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mrm · Apr 13, 2001, 02:35 PM

I have a PowerMac G4 AGP 450 Mhz, with a 25 GB ATA hard drive and 256 MB of RAM. I'd been told in the past I had slots for stacking 2 more internal hard drives. I'm having a hard time figuring out what kind to buy - or if I should go with an external drive. Can anyone help?

I think we need at least an extra 50 GB - either external or internal. Is there an internal one of that size I can get? What brands are most reliable, best quality? What are the arguments for getting an external hard drive instead?

And this may be off topic -- but I'm also looking for a reliable back up system for something like that... 20-30 GB of images which are organized in groups of 4-10Gb. Tapes? DVD? I'll probably post this to the peripherals forum, but I appreciate any advice, particularly if the back-up system affects the type of hard drive to buy.

Thank you very much!

[This message has been edited by mrm (edited 04-20-2001).]

pele · Apr 13, 2001, 05:31 PM

Well, in general when there's more than one drive on one IDE bus, it starts to affect the performance in a negative way, it doesn't help that IDE drives use more CPU cycles either. So if you have the money, and you want a second internal drive, I would go for an Ultra 160 SCSI card and an IBM or Seagate 10,000 RPM Ultra 160 SCSI drive. They have 160 MB/sec bandwith, far faster than an external firewire would be, they're awesome. Of course an external drive has it's advantages, you can easily switch it between computers and share data.

Corinthian · Apr 13, 2001, 06:18 PM

It is right to say that a second ATA hard -drive would slow down the Mac, but I would not recommend any Ultra 160 HDs because they are far too cost inefficient. As we know, any Ultra 160 HD with more than 18G in capacity would cost you more than 700USD, and you would find that a ATA HD would do much better. I would better recommend a Quantum Firewire External 80G HD would not cost you more than 400USD, a even lower cost choice would be a 60G IBM ATA HD which would only cost you around 1800HKD(slightly higher than 200USD). You would be ble to see which one would be better.

lgs · Apr 13, 2001, 11:07 PM

Just curious - why and/or how would adding a second drive on one IDE bus have a negative effect? Thanks.

Luis

cube-dude · Apr 14, 2001, 09:52 AM

This belongs in the Peripherals forum. Transfering there.

Chunderkat · Apr 14, 2001, 01:55 PM

if you've got the money, get yourself an ultra 160 card and go with scsi. if you don't, then go get yourself a ibm 75 gxp. best ide drive out there. the come in sizes up to 75 gigs, i believe. u can also get an ata controller from sonnet or something and get 2 identical ibm drives and make a software raid. softraid does the trick i believe.

Apr 14, 2001, 01:58 PM

ATA internal is the way to go for the littlist amount of cash.

[This message has been edited by georgius (edited 04-14-2001).]

Paul S · Apr 15, 2001, 09:22 PM

Internal ATA is the most cost efficient way to go. I just bought an IBM 75GB Deskstar for $279 including shipping on the web. It's by far the best ATA drive on the market and will sustain 34-37MB/s, far fast enough for my video work.

External FW right now is not the way to go, but it will be. For now, the ATA-FW bridge in external drives limits speeds to 12MB/s. New bridge chips are coming out that will double that speed, for roughly the same money. When that happens, external FW is a more viable solution.

As for Ultra160 SCSI, sure it's fast, but you'll need a controller card that's over $200 plus for 50GB+ capacity you'll be spending well over $1000. For that money, you could buy multiple 75GB ATAs and a hardware Sonnet RAID card.

mrm · Apr 20, 2001, 02:56 PM

Thanks for your help. I was all set to go with the IBM deskstar 75GB drive, and then I saw this string on the MacWorld pages where everyone complains about the awful noise of these extra hard drives, including the IBM:
http://www.macworld.com/cgi-bin/stor...rum.pl?read=23

Is the noise really all that bad? Anyone else have this experience?

Thanks,
Margaret

Timo · Apr 20, 2001, 05:19 PM

Originally posted by Paul S:
Internal ATA is the most cost efficient way to go. I just bought an IBM 75GB Deskstar for $279 including shipping on the web. It's by far the best ATA drive on the market and will sustain 34-37MB/s, far fast enough for my video work.

External FW right now is not the way to go, but it will be. For now, the ATA-FW bridge in external drives limits speeds to 12MB/s. New bridge chips are coming out that will double that speed, for roughly the same money. When that happens, external FW is a more viable solution.

I put a IBM 60GB Deskstar into a Granite Digital enclosure (a fairly easy thing to do), and the two fans are much louder than the drive, which is actually hard to hear. So: absolutely no noise problem; I leave it on all the time here in a smallish apartment.

Granite Digital's ATA-FW bridge is better than previous efforts, and I get sustained reads of 24MB/s, as Paul S. has predicted. Not as fast as an internal install, but hot-swappable, portable, convenient and fast enough. I understand that the bridge board is also user-upgradable if some more efficient one is cooked up in the future.

Hope that helps.

T