4 Hard Drives in a G4???

S

sammond7

Registered
Hi,

I read earlier that it is possible to fit 4 HD in a G4 case. I need to install a 4th one in mine but have no idea what to connect it to or where to mount it in the case?!

Also, instead of doing this, would an external drive connected via firewire 400 be an option? Or will it be slower than an internal option? Has a G4 got the capacity to run at firewire 800? Will that be any faster than internal?

Basically ANYTHING i will need to know about extra HD installations would be a great help (illustrations especially)

Thanx!
 
I found a fix to this issue, it worked for me:

Thanks to the OP. See the thread at:
http://www.designersblock.org/forum/viewtopic.php?p=3042&sid=f69b6c49dd07878173b9a4e8a677332e

Mac users,

Maybe my solution will help you as well - I found it on Apple's website re: Panther. The problem seems to be with certain Mac applications playing with the frequency settings on the computer.

If you go to the Applications folder, and then the Utilities folder, you'll find the Audio MIDI application. Open it up, and then change the setting in the lower right -- which often gets set above 48000 kHz. Reduce the setting to 48000 or less, and you should again have audio in your web apps / with your plugins.
Click to expand...

Cheers,

J
 
'... it is possible to fit 4 HD in a G4 case.' - it is possible to install five (5) hard disk drives, hdd, into a PowerMac G4.

A second hdd can be installed above the (original) boot drive.
A third hdd can be installed below the CD / DVD (ROM / burner) drive.
Drives four (4) and five (5) can be installed to the left of the (original) boot drive, side by side. To power these hdds, a couple of Molex power splitters and a PCI to SCSI / ATA / SATA PCB (printed circuit board) are required.

'... would an external drive connected via firewire 400 be an option? - absolutly.

'Or will it be slower than an internal option?' - well, yes it is - considering the external hdd must send and receive data via FireWire to ATA / SATA bridge chips - within the external enclosure and within the PowerMac. However, unless you are doing some serious real time video capturing / manipulation or similar, booting from a FireWire (400 MB) hdd will work just fine.

'Has a G4 got the capacity to run at firewire 800? - yes, via a PCI to FireWire 800 PCB.

'Will that be any faster than internal?' - not really. Also, FireWire 800 does not really operate any where near twice the speed of FireWire 400. But, if you do video capturing, etc. - FireWire 800 may be a consideration.

View Apple's detailed installation instructions.
 
thanks for the advice barhar. The purpose of the extra drive is backup...but it needs to recieve around 50-80gb/day of data in the shortest amount of time possible so as to not slow down the rest of the network for any longer than required. (When we backup now it is near impossible for anyone else to open a document on the server without it taking a good few mins!)
Do you think an external drive on FW400 will be noticeably longer to backup to than an internal drive or will the time taken be similar? Also, on that note - will the FW800 be worth the effort to gain extra speed or not?

thanx
 
Internal SATA hard disk drive, hdd, via a PCI to SATA PCB would be faster than FireWire 400 and FireWire 800 external ATA based hdds.

A nice SATA to FireWire 800 comparison.
 
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