[alligator]

About 2 months ago I purchased a 120 GB IDE Hard Drive from Western Digital - for my PC. I changed my mind, and purchased a G5, and now I tried to install the hard drive in the G5.

Turns out the G5 only takes Serial ATA drives, not IDE drives.

What do I do? It's too late to return the drive, and I don't have the original packaging anyway. I put only 1 file on the drive the whole time I had it.

[kbata]

Buy a Firewire enclosure and put it in that.

[alligator]

I'd rather not, it fits nicely inside the case of the G5 - I was hoping there were some adaptors or something similar.

[zigzag]

Someone linked to some adaptors a week or two ago but I think someone else pointed out that adaptors don't work on the G5. I'm not sure. It was also unclear whether the adaptors would fit in the drive bay. Do a search for "serial" and maybe the thread will come up.

I would sell the drive on eBay and buy a serial drive.

[Hydra]

Originally posted by alligator:
I'd rather not, it fits nicely inside the case of the G5 - I was hoping there were some adaptors or something similar.

They do have adapters that cost around $20 but apple states they don't support them (whether or not they work is another story). There is also the issue of having enough clearance - some stick out a bit from the drive.

http://www.newegg.com/

-Jerry C.

[kevin_stevens]

Clearance is one thing, you also have to provide power to the things; I don't think the correct voltage comes from a SATA bus. All the adapters I've seen use a separate "standard" power connector.

KeS

[Hydra]

Originally posted by kevin_stevens:
Clearance is one thing, you also have to provide power to the things; I don't think the correct voltage comes from a SATA bus. All the adapters I've seen use a separate "standard" power connector.

KeS

The link I supplied above has an adapter that adapts the power as well.


Whooo Whooo 250 posts!

-Jerry C.

[chabig]

It would be best to sell the drive on eBay and buy a SATA drive.

[kevin_stevens]

"Comes with Adapter and Cable, (uses Pass-through Molex 5v12v Connector"

Do you see a Molex 5v12v Connector inside the G5? Neither do I, though perhaps something could be done with the power for the optical drive.

KeS

[proton]

Apple Knowledge Base:

Power Mac G5: ATA Parallel-to-Serial Adapters Not Supported

- proton

[Hydra]

Originally posted by kevin_stevens:
"Comes with Adapter and Cable, (uses Pass-through Molex 5v12v Connector"

Do you see a Molex 5v12v Connector inside the G5? Neither do I, though perhaps something could be done with the power for the optical drive.

KeS

I guess if ATI says it's OK to use a splitter off the optical drive power cable to power a retail Radeon 9800 it should be OK for the drive too. The KB document say "not supported". Like I said above it is does not mean it won't work. If you put one in and it works it should be fine if it doesn't don't cry to Apple about it. I'm all for selling the drive and getting a real SATA drive but if one chooses to experiment a little why not.

The original poster said he doesn't want to put it in a firewire case and selling the drive may not result in getting much money. There is always the possibility of gettng a cheap ATA card and finding a place to put the drive in there. The single G5's look like they have plenty of room under the heatsink of the cpu.

My dual 800 does not support having a HD in the zip bay but I threw the original 40GB drive in there (for back-up because of the slower bus) after putting 2 bigger drives on the main ATA bus. It works fine now for over a year but if it burns up I'm not blaming Apple for it.

-Jerry C.

[MacNStein]

Originally posted by kevin_stevens:
"Comes with Adapter and Cable, (uses Pass-through Molex 5v12v Connector"

Do you see a Molex 5v12v Connector inside the G5? Neither do I, though perhaps something could be done with the power for the optical drive.

KeS

Yes, the molex connector to the optical drive would work. It conforms to all the specs regarding the power rail requirements for an ATA hard drive.

[MacNStein]

I looked at the High Point adapter at New Egg, and based on the case constraints of the G5 it wouldn't work with the top drive. However, there is enough clearance to attach it to a drive in the bottom of the rack.

In regard to Apple saying they don't support it... well, I see what they're saying. It's not an ideal solution, and adds a point of failure to the I/O design. That said, I believe it would work.

$20 isn't much, buy one and give it a shot.

Link

[dancrane2]

I heard there was a limit of 130gb storage for an ATA drive on the EIDE bus. Is this still true for a Serial ATA drive? Will I be able to just slide in a 250gb SATA drive and have it work or is the rest wasted space?

[SuperM]

Originally posted by alligator:
I'd rather not, it fits nicely inside the case of the G5 - I was hoping there were some adaptors or something similar.

You options a rather limited with the G5. I have exactly the same 120GB hard drive you have. Knowing that I cannot install any of my 3 ATA drives from my B&W G3 into my DP G5 (when it arrives), I purchased a Firewire enclosure and installed it into that. It also has the added benefit of being able to transport it and plug it into any Firewire equipped Mac for transferring those 5GB+ files. How else do I transfer all my files from my 3 drives to the internal drive on my G5? Use a network maybe? Yes that's possible, but too slow.

[zigzag]

Originally posted by dancrane2:
I heard there was a limit of 130gb storage for an ATA drive on the EIDE bus. Is this still true for a Serial ATA drive? Will I be able to just slide in a 250gb SATA drive and have it work or is the rest wasted space?

That might have been true for some older busses but no longer. I'm quite sure that the G5 can handle 250 GB serial drives or it wouldn't be sold with them. That is if I understand your question right.