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ZOM 77 · Jun 30, 2003, 07:45 AM

hi

i have a dual 533 digital audio with 2 internal hard drives.
one is the standard 40gb that came with it,
the second i put in myself and its a 125gb ibm drive,
i have a 3rd hard drive id like to put in, also a 125gb ibm drive.
i was wondering if i could put this drive in with out upgrading anything in the machine..

just add it to the ata 66 i got in there?

i took a few pictures of the insides if anyone wants to take a look:

dual 533 insides

any help would be appreciated

thanx

motech]

tobster · Jun 30, 2003, 08:53 AM

I'm not sure if this helps you any but according to EveryMac.com (link to dual 533) the dual 533 came with 3 bays for 3.5" drives (one external and two internal). You already have the two internal occupied for your two drives. I can't recall if the external one (meant for ZIP) can be used for HD but there are probably some people here that know.

An extra ATA card is your next option and there is actually a lot of room for extra drives, on the bottom left of the tower.

Hope that helps.

btw. looked at your Eilat and Tel Aviv pics, brought back good times since I lived in Israel. I just wished these cold days here in Iceland (such as today) were like the hot days in Israel.

- tobs

ZOM 77 · Jun 30, 2003, 09:44 AM

Originally posted by tobster:
I'm not sure if this helps you any but according to EveryMac.com (link to dual 533) the dual 533 came with 3 bays for 3.5" drives (one external and two internal). You already have the two internal occupied for your two drives. I can't recall if the external one (meant for ZIP) can be used for HD but there are probably some people here that know.

An extra ATA card is your next option and there is actually a lot of room for extra drives, on the bottom left of the tower.

Hope that helps.

btw. looked at your Eilat and Tel Aviv pics, brought back good times since I lived in Israel. I just wished these cold days here in Iceland (such as today) were like the hot days in Israel.

- tobs

i just moved to tel aviv from nyc

its soo great here
its 88* right now
im having a blast,
the only downer is that macs and mac parts are at least 150% the cost of parts in ny...
cant really do ebay here either..

anyway..
i was wondering if anyone knew,
maybe i can connect my 3rd drive to where the zip drive was suppose to be connected (mine doenst have the zip drive)

thanx again

motech

desvenne · Jun 30, 2003, 11:43 AM

Originally posted by ZOM 77:
i was wondering if anyone knew,
maybe i can connect my 3rd drive to where the zip drive was suppose to be connected (mine doenst have the zip drive)
[/B]

No problem there, just remember that you have to configure the jumpers to make it a slave drive (because your cd drive is the master on that channel).

Another option would be to get a pci ATA card, and connect the two aftermarket drives you got to the two channels on the card. Yeah it's upgradng and ore costly than putting it in the zip drive, but ata cards aren't that expensive...

Let's keep that option for the future. Maybe that's a nice compromise.

Anyway, as to your original question: just do it, no problems there.

Cheers

p.s. enjoy Tel Aviv.

reader50 · Jun 30, 2003, 01:44 PM

The Zip bay will work just fine for a 3rd HD. However, the Zip is on an ATA-33 bus, so for maximum speed you should put your slowest HD in that bay, the main HD bus is ATA-66.

As for the thread's title question, the maximum number of HDs in a digital audio is 8. Two in each of the three lower bays, one in the Zip bay, and one on top of the optical bay (requires a special bracket). In order to support the extra drives, you would need to add at least one ATA-PCI card, plus a bunch of power connector splitters, and your power supply will be pushed a bit. Still, an internal 8-drive RAID could be pretty sweet.

tooki · Jun 30, 2003, 03:28 PM

Actually, there are heat considerations when putting a hard drive into the zip bay -- it has no cooling to speak of, since zip drives don't create meaningful amounts of heat.

tooki

nerd · Jun 30, 2003, 06:45 PM

I've had 4 drives in mine for quite some time. One above the stock drive, then one in each empty bay to the left of the stock drive. You do need to split the power for the 4th drive. The drive closest to the front of the machine does get warmer then the other two but it's (10k rpm IBM SCSI) not "hot".

Brad

riverfreak · Jun 30, 2003, 09:36 PM

Originally posted by nerd:
I've had 4 drives in mine for quite some time. One above the stock drive, then one in each empty bay to the left of the stock drive. You do need to split the power for the 4th drive. The drive closest to the front of the machine does get warmer then the other two but it's (10k rpm IBM SCSI) not "hot".

Brad

I realize it's not quite the same beast, but I've had six drives running in my blue and white 24/7 for 3 years now. Three are on the bottom tray, one in the zip bay, and two (stacked in a stacker tray from a G4) on top of the optical drive.

works like a champ!

PacHead · 10:03 PM

I just posted a question a few days ago here asking about the max # of drives in a quicksilver.

I understood that 3 was max, without me getting any extra pci card.

2 on the regular ata connections and 1 on the optical port.

So the digital model macs can support 8 but quicksilver only 3 ?
And now the G5 only 2 drives.
I'm not too knowledgable about older mac towers, but it seems that they could have a lot more drives in them, than newer generation macs.

* Oh, i just reread the thread again, and an extra ata card is required for the 8 drives. Disregard my question then. I was just a little baffled, if one could hook up 8 drives without anything extra.

ZOM 77 · Jul 1, 2003, 03:09 AM

Originally posted by PacHead:
I just posted a question a few days ago here asking about the max # of drives in a quicksilver.

I understood that 3 was max, without me getting any extra pci card.

2 on the regular ata connections and 1 on the optical port.

