Installing new HDD. Help!

Posted:
in Current Mac Hardware edited January 2014
I'm installing a Maxtor 200GB hard drive. The instructions say it requires a Mac-compatible Ultra ATA/133 PCI card. Unfortunately, the "About this Mac" won't open the System Profiler , so I can't check it. Anyone know another way to the S P? Does anyone know if my computer, an 800 MHz PowerPC G4 tower, would have an Ultra ATA/133 PCI or not?

The instructions also say to set the jumpers on additional HDD attached to the built-in ATA ports must be set to cable select, not to master or slave. I'm lost. Help. How do I know if I should set to cable select or to master and slave?

Thanks

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Hmm, it seems the G4 you have may be an ATA-66 bus. ATA-133 drives should work on it albeit slower but ones that have sizes above 137GB won't work properly because they don't have a large enough address space. That's why you need the ATA-133 bus.



    The system profiler app is (or should be) in /Applications/Utilities.



    You should put the drive on CS setting.
  • Reply 2 of 15
    guarthoguartho Posts: 1,208member
    Marvin is correct, but I'd like to add that Apple silently upgraded the ATA in the G4 towers. Some of the later ones can handle the larger drives while earlier runs of the identically specced model could not. I have a G4 867 that supports larger drives even though it technically should not. You might get lucky. Let us know how it turns out.
  • Reply 3 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    My bad. I didn't relate all the details. The new HDD will be the main drive and the old HDD will be a secondary although I may remove it later. The old HDD, a Seagate, had settings for 'Master'.



    Marvin, should I still use the CS setting? The new HDD came with that setting. What will happen if I use incorrect settings?



    BTW, although System Profiler is in Utilities, it won't open from there either. I did a re-install several weeks ago and have had some weird problems:



    In addition to "About this Mac" not opening SP, System Preferences doesn't open from the Apple logo. It does open from the Dock, though.

    I've thought of doing a new re-install, BUT - I plan to upgrade from Panther 3.9 to Tiger as soon as I get the new HDD installed, so I'd like to skip that step.



    In order to upgrade to Tiger (can't upgrade to Leopard because my G4 is 800 MHz), I have to use a DVD reader - Leopard comes on DVD's and my G4 doesn't have a combo drive.



    I borrowed an external DVD reader and intend to put Tiger on the new HDD, move user files, and other necessary files and apps. If you have any suggestions in that area, I'd like to hear them.



    Guartho, have you been able to upgrade to Leopard? You said you have a G4 867 so you should be able to.
  • Reply 4 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Marvin, should I still use the CS setting? The new HDD came with that setting. What will happen if I use incorrect settings?



    Your house will burn down. I'm sure it just doesn't boot if the settings conflict e.g. two master drives. If the new drive is going to be the main drive then set it to master and the old one to CS. You could also set them both as CS but I would set the main drive as master.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    BTW, although System Profiler is in Utilities, it won't open from there either.



    Try typing system_profiler into the terminal.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    I borrowed an external DVD reader and intend to put Tiger on the new HDD, move user files, and other necessary files and apps. If you have any suggestions in that area, I'd like to hear them.



    That sounds fine. You should be able to use migration assistant to transfer users from your other drive.
  • Reply 5 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    [QUOTE=Marvin;1222773

    Try typing system_profiler into the terminal.

    [/QUOTE]



    Marvin, I was able to access System Profiler using terminal. Thanks.



    What tells me if I have an Ultra ATA/133 card or not. Or do you need more info from Sys Prof?



    Hardware Overview:



    Machine Model: Power Mac G4

    CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.1)

    Number Of CPUs: 1

    CPU Speed: 800 MHz

    L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB

    Memory: 1 GB

    Bus Speed: 133 MHz



    ATA-4 Bus:



    ST340016A:



    Capacity: 38.18 GB

    Model: ST340016A

    Revision: 5.05

    Serial Number: 3HS21CG7

    Removable Media: No

    Detachable Drive: No

    BSD Name: disk0

    Protocol: ATA

    Unit Number: 0

    Socket Type: Internal

    OS9 Drivers: Yes





    DIMM2/J23:



    Size: 512 MB

    Type: SDRAM

    Speed: PC133-333



    PCI/AGP Cards:



    usb:



    Type: usb

    Bus: PCI

    Slot: SLOT-4

    Vendor ID: 0x1033

    Device ID: 0x0035

    Subsystem Vendor ID: 0x9005

    Subsystem ID: 0x0011

    Revision ID: 0x0043
  • Reply 6 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Marvin, I was able to access System Profiler using terminal. Thanks.



