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lapinos · Jan 14, 2004, 05:09 AM

Is there a maximum HD size that I can fit in a bw G3?
I have 60+6 Go on the IDE bus, and I consider removing the original 6 GB HD and installing a 120GB HD instead.

Can the original bus handle soo much capacity?
I wish to have the testimony of someone who acttually did such a change.

Thanks

Greg

rubberduck77 · Jan 14, 2004, 06:29 AM

I don't think that the bus would be the problem there. I had a B/W G3 myself and I installed a bigger HD, but I ran into another problem: In some of the earlier revisions, the IDE Bus Controller could not handle some fast drives which resulted in data corruption. Solution was getting a 3rd party HDD controller

I think xlr8yourmac.com covered these issues as well as some threads on these forums here.

But as you are running a 60gig drive without problems so far, this could mean that your G3 is not affected.

And for your concern: I am not aware of a "size limit" that an IDE bus could handle... albeit I am no technician there!

lapinos · Jan 14, 2004, 08:06 AM

I have 2 additional pieces of info regarding your reply:
My dual HD configuration works only in X. The only time I booted in 9 it erased my 60 GB....
There is indeed a bug in the IDE controller (BW bought in spring 1999)
Secondly, I read about a limitation in the IDE controller of the eMac, that's why I am curious about this topic.
Greg

bowwowman · Jan 14, 2004, 08:13 AM

Originally posted by rubberduck77:
I don't think that the bus would be the problem there. I had a B/W G3 myself and I installed a bigger HD, but I ran into another problem: In some of the earlier revisions, the IDE Bus Controller could not handle some fast drives which resulted in data corruption. Solution was getting a 3rd party HDD controller

I think xlr8yourmac.com covered these issues as well as some threads on these forums here.

But as you are running a 60gig drive without problems so far, this could mean that your G3 is not affected.

And for your concern: I am not aware of a "size limit" that an IDE bus could handle... albeit I am no technician there!

It's not the IDE bus itself, but the controller chip that limits the drive size, but even then it is up to 137GB, not 120...anything bigger than 137GB WILL require a controller card to function at full capacity

Since you already have 2 drives running, it would not be a problem swapping in a 120GB drive for either of the other ones.

However, if the bigger drive is NEW, then it is most likely ATA/100 or ATA/133, and either would benefit (performance-wise) from a faster controller card. These cards can handle up to 4 drives also, so with the 2 connected to the mobo, you have the capability to have a total of 6 HDs...

This is in addition to the CD & Zip, which are connected to their own controller on the mobo !

I currently have the OEM 6GB, 2-20GB's, and 80GB, and a 160GB drive in my B&W, with a Sonnet Tempo ATA/100 controller and everything has been running great this way for almost 2 years now

bowwowman · Jan 14, 2004, 08:25 AM

Originally posted by lapinos:
I have 2 additional pieces of info regarding your reply:
My dual HD configuration works only in X. The only time I booted in 9 it erased my 60 GB....
There is indeed a bug in the IDE controller (BW bought in spring 1999)
Secondly, I read about a limitation in the IDE controller of the eMac, that's why I am curious about this topic.
Greg

Did you install the OS 9 drivers on both HD's ? If not, that is why it won't work as dual boot. I have OS 9 on 2 drives, and OS X on 2 others and can boot into any of them interchangably.

I bought my B&W in June '99.

I was not aware of the emac having a limited IDE controller....

lapinos · Jan 14, 2004, 08:34 AM

Originally posted by bowwowman:
Did you install the OS 9 drivers on both HD's ? If not, that is why it won't work as dual boot. I have OS 9 on 2 drives, and OS X on 2 others and can boot into any of them interchangably.

I bought my B&W in June '99.

I was not aware of the emac having a limited IDE controller....

I read (too late, the damage was done already) that the IDe controller of some series of BW had a known bug that corrupted any 2nd HD you would plug in the bus. This bug destroyed my new 60GB drive (and its content) the first time I booted in 9 (9 & x driver installed)
The fact that this bug does not affect X operations puzzles me a bit, but after the FW800 issue of last autumn, my problem seems less werd. I've been running with 6+60 since 2 years now without any problem.

As you sait in your previous post, some IDE controller chips are limited to less than 137GB.
I will try to find the most inexpensive ATA100 (or SATA) card on the market.

Cadaver · Jan 14, 2004, 12:47 PM

The rev. 1 B&W G3 had an IDE controller chip that could only support 1 hard drive (and ATA/33 drives at that). In fact, the short IDE cable attached to the drive has only one connector.

The rev. 2 controller supported two drives, and has a second connector on the cable (along with a taller hard drive bracket to allow stacking a second HD on top of the first). This controller should theoretically support any current drive up to 137GB, but not sure if it actually works in practice.

The best solution is a PCI UltraATA controller card. They are available for as low as $85 from most Mac online retailers. IDE RAID controllers can be had for a bit more, but potentially offer much more performance.

I have a rev. 1 B&W G3 (running a PPC750fx @ 900MHz presently) with a Maxtor 60GB 8MB cache drive attached to a PCI UltraATA controller - works great and reads/writes are actually quite fast for as old as the machine is. Boots Panther about twice as fast as OS 8 used to boot on its original 12GB drive.

While the upgrade options for these machine are limited, a fast drive controller can go a long way to making the machine feel more responsive with today's gigabyte-heavy software.

Lateralus · Jan 14, 2004, 01:29 PM

I had two 120GB Seagate Barracudas in my Revision 2 B&W using it's onboard IDE. Never gave me a problem.

