OS X doesn't have HDD size limits, but some of the hardware in your Mac will have limits. The ATA controller in any current Mac cannot handle drives >137 GB. This is a limit of the Ultra ATA/66 spec. If you want to add a 160 GB Maxtor HDD for example, you will need one of those fancy new Ultra ATA/133 PCI cards.
Apple Power Macs have one Ultra ATA/66 channel. You can have 2 IDE HDDs on it. If you don't have an internal Zip or anything occupying the 3.5 inch bay underneath your CD-ROM drive, you can add a HDD there too.
As far as room is concerned, you can add a second double decker drive sled to the bottom of the tower. That will enable you to physically fit 5 HDDs on the bottom of your tower and 1 in the 3.5" bay beneath the CD-ROM drive. That's 6 HDDs total without 'hacking' anything.
Anybody know when serial ATA is due? With Apple having missed ATA100 and ATA133, is serial ATA next up? I believe it starts at 200, which would be ideal for digital video. A soft raid solution with a couple of drives on a serial ATA bus would make for a nice, fast and cheap SCSI alternative. Perfect speed match for 1.6Gb firewire too (if that's what's up next.)
Wasn't there talk a while ago about a new I/O bridge from Apple that was going to have updated firewire, USB, and ATA, and also sound and PCI. UMA2 was the catch phrase bandied about back then -- a complete MoBo and I/O overhaul that would benefit every machine? Haven't heard so much about that lately.
Now there are DDR G4 rumors (7460, 7470, 7500), would an architectural boost bring a host of I/O goodies with it?
The drive doesn't have to be "recognized first", you just have to go to the control panel/System preference called "Startup disk" and tell it what system you want to startup from. It doesn't matter where the system is. You can even use a firewire HD/zip/cd/floppy(on older macs, of course).
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Apple Power Macs have one Ultra ATA/66 channel. You can have 2 IDE HDDs on it. If you don't have an internal Zip or anything occupying the 3.5 inch bay underneath your CD-ROM drive, you can add a HDD there too.
As far as room is concerned, you can add a second double decker drive sled to the bottom of the tower. That will enable you to physically fit 5 HDDs on the bottom of your tower and 1 in the 3.5" bay beneath the CD-ROM drive. That's 6 HDDs total without 'hacking' anything.
if I bought an ata-133 card, apple is okay to boot that up first & recognize that first [with the OS on it], right?
maybe i can bypass the whole ata-66 thing of apple's, & just get a pci card so I can use a WD 120jb drive........ ???
Wasn't there talk a while ago about a new I/O bridge from Apple that was going to have updated firewire, USB, and ATA, and also sound and PCI. UMA2 was the catch phrase bandied about back then -- a complete MoBo and I/O overhaul that would benefit every machine? Haven't heard so much about that lately.
Now there are DDR G4 rumors (7460, 7470, 7500), would an architectural boost bring a host of I/O goodies with it?
<a href="http://www.serialata.org/faqs.html" target="_blank">http://www.serialata.org/faqs.html</a>
Speed aside I'll be happy with the smaller non ribbon connecters!
Unfortunately I believe it will still lack the ability to do simult read/writes but progress is progress.
The drive doesn't have to be "recognized first", you just have to go to the control panel/System preference called "Startup disk" and tell it what system you want to startup from. It doesn't matter where the system is. You can even use a firewire HD/zip/cd/floppy(on older macs, of course).
Welcome to the club. Hope you enjoy your stay
<strong>Was wondering........
if I bought an ata-133 card, apple is okay to boot that up first & recognize that first [with the OS on it], right?
maybe i can bypass the whole ata-66 thing of apple's, & just get a pci card so I can use a WD 120jb drive........ ???</strong><hr></blockquote>
Read what he posted: The ATA controller in any current Mac cannot handle drives >137 GB. This is a limit of the Ultra ATA/66 spec.
120 GB is less than 137GB. You can use that drive currently. I have a 100GB Western Digital in my G4 Sawtooth Right now with no issues.