for the 500 GB drive and add a SATA PCI card. That's what I did.

I've got a G4 Digital Audio with a Fastmac 1.5 GHz G4, a SeriTek SATA PCI (4 internal ports) card, a 500 GB and 320 GB SATA drives, and the original IDE/ATA drive. I even added an ATI Radeon 9800 Pro that I got off eBay.

And don't forget to adding USB 2.0, FireWire 800, 802.11b/g, and Bluetooth.

With Leopard coming, you'll need the EXTRA capacity and if you're gonna use Time Machine, you're DEFINITELY going to need the EXTRA capacity.

Which iMac do you have...? G3? G4? G5?

USB 2.0 for G5 iPod support...

I have G4..

Only at all stating what I would do--instead of buying an SATA PCI card and then later an external enclosure, I'd buy an Icy Dock enclosure that uses inexpensive trays. Support for SATA drives, Firewire, etc. Moderate initial cost, cheap to expand when you need the next drive instead of buying another piece that's equally expensive.

Wise choice, Dave, it's why you were urged to buy that PowerMac with gigabit in the first place: it had the firewire you needed for VirtualDVHS, there's easy access and room inside for even more big drives, fans to keep them cool, it could be networked easily and hidden if necessary.

Max it out first. Yank out the Zip drive and put an SATA there as well. Then think about how to extend your storage or network.

It's not stated enough around here: in the home theater context, there's years of valuable life left in these older G4 Powermacs, especially the Quicksilvers and MDDs.

Amen!

thinking about adding an external hard drive to my mac pro laptop
any suggestions on brand and type i looked at the lacie 250 usb rj45
but limited knowledge in this area has me second guessing.

I would agree, except for the fan noise. I have a MDD and it is loud. Way too loud to be in the same room as your Home Theater. Compared to it the MacPro is virtually silent. The only defect of the MacPro (aside from cost) is that for some bizarre reason it doesn't support Front Row/Apple Remote.

Of course if you have a separate computer room so noise isn't a factor, then indeed the older G4s are just fine.

Right, our living space will at times dictate what makes the most sense--but even if you have a trusty "windtunnel" that hasn't had the power supply and quieter fan mod--have you heard any of these NAS and multiple drive enclosures? With beefy power supplies and fans to keep the drives cool, most can hardly be called quiet--so at some point when you need to address storage you'll have to confront the noise issue.

If you bought a Terastation you're stuck with the IDE drives it shipped with that can't be upgraded or swapped out--it's value has just declined as hard drive capacities have risen and prices on bare drives have dropped--what's 1 TB now? Chump change.

Even with a Infrant ReadyNAS, which always seemed to me the far superior device and value--there's a limit to how far you can bump up its capacity--but don't try playing back an EyeTV recording from a USB hard drive you might plug into it--the NAS is pretty slow to begin with and those USB ports and externals, well forget about it. They're not designed to stream from.

These older Powermacs will appeal to those of us with a gigabit network yet on a budget, they can be placed anywhere--4 or 5 big hard drives inside, plus any number of externals can be connected via firewire 400, 800 or eSATA. That's a lot of expansion and nimble performance for a few hundred bucks--less than half the price of a bare ReadyNAS--and you're right Ted, as long as you have someplace to tuck it. But, you'll have to deal with fan noise or an enclosure which doesn't spin fans down as the drives spin down, one way or another, as you face growing backup, redundancy and storage needs.

As for 1.5 vs 3.0, I think you'll just need to try it out.

But, probably not any real advantage to boot off your SATA drive (if you even can, as many cards are not bootable--check Xlr8yourmac's for more info), and it's best practice to have a separate capture drive from your boot drive. Though if you can boot off it, might be good to setup a small partition for a 'emergency' drive.
Now another way would be to clone one of the 60 Gigs, to the other, and run a RAID1 array (Mirrored) as a boot drive for some speed and redundancy, then use the other drive cage for your extra SATA drive(s). According to the specs you have support for 4-total internal drives.

With my MDD I also had 4 drive spaces, and quickly populated them, and with three ATA busses it was easier. But, now I've put it in a rackmount case modified by Marathon Computer (RIP) to fit the MDD. And, I myself just got a SATA RAID card and will slowly work on putting together a RAID-5 array to hold all my recordings. I'll start with a JBOD group with all my previous drives, that were in a SeriTek external enclosure, with PCI card, I got at MacWorld. I hope to get a internal array to house them as the i-Star case has room for two 3x5.25" arrays. But, I'll go with one to start as I need the others for my Superdrive, and maybe Blu-Ray-ROM. Then I"ll need to find a good external firewire case for all my IDEs.

Mostly good advice, but I just want to point out that RAID-0 offer absolutely ZERO redundancy... In fact, it doubles your chance of drive failure. I only recommend it for "working" partitions, where you dump the contents to another drive at the end of the day.

If you want redundancy AND speed, RAID-5 is a good way to go. Some like RAID-1+0, but it's not really cost-effective.