[lwtucker]

Advice needed as I am considering an upgrade to the new DC PowerMacs: First of all I cannot afford the quad! Would it be smart to upgrade from my RevA Dual 1.8 to either the DC 2 or DC 2.3. I am a photographer and my biggest problem seems to be disk space -- I currently have 2 internal 160's and an external FW400 160. Would it be smart to just upgrade my drives and maybe get the FirmTek SATA External solution? Thanks for any help as I am going crazy trying to make a decision. My score on the Horse Radial Blur thing was 51 sec. Thanks a million and I apologise in advance for any mistakes as this is my first post!

[jamil5454]

To be honest, if you need more disk space then you should just get more disk space, not a whole new computer. And besides, a DC 2.0 or 2.3 wouldn't really be a big step above the machine you have now.

I would put the internal 160s you have now into an external FW800 enclosure, then buy two 400s for the internal drive bays. I'm not sure if you want to RAID 0 the setup, since this will give double the chance for failure.

You can also keep the external 160 connected how it is.

[G5man]

You may want to use 500's instead if they work on the RevA, that will get you close to a terabyte of internal storage.

[Chinasaur]

Gnarr!!! Aye matey!! Upgrade yer DP 1.8 afore ya go makin it walk 'ta plank!!

[Chinasaur]

Gnarr!!! Aye matey!! Upgrade yer DP 1.8 afore ya go makin it walk 'ta plank!!

[memento]

I think you should donate it to me. My MDD dual 867 is starting to feel old.

But seriously - if your biggest problem is disk space, then get more. Forst max out your available internal mounting and connections, then switch to external. Either firewire or SATA. You already have external FW, so keep adding. Right now I have 4 internal ATA drives, 3 external FW, and 1 external USB2. RAW format takes up a lot of space.

[Todd Madson]

-Back up your current data to a new larger drive and replace the two internals:

-Two 300 GB or larger SATA drives ought to hold you for a while. 400 or 500
would be even better.

-I am currently at 150 GB internal only and it's close to full so I will be adding a
400 or 500 GB internal mechanism to spread it out a bit.

-The older G5s can have the third party extra drive brackets installed so you can
install quite a few drives in there with that.

-It would be cheaper than a new machine.

-The speed increase would not justify the cost unless you can get a dual 2.5 or
dual 2.7 that was refurbed (someone reported they got a dual 2.5 for around
$1999 or so, amazing) or used to get a moderate boost and/or unless you
specifically NEED pci express or pc4200 ram.

-The only way you should go to a DC machine is if you need PCI express or the
faster ram standard.

Currently, it would make more sense to get a couple of very large drives and
add some more ram and go from there.

[lwtucker]

Thanks for the great advice regarding my RevA DP 1.8 PowerMac. Chinasaur will be glad to know that I decided not to make er Walk da Plank. I decided that you guys were right and that going to a DC2 or a DC 2.3 would not have been that big a difference. I Finally decided on two new Maxtor Maxline III's for my internals and got the FirmTek external HotSwap enclosure for my old 160 orphaned drives. I also got Tiger as well and picked up a ATI 9600xt videocard off eBay to replace my nvidia 5200. I already have 3.5 megs of RAM so I think I'm set. I really appreciate the advice as without it I would have probably gone out and bought a new box, for which, I really didn't have the money! Thanks again!