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Adding more than 2 hard drives to a Quad G5
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Forum Regular
Join Date: Jun 2001
Location: Boothwyn, PA, USA
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Is it possible to add 2 more hard drives to my Quad? Will I need a SATA PCI-E card? Do they make some sort of mount that I can place inside the tower to mount the drives to? Anyone done this before? I am getting tired of using all these external FW drives and the cost of storage is so cheap now I figured I would just try and dump more storage inside the tower. Thanks in advance.
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Administrator  Join Date: May 2000
Location: California
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You can have 3 HDs + the optical without modifications.
There are at least 3 kits to place 2-3 HDs in front of the CPU bay, but only a couple of them work with the dual-core G5s. Those kits require a PCIe card to provide the additional SATA ports.
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Junior Member
Join Date: Mar 2005
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Originally Posted by Bill Kinkle 
Is it possible to add 2 more hard drives to my Quad? Will I need a SATA PCI-E card? Do they make some sort of mount that I can place inside the tower to mount the drives to? Anyone done this before? I am getting tired of using all these external FW drives and the cost of storage is so cheap now I figured I would just try and dump more storage inside the tower. Thanks in advance.
Please disregard, missread that you have a G5 not Intel quad.
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Not in the Quad. The Mac Pro has four bays, but the Quad only has 2 
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Join Date: Dec 2001
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Sonnet makes the G5 Jive, for which you also need an additional SATA card, which would make the maximum number of drives for your machine 5. They don't say it's not compatible with your model.
--Chris
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Current: iMac 20" 2.4/4/320 / iMac G4 800
Portable: iPhone 3G White/16 / 12" PowerBook 1.5/1.25/80
Former: PowerMac G5 Dual 1.8 / iBook G3 700 / PM 7500, 3G iPod 10GB, 5.5G iPod 30GB
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Administrator Join Date: May 2000
Location: California
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Using 3rd-party mounting brackets, you can add up to 3 more HDs in the front of the CPU bay, and up to 2 more HDs within the PCI bay space. If you are willing to remove the optical drive, a special bracket can mount 4 more HDs in the optical drive space. All of this internal storage is somewhat pricey, but you can get up to 11 internal HDs in a G5. By far the cheapest upgrade is the one I linked to in my first post, you can add a 3rd internal HD for peanuts.
PCI Bay Mounting Kit
WiebeTech G5Jam (2 more HDs)
$400 or higher. Comes with a SATA card, costs more to come with drives. They don't seem to sell just the the G5Jam, which would likely go for ~$200 if you subtract $200 for their SATA card & cables.
Combo (CPU + PCI Bays) Mounting Kit
WiebeTech G5Jam+ (4 more HDs)
$400. Bare kit, add your own drives and SATA card. Note that this kit only adds two drives to the CPU bay, not three like most of the other CPU bay kits.
Optical Bay Mounting Kit
MaxUpgrades MaxConnect Optical Bay (4 more HDs)
$219 for kit, supply your own drives and SATA card.
CPU Bay Kits
G5 Drive Bracket (3 more HDs)
$49. Supply your own SATA card. Note: this bracket is currently NOT compatible with dual-core G5s, like the Quad.
MaxUpgrades MaxConnect CPU Bay (3 more HDs)
$75 bare kit, more for cables & SATA card.
Sonnet G5 Jive (3 more HDs)
$80. Supply your own SATA card. You can buy this from OWC.
Transintl Swift Data 200 (3 more HDs)
$79. Supply your own SATA card.
G5 Drive Mounting Kit (2 more HDs)
$50. Supply your own SATA card. Note, this kit mounts via 4 visible screw heads to the G5's front mesh. Besides offering only two HDs, I think the mounting method is ugly.
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Join Date: Dec 2001
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Unfortunately, the G5 Jam and Jam+ linked above are incompatible with the Quad. Instead, you would need the Wiebe Tech G5 Jam Express which allows you to add two drives, but sadly it is no longer available.
--Chris
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Current: iMac 20" 2.4/4/320 / iMac G4 800
Portable: iPhone 3G White/16 / 12" PowerBook 1.5/1.25/80
Former: PowerMac G5 Dual 1.8 / iBook G3 700 / PM 7500, 3G iPod 10GB, 5.5G iPod 30GB
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Truckee, CA
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IMO large capacity FW800 external storage makes the most sense on a legacy box like the G5. That way you can use them in the future on your next box. OWC has units up to 1.5 TB:
OWC Mercury Elite Aluminum Solutions at OtherWorldComputing.com
Versions are available that will connect multiple ways: FW800, USB 2.0 ( not recommended) and eSATA, making for good choices moving forward.
IMO using tricks to exceed Apple's internal drive engineering is a bad idea for heat/power supply reasons.
-Allen Wicks
(Last edited by SierraDragon; Jan 22, 2007 at 08:00 PM.
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Addicted to MacNN
Join Date: Jan 2003
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Originally Posted by SierraDragon
IMO large capacity FW800 external storage makes the most sense on a legacy box like the G5. That way you can use them in the future on your next box. OWC has units up to 1.5 TB:
OWC Mercury Elite Aluminum Solutions at OtherWorldComputing.com
Versions are available that will connect multiple ways: FW800, USB 2.0 ( not recommended) and eSATA, making for good choices moving forward.
IMO using tricks to exceed Apple's internal drive engineering is a bad idea for heat/power supply reasons.
-Allen Wicks
Its funny the Quad G5 is called a "legacy" box.
Y'know... SCSI drives, PS-2 ports, parallel ports, serial ports, ISA slots, NuBus slots, joystick/games ports and dual dual-core PPC970 processors...
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Mac Elite
Join Date: Mar 2004
Location: Truckee, CA
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Originally Posted by Cadaver
Its funny the Quad G5 is called a "legacy" box.
Y'know... SCSI drives, PS-2 ports, parallel ports, serial ports, ISA slots, NuBus slots, joystick/games ports and dual dual-core PPC970 processors...
A legacy box from the standpoint of this thread. Today external drive speed maximizers are using eSATA. In the context of my response new mass storage for the legacy G5 is bridged to future boxes by purchasing external mass storage that has both the older FW and the newer eSATA connectivity on board.
-Allen Wicks
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