[fishguy]

I have a G4 533 dp with 2 internal hard drives. Can I add a 3rd? Ide or SCSI? What is the best way to go? What drive is recommended?

thanks

fishguy

[reader50]

You can add a 3rd hard drive in the old Zip bay if you do not use that bay for anything else (like a Zip drive). However, that bay is on an ATA-33 bus, so move your slowest drive there and install the new drive on the regular HD bus which is ATA-66.

If you can't use the Zip bay or want to add a SCSI drive, you must add a PCI controller card to obtain additional busses. Or you can use a Firewire enclosure.

USB enclosure boxes used to be available and may still be, but they are just horribly slow. Avoid them.

[fishguy]

Is the firewire enclosure you mentioned an external solution?

[Zoom]

Yeah, a FW enclosure would be external. The internal solutions are pretty much what reader50 said they were. If you don't want to clutter your desktop, get a PCI IDE controller card and add this drive there. That's the optimal technical solution, I think. The external solution might be nice if you want something portable, say to transfer lots of files or big files. You could shuffle your drives to put the smallest one in an external case maybe, just make sure you have the master/slave jumpers set correctly.

[fishguy]

I think another internal is the way to go for me. For the main master/slave drives, is there a size limit for the hard drives that my system can handle? I have a 40 GB and an 80 GB right now. I think that I'm going to swap the 40 for a bigger one, but I have seen some mention of 120GB being the max size. Is this true and if so is there a workaround? I have a dp 533 graphite so its about 2 years old.

My 40GB is my master and has a partition. I would like to ditch the partition when swapping. Will carbon copy cloner let me copy without partitioning the new drive?

I added a Seagate barracuda (80GB) and have been pleased. I was going to go that route with a larger capacity unless others have a better suggestion.

Thanks for the help.

[Zoom]

Not sure about CCC's capabilities with respect to partitions. Check the web site.

Some machines do have limitations on the size hard drive they can take. I'm not sure how you find that out, though. I think the limitation comes from the ATA/IDE controller, though, not the OS. Poke around the 'net and find some detailed specs on your machine, they might tell you.

[fishguy]

If I add a PCI IDE card, would it make sense to put the largest drive (new) on it and the leave the other 2 alone?

I'm new to PCI cards. Can someone reccomend one and any concerns in using them? Is there a capacity limit when using a PCI card? Do I need to buy a holder to physically mount the 3rd drive in the G4?

thanks

[fishguy]

How are SIIG's Ultra ATA controllers? I also noticed a RAID controller for $50 more. Let me see if I have this right - with RAID I can connect multiple hard drives, like a 160 and an 80 GB and they would work in concert as one drive, with increased performance? If I add a PCI RAID controller and plug a new drive and my 80 to it, can I leave my exisitng data on the 80?

[reader50]

The internal ATA buss is limited to 137 GB (128 GB real). If a larger drive is installed there, only the first 128 GB will be seen. Most modern ATA PCI cards do not have this limitation, but check the manufacturer's specifications before buying a card.

You will need to buy another mounting bracket if you wish to mount the drive internally outside of the Zip bay. Check sites that service Macs or sell used components, someone should have mounting brackets. Apple service will have extra brackets, but may want an unreasonable price for them.

Multiple drives can be put together into a RAID array, but the drives usually have to be reformatted. Also, Macworld tests indicate current ATA RAID cards on the Mac gave little performance gain.

Drives used for RAID arrays should be of equal size. If you use an 80GB drive and a 40GB drive, the array will use the first 40GB on each drive and ignore the remaining space on the 80.

[G4ME]

on my dual 500 there are two more places for drives right next to my hard drives. All you have to do is unscrew the bottom plate and mont that plate you your harddrive and then put back in your G4

[fishguy]

Thank you very much!!