[bri-guy]

After sitting unused on my desk for a few days, I finally plugged my G5 in and started it up in firewire disk mode (my G4 for some reason won't do this) and transferred all of my documents over to the G5. As soon as I started transferring files, the fans kicked on full blast - and they're LOUD. They stayed on full blast until I shut the G5 off; they were on even while it was sitting idle for an hour while I did other things.

I've never heard a computer this loud outside of a server room.

Now that I'm running the G5 in normal mode, the computer is much quieter than my Yikes! G4 ever was. It is actually noticeably quieter. I'm impressed!

[superlarry]

i noticed the same with my 12" powerbook.. also, the battery drains *very* quickly in firewire target disk mode. because this happens on more than one kind of machine, i'm willing to bet it's normal (although i'm not sure why).

[Socially Awkward Solo]

It is NORMAL because the Mac isn't running any smart software from the OS to tell it if it needs the fans or not so it just blasts them to be on the safe side. The only software it is running in that mode is from the ROM.

[Link]

heh. all recent comps do that...

Your g4 won't boot into fwt mode because it'd probably got no drive set as a primary master.

I realized this the hard way the other night, when my g4 kept shutting down on me, I checked my hard drive and swapped it's jumper to master (or default... ) and it booted.