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legoskid · Apr 8, 2002, 03:59 PM

i have a powermac 7500 that comes with a 1.2gig drive running OS 8.5 which is hardly capable of holding many of my media or software for that matter.
can someone please advise me as how to upgrade to a better hard drive and make it work?
or should i get an external drive?
and do i have to format them?
i don't know how to do any of this but wanting to try to appreciate these older macs....

thanks.

hempcamp · Apr 8, 2002, 08:10 PM

Originally posted by legoskid:
can someone please advise me as how to upgrade to a better hard drive and make it work?

Adding a second internal drive to your 7500 is cake compared to other Mac models. Depending upon how much room you need, you should be able to find a 50-pin SCSI drive pretty cheap. You could also buy a 68- or 80-pin SCSI drive, but make sure you get the vendor to throw in a pin converter so that it will work with your current 50-pin Fast-2 SCSI bus. Lots of these can be found on ebay -- I have had success with ANT Computers (ebay id: [email protected]) -- but be careful, especially when buying secondhand drives. I highly reccomend Seagate mechanisms.

Next, you'll need to find drive rails. These are common in many Macs so often on ebay too, but you can buy them directly from someone like Sun Remarketing or MacGurus. Follow the excellent directions provided by Steve Wood at http://www.mathdittos2.com/columns/bh/bh010723.html for opening up your Mac and getting to the drive bay. Then, it is just a matter of sliding in the drive and connecting the ribbon cable and power (there are already second connectors on your current cables for adding a second drive). Jumpers will also need to be set, so check the manufacturer's web page for details.

Finally, boot up and use Drive Setup (if you don't have this already, you can download it from Apple) to initialize the new drive. Assuming your jumpers are set right and cables snugly connected, Drive Setup will recognize your new drive and put it right on your desktop.

When you get closer to the actual installation, let us know, and we'll be happy to help you out more. Best of luck!

--Chris

P.S. I bought a 4 gig 7200 RPM SCSI Seagate drive from ANT computers on ebay for around $20. It is loud, but a fast drive, and I have not had any problems with it.

legoskid · Apr 9, 2002, 10:31 AM

Sounds Good!
But just wondering...
Would it be better to replace the primary drive?
Can I do that just as easily?

Thanks

hempcamp · Apr 9, 2002, 01:50 PM

Originally posted by legoskid:
Sounds Good!
But just wondering...
Would it be better to replace the primary drive?
Can I do that just as easily?

Thanks

If you want, it's up to you. Basically do the same I explained earlier, and once you get the second drive formatted, just copy the contents of your current drive to the new drive. For this, you can skip finding the drive rails, as you can sit your drive in the bay without rails while you do the transfer, then take the rails off your old drive once you are done.

--Chris

Walter J. Ferstl · Apr 11, 2002, 07:23 AM

Hello legoskid,

assuming you can get a drive sled for the new drive, why remove the old one?

In any case, I would recommend to install a System folder on the new (or just more recent) drive and use it as a startup drive from then on. You could go on to utilize the old drive, e.g. as a repository for files that are going to be burned to a CD-R, for download and web cache files, in short - for "not so critical" files.

I do not recommend using a 68-pin drive via a 68-to-50 pin converter in a non-wide (50-p) SCSI setup (the same goes with 80-to-50 pin converters in case of SCA drives). Termination (and thus stability) problems are likely to occur.

MacGurus http://www.macgurus.com/ have an excellent SCSI FAQ page.

Good luck,

Walter.

[ 04-11-2002: Message edited by: Walter J. Ferstl ]

Walter J. Ferstl · Apr 11, 2002, 07:41 AM

Hello legoskid again,

as to drive specifications, a slower rotational speed drive like a 5400 or 7200 would be enough for the 7500/100.

In my experience, the IBM DDRS, DCAS, and DNES types are reliable and not too noisy. They are available, at least at clearance sales etc., in sizes between 2 and 9 GB.

Some friends of mine trust in Seagate drives like the Barracuda series.