So the digital model macs can support 8 but quicksilver only 3 ?
And now the G5 only 2 drives.
I'm not too knowledgable about older mac towers, but it seems that they could have a lot more drives in them, than newer generation macs.

* Oh, i just reread the thread again, and an extra ata card is required for the 8 drives. Disregard my question then. I was just a little baffled, if one could hook up 8 drives without anything extra.

sshhhh,
my powermacs not OLDER!

(she could hear u!)

CIA · Jul 1, 2003, 12:30 PM

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=128599

There is a photo in this thread you will get a kick out of, and it may have some answers for you...

Eric E. · Jul 2, 2003, 08:42 AM

A Digital Audio has the space and connections for the following combinations: 4 hard drives, or 3 hard drives and 1 optical drive i.e. CR-RW and/or DVD-R/Rom, and 2 hard drives with one optical drive and Zip drive.

If you add a PCI ATA-133 card (like what I did to my 466), a Digital Audio can have 5 hard drives and 1 optical drive. HD #1 sits below the DVD-R/W (where a Zip Drive would normally be) and it is the original 30 GB drive that came with the computer, and the only one directly connected to the mother board. HD #2-5 are attached to a PCI ATA-133 card, and these 4 drives are all mounted on the bottom internal bays. I've had this setup for only 1 week so far, so I have no long term experiences in regards to heat or power supply issues.

I've heard about the brackets that will allow you to mount a hard drive on top of the optical drive, but I have to disagree with reader50's statement about being able to mount a total of 6 hard drives in the 3 bottom drive bays ("Two in each of the three lower bays....") unless you plan to use the Quick Silver with the side panel open - which is obviously not a good idea.

Eric

Eric E. · Jul 2, 2003, 08:50 AM

unless you plan to use the Quick Silver with the side panel open - which is obviously not a good idea.

Oops... I meant use the Digital Audio with the side panel open.

Eric

11011001 · Jul 2, 2003, 06:21 PM

Originally posted by PacHead:
I just posted a question a few days ago here asking about the max # of drives in a quicksilver.

I understood that 3 was max, without me getting any extra pci card.

2 on the regular ata connections and 1 on the optical port.

So the digital model macs can support 8 but quicksilver only 3 ?
And now the G5 only 2 drives.
I'm not too knowledgable about older mac towers, but it seems that they could have a lot more drives in them, than newer generation macs.

* Oh, i just reread the thread again, and an extra ata card is required for the 8 drives. Disregard my question then. I was just a little baffled, if one could hook up 8 drives without anything extra.

I have had 6 drives in my QS at once. 4 7200s, and 2 5400s. I was copying data from the 5400s to the 7200s (they are on hardware RAID 0).

I only had them in there for about 3 hours, I wanted to turn it off as quickly as possible.

Boy, were they hot when I took them out.. I think I really pushed the limit.

The QS can safely handle 4 drives though (my usual setup). If you put another fan in there, it could handle more.

Another option is to build a rack of drives outside of your tower, with ATA cables running out of the machine.. man.. that would be ugly, and.. well, I have seen it done, not with a mac though

Hmm, so with 4 ATA RAID cards, and an extra external powersupply, one could have 16 + 3 (on internal ATA) drives!! Don't know if the firmware can see that much though. But could you imagine, with 8 hardware RAID volumes, with software RAID hooking them together.. that would be just.. err.. well.. freeking rediculously fast!! Druel. (Guestimating 400 to 500 mb/s theoretical performance? but of course, the IO controller couldn't transfer that quickly, nor could the CPU move the data that quickly over software RAID).

reader50 · 08:42 PM

Originally posted by Eric E.:
...
I've heard about the brackets that will allow you to mount a hard drive on top of the optical drive, but I have to disagree with reader50's statement about being able to mount a total of 6 hard drives in the 3 bottom drive bays ("Two in each of the three lower bays....") unless you plan to use the Quick Silver with the side panel open - which is obviously not a good idea.

Eric

ProMax offers custom storage solutions, including internal upgrade solutions. The largest they offer today is an internal 4-HD upgrade, but a couple years ago they were offering a 7-HD internal upgrade kit. That is 7 new HDs from ProMax, plus your existing ATA HD for a total of 8. The kit went something like this:

2 ProMax ATA-PCI interface cards.
2 lower bay drive sleds - Apple only supplies brackets for the #3 rear bay.
1 custom mounting bracket for above the optical bay.
3 power supply Y splitters.
3 or 4 ATA ribbon cables.
7 60GB or 80GB ATA-66 IBM Deskstar HDs.
assorted screws and paperwork.

The webpage instructions indicated 2 drives in each of the lower bays + one in the Zip bay + one on top of the optical bay. There was no mention of having to leave the case open. You got all this for the low, low price of about $3,000. Actually, only $2,999 to be more exact.

At the time it required two PCI-ATA cards. You might be able to supply the minimum 5 extra connections (preferably 6, the Zip bay is normally covered by an ATA-33 connection) with one card today, if it supports slave drives.

Eric E. · Jul 4, 2003, 07:27 PM

ProMax offers custom storage solutions, including internal upgrade solutions. The largest they offer today is an internal 4-HD upgrade, but a couple years ago they were offering a 7-HD internal upgrade kit.

I stand corrected. I wonder how the double HD trays in bays #1 & #2 looked like since I know that the stock Apple double HD tray in bay #3 would not fit in them - I found out that the side panel will not close when I moved it to any of the forward bays. Nevertheless, I'm a bit skeptical if the Mac's power supply would be able to support all those internal drives.

Eric