    What tells me if I have an Ultra ATA/133 card or not. Or do you need more info from Sys Prof?



    Yeah, if you use:



    system_profiler -detaillevel full



    that should tell you everything. Once it reaches a point where it looks like it's stuck, you can hit ctrl-c. The info it's looking for at the end is installed software.



    There will be a lot of info so just do a command-f and look for ATA.
  • Reply 7 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Sorry to be a pain, Marvin, but I must have done something wrong. With the new HDD set as master and the old HDD set as cable select, the computer doesn't boot. I get a small square with a question mark in it.

    Taking the new one out and leaving the old one set at CS, the computer boots - I'm using it now.

    If you have more suggestions, I'm all ears.



    Using system_profiler -detaillevel full does give me more info, and using FInd gives me MANY ATA's, but I don't know what I'm looking for.

    I don't see anything resembling ATA/133. The closest I can see is the info I put on post #6 of this thread.



    Thanks
  • Reply 8 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Sorry to be a pain, Marvin, but I must have done something wrong. With the new HDD set as master and the old HDD set as cable select, the computer doesn't boot. I get a small square with a question mark in it.



    The new drive doesn't have a system on it. You'll have to boot from the installer disc or hold alt and boot from the old drive (try the latter first). If both drives were set as CS, it would probably look at both drives to see if there was a system so it might be best to do that. Right now, since the new drive is set as master, it thinks that's where the OS should be and it's not finding it.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Using system_profiler -detaillevel full does give me more info, and using FInd gives me MANY ATA's, but I don't know what I'm looking for.

    I don't see anything resembling ATA/133. The closest I can see is the info I put on post #6 of this thread.



    If you set the drives to CS or boot using alt and manage to boot from your old system and you see the new drive mount with the capacity you expect then you will know you have an ATA/133. If you don't have an ATA/133, it should still mount but it won't show the correct disk size.
  • Reply 9 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    The new drive doesn't have a system on it. You'll have to boot from the installer disc or hold alt and boot from the old drive (try the latter first). If both drives were set as CS, it would probably look at both drives to see if there was a system so it might be best to do that. Right now, since the new drive is set as master, it thinks that's where the OS should be and it's not finding it.



    If you set the drives to CS or boot using alt and manage to boot from your old system and you see the new drive mount with the capacity you expect then you will know you have an ATA/133. If you don't have an ATA/133, it should still mount but it won't show the correct disk size.



    After trying several ways, the one that worked is setting both drives as CS. I'm about to start the Tiger installation. Oddly, there is no "Set up assistant" or "Migration assistant" in my Applications/Utilities.

    I'm hoping there's one in the new Tiger. I'll let you know how my installation goes.

    Thanks
  • Reply 10 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Installing Tiger went well. However, it took longer than expected.

    Customizing was not an option and I wasn't able to eliminate extra fonts, languages translations, unneeded printer drivers, etc.

    Although there was no set up or migration assistants, there was a dialog box that copied User accounts, network and other settings, programs, and other nonsystem data.

    Another dialog box allowed me to transfer mail boxes and email.

    Although it wasn't exactly as I expected, all in all, I'm satisfied.



    BTW, I partioned the 200 GB HDD to 137 GB and 49 GB and they both showed up. I don't know whether that means I have an ATA-133 card or not.



    Thanks again, Marvin. You've come through for me more times than I can count.
  • Reply 11 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Customizing was not an option and I wasn't able to eliminate extra fonts, languages translations, unneeded printer drivers, etc.



    If you want to fix those manually, your printer drivers are in /Library/printers. Fonts are in /Library/fonts. Extra languages can be removed using Monolingual and in some ways it's better using that app because it also removes extra languages from 3rd party apps like iwork.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    Although there was no set up or migration assistants, there was a dialog box that copied User accounts, network and other settings, programs, and other nonsystem data.

    Another dialog box allowed me to transfer mail boxes and email.

    Although it wasn't exactly as I expected, all in all, I'm satisfied.



    Glad to hear you got all your data across.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    BTW, I partioned the 200 GB HDD to 137 GB and 49 GB and they both showed up. I don't know whether that means I have an ATA-133 card or not.



    Did you partition it because it wasn't showing up properly as 200GB? Does the system profiler app with the Tiger installation work now? If so, maybe that will provide some info on the ATA card.
  • Reply 12 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    Did you partition it because it wasn't showing up properly as 200GB? Does the system profiler app with the Tiger installation work now? If so, maybe that will provide some info on the ATA card.



