[dimension10]

Hello all, I recently had an external firewire drive crap out on me.

The tech support team at Maxtor told me that I may be able to install the drive directly into my machine and recover the data.

I searched through the apple knowledge center but did not find any info on how to do this.
Could anyone provide a walkthrough or point me toward a good tutorial on installing an ATA drive into a power mac G4.

oh and by the way don't buy Maxtor firewire drives.

[dimension10]

I dug further and found some info.

http://www.macworld.com/2001/01/howto/storage.html

[bradoesch]

Do you have the older drive with the power switch on the back? I heard nothing but bad things about those, but apparently the newer model without the power switch on the back (the one I have) was improved.

Another thought. If the actual hard drive is fine, and it's the FireWire case that's hosed, you should be able to read your data fine when the drive it connected to your G4 internally.

[dimension10]

I did not have the version with the power switch on the back. The only way to turn off the drives power was to unplug it.

The drive is only 13 months old. One month over the warranty and customer support basically told me "tough ****" when I explained my situation.

I will never buy a maxtor drive again.

[Griz]

Next time be smart and buy a IBM with a lifetime warranty.