[renn]

Does anyone know how many (and of which type) hard drives there can be installed internally into a PowerMac G4 (Digital Audio)? The machine currently has a regular HD and a ZIP Drive installed (which ofcourse could be removed).

Thanks in advance!

[chefpastry]

Your PowerMac has room for four hard drives on the bottom of the case. You can also fit a hard drive where the Zip drive resides now. I've also heard of people putting hard drives on top of the optical drive.

Your PowerMac only comes with two IDE channels each of which can handle two devices. If you wish to install more drives, you will either need a PCI ATA controller card or a PCI SATA controller card.

[mduell]

With the built-in controller (which lacks LBA48 support), you can only use up to 128GB of each hard drive. With 250GB drives at about $100, you probably want to get a PCI SATA controller too.

[new newton]

Originally Posted by chefpastry

You can also fit a hard drive where the Zip drive resides now.

Having killed a drive by doing that, I wouldn't at all recommend it. That is a tight fit and there's absolutely no ventilation for cooling.

The best thing to do is to buy a SATA card and stick a couple of drives in at the bottom of the case. You can add 500-600GB of storage for well under $300 by doing that. The other advantage to doing it that way is that you're somewhat future-proof. You're not investing in old PATA technology that won't be supported in the next machine you buy.