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PC hard drives?
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-1984-
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Nov 7, 2001, 10:52 AM
 
Will a hard drive sold for PCs work with a Mac? Specifically, a Seagate 50-pin SCSI for my Power Computing. I have Hard Drive Toolkit available if I need to write an Apple-compatible driver. I've found PC hard drives are much cheaper. Any help, advice, suggestions appreciated.
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<SpinyNorman>
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Nov 7, 2001, 12:41 PM
 
Hard drives are platform-independent. As you have noted, some cannot be readily formatted without a third-party utility such as HDT.
     
madoka
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Nov 8, 2001, 12:10 AM
 
Yes, hard drives are platform independent. However, I'm not sure what you mean by HDs being cheaper. Although IDE HD prices has gone down, SCSI ones didn't change that much as far as I know.
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kpttripp
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Nov 9, 2001, 12:21 AM
 
Originally posted by -1984-:
<STRONG>Will a hard drive sold for PCs work with a Mac? Specifically, a Seagate 50-pin SCSI for my Power Computing. I have Hard Drive Toolkit available if I need to write an Apple-compatible driver. I've found PC hard drives are much cheaper. Any help, advice, suggestions appreciated.</STRONG>
Yes i agree pc hardrives are cheaper even though they work for mac. Same o same o anything sold for mac. i bought a pc formated hardrive on ebay and had to Hardisk Toolkit. Took awhile for the computer to accept it but I did still have a small apple hardrive connected just in case.Seagate you shouldn't have trouble finding a driver mine was a tandem duh can't even find that website.
     
Captain Obvious
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Nov 9, 2001, 09:46 PM
 
Originally posted by -1984-:
<STRONG>Will a hard drive sold for PCs work with a Mac? Specifically, a Seagate 50-pin SCSI for my Power Computing. I have Hard Drive Toolkit available if I need to write an Apple-compatible driver. I've found PC hard drives are much cheaper. Any help, advice, suggestions appreciated.</STRONG>

I used HDT to format a former Compaq HD, Seagate brand 50 pin SCSI, and it is now mounted onto a beige G3. Where did you find them cheaper?

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BTP
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Nov 12, 2001, 04:52 AM
 
Yep. No such thing as a 'PC' hard drive.

Check dealmac.com and pricewatch.com for the best prices.

They newer models of Macs use IDE drive, which have come a long way and have a nice price/storage ratio. For instance, at newegg.com you can buy an IBM 60G 7200RPM EIDE for $122.

If you want to move away from SCSI, a PCI/IDE card from Sonnett. The 66MHZ model is selling on ebay for about $50 and you can attach up to 4 IDE devices. The bonus is that you can also add the cheap CD-RW's to the older PCI PowerMacs. A good way to squeeze a lot more life out of an older mac.

Learn more about this subject from xlr8yourmac.com.
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Millennium
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Nov 12, 2001, 12:05 PM
 
SCSI is SCSI. Any SCSI drive should work with a Mac (there is one model from Seagate that really disagrees with OSX; no one knows why, but that is the only exception to the rule).

As for IDE drives, the Mac does have a few special requirements (certain things which are technically optional parts of the ATA standard). But as far as I can tell, a drive that doesn't meet those requirements hasn't been made in the last 5 years, so you're basically safe there too.
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kbbaucom
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Nov 27, 2001, 07:32 AM
 
Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>SCSI is SCSI. Any SCSI drive should work with a Mac (there is one model from Seagate that really disagrees with OSX; no one knows why, but that is the only exception to the rule).</STRONG>
SCSI is not SCSI. There are many different types of SCSI, and not all of them are compatable. An LVD SCSI drive will not work in a Mac, without a special SCSI card. SCSI has 50, 68, and 80 pin connectors, and there are fast, wide, narrow, ultra SCSI, ultra 2 SCSI, etc. Not all of these kinds of drives will work without certain SCSI cards.
     
   
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