G4 PPC hard drive question
I have a G4 PPC 1.24GHz 20" (sunflower) computer. I want to upgrade the 80Gb Hard drive to a bigger one. As I understand it, (correct me if I'm wrong) My computer used an "ATA/100" Hard drive. Is ATA/300 backward compatable? The largest ATA/100 Drive I could find was 750Gb. If the ATA/300 Drives will work I can go all the way up to 1Tb.
Comments
What I would do is buy a SATA drive & a Firewire case, that system will actually run faster on the FW interface and running a SATA drive because yoy would max out the 400 mbit connection, versus the internal 100 or 133 mbit connection it has for HDD. Plus, you wouldn't have to tear apart the imac...
Um, 100 and 133 stand for 1.00 gigabit and 1.33 gigabit, respectively. Serial ATA transmits at either 1.50 gigabit (SATA/150) or 3.00 gigabit (SATA/300). Through FireWire, there's no discernible difference between ATA and SATA.
And take it from personal experience, avoid SATA external hard drives unless you are worried about being able to remove them and install them into a new computer internally. They tend to be a more expensive. I had to buy two enclosures (no HD's in them), and they were more expensive than ATA variants, not to mention I couldn't find a good one with FireWire.
Um, 100 and 133 stand for 1.00 gigabit and 1.33 gigabit, respectively. Serial ATA transmits at either 1.50 gigabit (SATA/150) or 3.00 gigabit (SATA/300). Through FireWire, there's no discernible difference between ATA and SATA.
And take it from personal experience, avoid SATA external hard drives unless you are worried about being able to remove them and install them into a new computer internally. They tend to be a more expensive. I had to buy two enclosures (no HD's in them), and they were more expensive than ATA variants, not to mention I couldn't find a good one with FireWire.
Not sure where you buy parts, but the SATA interface is more robust, all the systems use it today, and there are plenty of cases to hold these drives. www.macsales.com makes great cases and www.newegg.com has tons of cases to choose from.
If I remember correctly, he wants a 1 TB drive, which is only SATA... IDE is pretty much obsolete, so finding those drives is limited, IDE terabyte drives don't exist.
I've replaced dozens of drives, I buy the bare OEM (not open box or refurbished) from newegg.com they are trustworthy and great service. best of all, great prices! The 1 TB drives are well under $300 now.
You doubt my advice, check out toms hardware: http://www23.tomshardware.com/storage.html
If he's going for a terabyte drive, sure, go SATA. But remember that while SATA is great for internal drives, it's advantages are lost in external drives. That's why almost all pre-assembled external drives are still using PATA.
Yes, you are right, you lose data performance due to the bandwidth restriction, but can pick it back up due to older systems having slower 5400 RPM drives or the caching wasn't as fast. Yes, a lot of the sunday flyer specials are still PATA, but anything with a eSATA port is SATA internal drive. Best Buy is starting to push eSATA now. The last year or so, I see fewer boxed PATA drives for sale.
If you want an internal terabyte drive, get the SATA, get a PATA to SATA bridge board, and see if you can make it work. I haven't been in a sunflower before, so I don't know if the room or the way the drive mounts will let you install a sata+bridge board or not, Apple doesn't give a lot of room for extras. Board: http://addonics.com/products/io/adsaide.asp and the power cable: http://www.newegg.com/Product/Produc...82E16812200151
My recommendation: go over to www.macsales.com and grab an external case that does RAID 1. I had 7 hard drives die in 18 months with my Powerbook, desktop, & external drives. 1TB is a lot of data to lose due to failure or mistakes. They have empty cases or ones with drives. The best for you would be the Guardian Maximus series.