[cebritt]

I need to replace the IDE hard drive in a SuperMac C600/240. Will a standard PC 10-20 GB UltraATA drive work or does it require an older drive, i.e., can I just buy a drive at Best Buy? Any size limits?

Thanks, Carleton

Well, it *should* work because UDMA drives are all backwards compatable. And since you'll be formating it on your system, not trying to transfer a UDMA drive already formatted on a different system then it should work okay, I think. Here's something interesting, even though drive manufacturers say that their drives are "backwards compatible" meaning that they'll still work on old E-IDE systems, there are instances where the drives won't work. I took a drive off of my brother's PC system which was formatted as by the motherboard using UDMA-33. I put it on an oldler system not capable of UDMA-33, it was E-IDE only, and it didn't recognize the format. So, if you have a drive that was formated on a UDMA-33 or -66 or -100 system, don't expect to get information off of it on an E-IDE system. However, if you format it on an E-IDE system, and the drive is compatable with UDMA-33 or -66 or -100 it will be able to read the format.
This is just extra information about how "Backward Compatibility" can sometimese be confusing. In your case though, it again *should* be all good.
-Orb

I have a 9.1GB Quantum ATA-33 drive in my C500/240 and a 20GB Maxtor ATA-66 in my C600/240. Both work great and I've had no trouble.

------------------
Eliott Wolfe
Winnetka, Calif

[drewman]

Responding to the PC system that couldn't read a newer ATA/33 drive.

My guess would be that the BIOS of the motherboard didn't recognize the large hard drive, not that the drive was an ATA/33.

drewman

[cebritt]

Epilogue: I found the Hard Drive Compatibility database at Accelerate Your Mac, http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drived...drivedb.lasso, and read that people had had good luck with Maxtor drives. Then I went to Maxtor's site, searched on "Mac", and found a note stating their IDE drives work with numerous Macs including the 6400 (similar motherboard to my C600).

So, I went to CompUSA, bought a 20 GB 7200 RPM Diamond Max Plus drive for $169, stuck it in my C600 and booted from a System 9 CD with my fingers crossed. Much to my amazement, it booted with a dialog box saying, "This disk is unreadable by this Computer. Do you want to initialize the disk? Format: Mac OS Extended 19 GB." I clicked OK and just 2 minutes later it was ready. It's the easiest hard drive I've ever put in a Mac!!! Very fast and quiet. I'm still amazed! Thanks for all of your input. It was very helpful!

Carleton
Austin, TX