[Simon Mundy]

Hey there - probably a dumb question but I'm less knowledgable on hardware than I am on software.

I'd like to add another 80 - 120Gb drive to my Dual 1.25 G4 and I can get a good deal on a Maxtor Diamond drive with an 8Mb cache. I know enough about drives to know that 7200RPM and an 8Mb cache means a wee bit more performance than the stock drives!

However, I'm a bit confused about the ATA specifications. In the owners manual, it says I have room for either an ATA/66 drive in the front, or an ATA/100 drive in the rear of the G4. The spec for the drive is an ATA/133.

Does this mean I can still install the drive and receive a slight hit in performance, or does it mean that the drive is completely incompatible?

Would appreciate your opinions on this

Cheerio

[SWFan]

Currently all ATA specs are backwards compatible. So an ATA133 drive will work on even an ATA33 IDE bus.

I'm not familiar with that particular Power Mac you have, so I'm not sure what type IDE bus its using. Based on your comment it sounds like there are two entirely different buses, one running at 66Mhz, the other at 100Mhz. If so, you'll get the best performance out of the new drive by connecting it to the ATA100 bus in your PM. But if you need or have to, it will work fine on the ATA66 bus too.

[milhaus]

7200 and 8mb is standard these days. for a few dollars more, buy a 16mb cache drive.