Replacing Apple hard disk with A.N.Other

ic1maleic1male
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
Hi,



My Power Mac G5 came with a Seagate 80Gb drive. Can I simply replace this drive with another of my choosing? There is nothing special a hard drive requires (like Apple firmware) for booting purposes? I'm thinking of getting a Western Digital 250Gb SATA to put in it instead.



Cheers.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    newnew Posts: 3,244member
    It's just that easy.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    mslifkinmslifkin Posts: 66member
    Or, you could keep the 80 gig drive, and add the 250 Gig in the second slot. The required cables are already there. Also, there are 4 plastic screws that you need to use to mount the drive. The heads of the plastic screws ride in the slots of the drive "holder" for lack of a better word. If you take the 80 Gig out you'll see them. If you leave the 80 and add the 250 there is another set screwed into the side of the holder. Hope this helps.



    Regards,

    Marc
  • Reply 3 of 6
    ic1maleic1male Posts: 121member
    Thanks for the info. I already have a second HDD in the lower bay so I can't reuse the 80Gb drive in there.



    On another note, do USB 2.0 hard drives work well on Mac OS X? I know Firewire is the main method of connecting external drives but I've seen an 80Gb LaCie USB 2.0 drive for only £60. Would this avoid the Apple issue with unmountable Firewire drives and whathaveyou?



    Thanks.
  • Reply 4 of 6
    mslifkinmslifkin Posts: 66member
    Sure, USB 2.0 external hard drives work fine. I've got 4 that are both USB and firewire. (I bought the drives and then got the cases to put them in) I mostly connect via firewire, and have never had a problem with my G5. I'm not familiar with the Lacie drive, but I'm sure it would work just fine. I don't recall seeing posts from anyone having a problem.



    Regards,

    Marc
  • Reply 5 of 6
    ic1maleic1male Posts: 121member
    Do you know of any drive enclosures that can accept SATA drives?
  • Reply 6 of 6
    mslifkinmslifkin Posts: 66member
    Here's one, but it's not cheap:



    http://www.addonics.com/products/enc...e5idecsu2f.asp



    It will take an SATA drive and connect via either USB 2.0 or FireWire.



    If you don't have the SATA drive yet, you might be better off buying a regular EIDE hard drive (parallel ATA), as there are many more cases for that type of drive, and the drives themselves aren't as expensive. It depends on what you're going to do with the drive; unless you're capturing video on it, parallel ATA should be fine. I've cloned my boot drive to externals several times; once you do that you can actually boot from the external drive if necessary. If you hold down the Option key right after you turn it on you'll see all the bootable drives available on your machine. Just click on the one you want to boot from and then click the right arrow.



    Regards,

    Marc
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