I'd still recommend a PCI ATA/100 or 133 controller nonetheless. The drives may work fine on the onboard ATA/33, but they would perform like crap. The difference between ATA/33 and ATA/100 is like night and day, and you will see a substantial difference, especially in the Finder. I was very satisfied with my decision to add an ATA controller to my B&W.

ATA/100 PCI cards can be had for as little as $50 on eBay, and the speed gain you would see from the addition of a controller card using your current hard drive would be far more substantial than the speed gain you would see by popping a shiny new 8MB cache drive in your machine and having it bottleneck on the onboard ATA.

Walker · Jan 15, 2004, 08:28 AM

So is the sonnet pci ata card the best one? Are there any OS X compatibility issues?

lw

CIA · Jan 15, 2004, 09:47 AM

Unless you are doing video work, (and if you are still using a G3, I'm guessing no) a ATA/66 card will do you fine. You can get them much cheaper then ATA/100 or ATA/133 cards as well. Look on eBay for a cheap Mac compatible card. Most modern hard drives are pressed to saturate even a ATA/66 bus, and most cards allow for hard drives larger then 137GB. Save yourself some bucks and grab one.

Dizzypaint · Jan 17, 2004, 06:24 PM

I have a B&W G3 and am thinking about upgrading the drives in a similar manner. However, I am a little unclear on the PCI cards.

All of the boxed PCI ATA controllers I see in the local stores come with software to be loaded and say they are compatible with the various Windows OS's. I have not seen any that indicate any compatibility with Mac's.

Can any PCI ATA controller card be used or is there some special way of telling what is compatible with the B&W G3? Is there some special piece of software needed to make one compatible?

Lateralus · Jan 17, 2004, 06:57 PM

You have to buy one that is specifically made for Macs. If the box has no mention of Mac compatability, then move on.

The only way to really get PCI ATA controllers for Macs is online. And the best place to get them is Other World Computing.

For the link above: Go ahead and select your machine in the right column, then click Show Models. Then highlight your model on the page that comes up and in this case select 'Hard Drive Controller Upgrades'. It'll bring up a nice list.

My personal recommendation would be the SIIG ATA-133 card.

Dizzypaint · Jan 17, 2004, 09:05 PM

That makes it fairly easy....

I'll take a look at that page.

Thanks!

sweet1 · Feb 23, 2004, 06:09 PM

I had this issue a couple of years ago and got good advice on this board. I kept my original 6GB hard drive (I use it just for Classic now), and added two Seagate 80 GB ATA drives, but I had to purchase a card that treated the ATA drives like they were SCSI drives. My original post can be found by searching sweet1 "Adding internal drive to B&W G3". Hope this helps.

Uniquark · May 17, 2005, 02:13 PM

I recently set up a Rev 1 300MHz B&W as a server and found this discussion very helpful. After getting through the video issues (see http://archive.mac-mgrs.org/archive/...0102225630.txt and http://www.macosxhints.com/article.p...1101233045375), I thought I was home free. I had installed Panther on two partitions of a 6GB drive and I had a test 3GB drive working as the slave on the same IDE bus. However, when I swapped in the 60GB drive I had planned to use for data, the machine refused to start up. Based on this discussion, I got the drive working by replacing the Zip drive with the 60GB drive. The server won't have any use for the Zip drive anyway. Now I have the CD and the 60GB drive on one IDE bus and the partitioned 6GB drive and the 3GB drive on the second IDE bus. It seems to be working fine after running a number of different tests. This setup gives me three backups of the OS in case I get any corruption there.

Uniquark · May 22, 2005, 03:01 PM

I spoke just a little too soon. It turns out that the 60GB drive I mentioned above refused to work even on the same bus as the CD. It was only recognized as a 30GB drive. However, I was able to put the 6GB OS drive on the IDE bus with the CD and the 60GB data drive on the Ultra ATA 33 bus by itself.

tooki · May 22, 2005, 03:34 PM

Sounds to me that the drive was mistakenly jumpered for "limit to 37GB". The IDE bus for the optical and zip certainly does support up to 128GB drives.

I highly, highly advise you to take the 60GB drive off the ATA/33 bus immediately. In the Rev 1, it may appear to work, but is very likely to have substantial data transfer errors that may not become evident until you try to read files off the disk. You are risking severe data loss.

tooki

lapinos · May 23, 2005, 02:47 AM

- Can anyoone confirm having problems with a HD connected to the expansion bay ATA bus on a RevA BB G3?
- Can such a problem be detected with software like TechTools or disk Utility?
- Is it linked to the HD size? Wat if the drive in the bay is the original 6GB?
- What can cause data loss on a HD plugged in the exp. bay?

Thanks for your answers.

Greg

bowwowman · May 23, 2005, 07:52 AM

Yes it has been confirmed by many many users on the xlr8yourmac
database reports. But this problem only exists on the Rev 1 B&W's.
It doesn't matter what drive it is, if it is a 2nd one connected to the motherboard's IDE channel, it WILL become corrupted at some point.

And AFAIK, there is no utility for detecting the corruption.
If ANY of your data is important to you, then get a pci controller card, run fast and run smoothly, and be happy

tooki · May 23, 2005, 10:45 AM

And it's not just if the drive is a second drive on the ATA/33 channel -- basically ANY non-factory drive WILL suffer data corruption.

I have NOT heard of problems with drives on the CD/zip IDE bus, but of course it's a slow bus. You have to jumper the drive correctly, of course.

You have a Rev. 1 B&W, you basically have no choice but to get an ATA card or use external storage.

tooki