Hard drive limit? :::

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
was wondering if OS X had a limit as to how big of a hard drive it can handle?



how many slots can the quicksilver/sawtooth G4's can accomodate?



thanks!!!

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 6
    eugeneeugene Posts: 8,254member
    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.
  • Reply 2 of 6
    badtzbadtz Posts: 949member
    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........ ???
  • Reply 3 of 6
    matsumatsu Posts: 6,558member
    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?
  • Reply 4 of 6
    hmurchisonhmurchison Posts: 12,419member
    Check out the Serial ATA FAQ



    <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.
  • Reply 5 of 6
    kaboomkaboom Posts: 286member
    you're thinking like a pc person.

    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
  • Reply 6 of 6
    noahjnoahj Posts: 4,503member
    [quote]Originally posted by Badtz:

    <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 &gt;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.
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