In a two internal HD setup, the startup drive would get SCSI ID 0 (zero) by removing all the three ID jumpers. The other drive could be ID 6 (all three ID jumpers in place) or ID 1 or any other number less than 7. Remember that ID 3 is usually already occupied by the 7500's CD-ROM drive.

Regards,

Walter.

Walter J. Ferstl · Apr 11, 2002, 07:43 AM

Hello legoskid again,

as to drive specifications, a slower rotational speed drive like a 5400 or 7200 would be enough for the 7500/100.

In my experience, the IBM DDRS, DCAS, and DNES types are reliable and not too noisy. They are available, at least at clearance sales etc., in sizes between 2 and 9 GB.

Some friends of mine trust in Seagate drives like the Barracuda series.

In a two internal HD setup, the startup drive would get SCSI ID 0 (zero) by removing all the three ID jumpers. The other drive could be ID 6 (all three ID jumpers in place) or ID 1 or any other number less than 7. Remember that ID 3 is usually already occupied by the 7500's CD-ROM drive.

Regards,

Walter.

Apr 16, 2002, 11:58 PM

I have a Seagate 18.2GB 50pin SCSI second drive on my 7500. I'm told that it is not bootable though I'm getting conflicting information. I have the original 1GB Apple drive that came with my machine and the two seem to work fine. The only issue I'm dealing with is Norton Systemworks telling me I have a cross-linking file problem that causes intermittent problems. I don't know if its a Norton issue or a real issue but it does crop up weekly.

Apr 18, 2002, 11:05 AM

I did the same thing and have the same problem with these issues and norton,
does anybody know for sure if there the second drive can be bootable?
what can i do about this intermittent problem with this drive?

Originally posted by <Jodar>:
I have a Seagate 18.2GB 50pin SCSI second drive on my 7500. I'm told that it is not bootable though I'm getting conflicting information. I have the original 1GB Apple drive that came with my machine and the two seem to work fine. The only issue I'm dealing with is Norton Systemworks telling me I have a cross-linking file problem that causes intermittent problems. I don't know if its a Norton issue or a real issue but it does crop up weekly.

hempcamp · Apr 18, 2002, 01:41 PM

Originally posted by <tom>:
I did the same thing and have the same problem with these issues and norton,
does anybody know for sure if there the second drive can be bootable?
what can i do about this intermittent problem with this drive?

I have a Seagate Barracuda 7200 rpm 4 gig half-height (large, loud monster!) in my 7500. Boots fine from either this drive or the 500 meg Apple OEM drive. Check your SCSI IDs and termination. Only problem is waking from sleep, since the drive takes longer to spin up than my Mac has patience for!

--Chris

PowerMac 7500/604e 200Mhz PM 4400/603ev 200Mhz
4 gig/16MB 2 gig/64MB
OS 8.5 YellowDog Linux 2.2

DominikHoffmann · Apr 19, 2002, 06:30 PM

What have you guys' experiences been with formatting such higher-capacity 3rd-party hard drives? Were you able to use Apple's hard drive utility, or did you have to use 3rd-party software?

raferx · Apr 22, 2002, 04:17 AM

Can you run X on that machine? I have my eye on 7200 that I would like to use as an ftp server... a new PCI ATA card, and a 40 gig drive, some more RAM, SSH in and out. Can I do it?

D'Espice · Apr 26, 2002, 11:05 AM

OS X doesn't support the older PowerMacs. But there should be a way of getting it to work, I'm still searching for this possibility. But prepare yourself for a really slow MacOS.

Langdon · Apr 26, 2002, 01:11 PM

Originally posted by D'Espice:
OS X doesn't support the older PowerMacs. But there should be a way of getting it to work, I'm still searching for this possibility. But prepare yourself for a really slow MacOS.

Supported.... no.
But its possible. You'll need an G3 or G4 upgrade card and there are a couple apps out there that allow you to install it. Sonnet makes one for their cards but I used XPostFacto. But it works you just need enough RAM.
http://www.versiontracker.com/morein...d=11168&db=mac