[pdot]

Does anyone know if one of those small external firewire hard disks fit into the zip drive bay in the current G4 design. I'm thinking about making use of the internal firewire port in last year's G4 model.

Also, will there be any technical problems I need to be aware of? I can't think of anything except for the size.

[cjpainter]

As long as the unit fits inside the bracket and the cable doesn't interfere with anything else inside the case you should not have any trouble with it. Although it would be cheaper to by another high capacity IDE drive and put it in place above the factory drive.

[pdot]

the main question was whether or not it fits. I don't have one of those drives myself and I don't know anyone else who does so i can't try it myself.

I do have an additional HD, but I just want to make use of the int. Firewire. Since the G4 case is so easy to open, you can save clutter around the case if you can put an external drive inside the tower.

[Misha]

Yes, most of them do fit. But you can always just stick it on top of the CD/DVD drive... there's a lot of space up there.

You typically pay a premium for these primarily because they're so easily transportable. Why use it as an internal device? It'll work just as well as an external Firewire drive.

[Bmeteor]

Why is there an internal connector in the first place? I don't see the logic in putting an external case internally when you can buy an IDE drive for at about $150 cheaper.

In case I'm missing something, has someone come out with native firewire drives? are there plans for anywone to?

[BlaKaT]

An Idea that I have been messing around with for a while but haven't done yet is to get a Firewire bridge as in an external full size drive case, and mount another internal drive, I have 2 internals in my G4 at the moment (well I did have 2 but Apple has taken 4 weeks to replace one that died at christmas but that's another story) and the 2 options that I had in adding another drive was to add it on the DVD's bus with it mounted in the third bottom bracket with an ATA extension cable, or get a firewire bridge and mount it in the same spot.

[swatki]

I'd only worry about heat. The upper bays aren't designed for hard drives.

The internal FireWire connection was designed on anticipation of a stand alone firewire bus, one that acted without a bridge. When that didn't happen, they removed the connection.

Just get an internal IDE drive and save FireWire for the external ports.

Also, Firewire is at 400 Mb/sec. right now. Why install an internal drive that runs at 50 MB/sec. internally, when ATA/66 or 100 drives (supposedly) can transfer at higher speeds?

[tooki]

And above all, the current IDE-FW bridge chipsets limit speed to about 16MB/s sustained. A far cry from the 38MB/s an IBM Deskstar 75GXP can get on ATA/66.

tooki

One advantage would be if you already have your IDE busses full. 3 matched IDE drives in a raid 5 config + DVD drive leaves you with firewire drives unless you want to spend a PCI slot on scsi. Also, doing anything with scsi risks the lives of the sacrificial goats who must occasionally be offered to the scsi gods to get the chain working again.

But in answering the original post, all I do know is that internal IDE drives fit in there. Not much room to spare either. I really can't say about firewire. Are the connectors on the very bottom of the drive? That may be an issue.

I would like to see some FireWire native drives. Anyway, if it's designed to be external, it should do fine up in that space above the drives. The new cases are very well ventilated. The processors themselves are hard to get above 110-F everything else should be cooler.

[This message has been edited by the ED (edited 01-28-2001).]

Has everyone forgotten that you can add an ATA/66 PCI card for $99? I have the capability for 6 ATA drives (including the Apple one and a second slaved to it) in my G4 since I added a Sonnet Tech Tempo card. And internal ATA drives are A LOT cheaper than Firewire drives.

[JB72]

My dream is if there existed a 5.25" DV drive that could be connected internally via firewire. Now THAT would be sweet. That's a serious DV BTO option. Could also be used as a backup device. Of course it would require Apple ship with a second exposed drive bay.

------------------
-JB72.338x

something clever

In theory, since Firewire uses SCSI commands and has similar device arbitration, performance should be a lot better than IDE devices.

That is, if it doesn't use an internal ATA-FW bridge. Performance sucks, since you have more conversion delays than you can throw a stick at - one between the PCI bus (parallel) to the FW link (serial), back to ATA (parallel) for the drive. And vice versa.

This is one native FW drive that I know of, not sure it's available in the US though. http://products.taxan.co.jp/taxanpro..._fw/index.html

[Misha]

Originally posted by tooki:
And above all, the current IDE-FW bridge chipsets limit speed to about 16MB/s sustained. A far cry from the 38MB/s an IBM Deskstar 75GXP can get on ATA/66.

tooki

I've gotten 20+ MB/sec from FireWire drives. Most 5400/7200 ATA/66 drives don't perform much better than that.

[tooki]

What FireWire drive were you using? Every test I have seen saw them max out at 16MBps.

As for ATA drives, sorry, you're wrong. Test after test shows good (e.g. IBM or Seagate) 7200 RPM drives getting 34-38MBps sustained. I think that falls squarely into "much better."

tooki

[This message has been edited by tooki (edited 01-30-2001).]

[Camali]

This maybe off topic, but wasn't some company showing off a bridge like device that attached to internal IDE hard drives that would allow you to use them as a internal FW device, using the internal FW port (which are no longer on G4s by the way)?

Also, I forget where, I read in some forum that there was a *NEW* firewire bridge converter that was going to allow the full 400mbs of the firewire connection to be used. The device is apparently in beta testing, not sure if its true, but if thats the case. I'm waiting for this new converter!