    The new HDD showed up in Disk Utilities as 200GB. One of the warnings in the Maxtor instructions was that if the 200 GB HDD wasn't compatible, there might be some loss of data. I thought it might be prudent to partition it. Whether that would resolve the issue or not - time will tell.



    Yes, System Profiler does now work under Tiger. I still don't see an ultra ATA/133 card.



    The only problem - so far - that I've had with Tiger is that Mail is flaky and craps out when I try to open some emails. Having to reopen it several times in one session is a pain. Then, some of the new "improvements" are not to my liking:

    Under the old mail, I could put the mailboxes on either side. I've lost that choice.

    Some of the toolbar buttons have changed and now take up too much space in the toolbar.

    These and a couple more changes are just petty annoyances, but I wonder why Apple took a step backward in a NEW OS.

    I know I'll get used to the new one, but - I'd still like to go back to the old Mail.



    Thanks for the info re the printer drivers, fonts, and languages. It's a good thing you and AI are around to bail me out from time to time. I only know enough to be dangerous. Oddly enough, after 20 years or so working on PC's, I learned how to fix many problems - mainly because they cropped up so often. I haven't had that experience with Macs - probably because the same problems DON'T crop up often.
  • Reply 13 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    I deleted the fonts and printer drivers I don't use and then ran Monolingual. I was surprised at the many apps that languages are associated with. In addition to most of /Applications, many more apps use the installed languages - even some that I don't see on my Mac, e.g. iPod and iPhone. It took quite a while for Monolingual to delete them. It's no wonder that they take up more than one DVD installation disk.
  • Reply 14 of 15
    MarvinMarvin Posts: 15,323moderator
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    The only problem - so far - that I've had with Tiger is that Mail is flaky and craps out when I try to open some emails. Having to reopen it several times in one session is a pain.



    Does a dialog come up? If so, click the report button and paste the log file. The part around Thread 0 is generally the most useful info.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    These and a couple more changes are just petty annoyances, but I wonder why Apple took a step backward in a NEW OS.



    Sadly, Apple likes to do that all too often. I still can't believe we don't have a color picker to let us decide on the color of the buttons in OS X.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    I know I'll get used to the new one, but - I'd still like to go back to the old Mail.



    You should be able to use the old Mail app if you still have it on your other drive. Just drag it over and open it. I would rename the Tiger one first though in case you need to use it.



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by sequitur View Post


    I was surprised at the many apps that languages are associated with.



    Some of the space taken up is completely insane. It's because Apple duplicate the interface files and they can often take up 1MB each. If there are 30 languages then 29MB is being wasted on one app. In some places, the software is just so bloated. The worst example I've seen is Automator. The Automator action to make a new text file in /System/Library/Automator was taking up 30MB+ if I recall. The actual script that does the work is 4k inside the bundle. Thanks to the heavy interface files and multiple languages, an action that only really needs 4k takes up over 30MB. I think I saved over 250MB of space on the Automator folder alone. I don't know why they can't just have a set of strings embedded in the .nib file for each language and then people wouldn't even have to worry about them because the extra space used would be negligible. If a menu button has a title called, 'submit', there doesn't need to be 30 copies of the button, just 30 variants of the text submit.



    iwork is pretty bad too actually though they've sorted it a little in iwork 08. A lot of the time I get the impression Apple want to keep their OS slower and more bogged down than necessary to ensure we keep buying hardware upgrades. All that's really needed is a bit more effort on optimization on their part.
  • Reply 15 of 15
    sequitursequitur Posts: 1,910member
    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post




    Does a dialog come up? If so, click the report button and paste the log file. The part around Thread 0 is generally the most useful info.



    No, no dialog box. It just disappeared. After the Mail problem, I found 4 or 5 other problems. However, after upgrading to 1.4.11, and upgrading Safari, FireFox, and QuickTime, those and the mail problem were fixed. I'm assuming Mail was flaky in the original Tiger. Now, I'm waiting for the other shoe to fall. What else will go wrong!?!?



    Quote:
    Originally Posted by Marvin View Post


    Some of the space taken up is completely insane.



    Removing other Languages (ESPECIALLY IN AUTOMATOR) liberated almost a Gig of space. I trod lightly in printer drivers, fonts, and Architecture (in Monolingual), and not much more space was freed up. I intend to go back over them later to see what else I can remove.
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