Additional hard drive

(in article <
You don't need a SATA card. Attaching to the ATA/100 internal bus should work
fine; MDD dual 1.25s had Large Disk Support for certain on the ATA/100 bus
and probably on the ATA/66 bus. Or you could get an ATA/133 card. Or an
UltraSCSI card. (Warning! Expensive!)

Nah. My eMac had more storage than that. The motherboard's not doing too
well, but that's due to a manufacturing problem. (Memo to Apple: Wake up, you
berks!)

If it's on a different controller and the circulation system is working
properly it shouldn't matter which bay you use.

--
We are Microsoft of Borg. You will be assimilated. Stability is irrelevant.
Where _you_ want to go to today is irrelevant. We will add your currency to
our own. Bend over right now. Resistance is futile.

(in article <1hcecy0.1jqv97p1xty4izN%
You have A Mirror Drive Door G4. Those machines shipped with three ATA buses:
an ATA/33 for the optical drives (max of two) plus an ATA/66 and an ATA/100,
with a max of two devices per bus, or four hard drives. (There are only two
drive bays configured for optical or removable media devices, so you might as
well use the ATA/33 bus for them.)

The MDD dual 1.25 shipped with a single optical device. either a combo drive
or a DVD burner, probably the DVD burner. It also shipped with a single hard
drive, a 120GB ATA/100 7200rpm drive. You can add an additional optical drive
(CD-ROM, DVD-ROM, CD-RW, combo drive, DVD-R) or other standard one-third
height 5.25" ATA removable media device. You can add up to three additional
standard one-third height 3.5" hard disk drives, one to the ATA/100 bus and
two to the ATA/66 bus. The ATA/100 bus for certain has Large Disk Support,
and can handle drives larger than128GB. I _think_ that the ATA/66 bus also
has Large Disk Support.

The MDD dual 1.25 has four PCI slots. You may place drive controller cards in
those slots, including but not limited to ATA/133, SATA/150, SCSI, UltraSCSI,
and FireWire. All ATA/133 and SATA/150 cards I know of have Large Disk
Support. UltraSCSI doesn't seem to have the ATA large disk problem. I can't
remember if earlier SCSI had that problem or not. The number of FireWire
internal drives is... limited. _External_ drives are plentiful. FireWire
itself does not have Large Drive limits; the controller cards in the external
drive enclosures may, but if someone sells you a 250GB external FireWire
drive you'll see all 250GB when you plug it in. (Remember that marketing
250GB is not the same as real-world 250GB; it'll say '250' on the box, but
when you attach the drive you'll get maybe 233. This is due to marketting
weasel-speak.) You can, for instance, not use the built-in ATA/66 bus,
substituting an ATA/133 card and attaching two drives to that.

You can have as many hard drives inside your system as you have space for and
power supply leads for. Apple includes a total of six drive power leads, two
for each drive they have designed for. Two of those leads are already in use,
leaving four for you to use as you see fit.

--
We are Microsoft of Borg. You will be assimilated. Stability is irrelevant.
Where _you_ want to go to today is irrelevant. We will add your currency to
our own. Bend over right now. Resistance is futile.

Sorry about my previous empty post. I'm the daughter in question. It is
a mirror-door 1.25Ghz G4. I know that with my model I need a SATA card
to fit a drive bigger than 128Gb. I'm an animator and need lots of
space for my huge rendering files.

What I really want to know is whether putting a 500Gb additional hard
drive into the machine is too greedy and will upset my poor wee G4. And
also, whether it's better to put it into the front bay or the back bay
(I heard that it should be kept apart from the original drive in the
back bay).

Hope that's specific enough to help.

Catriona

No such machine exists.
In all likelyhoood it isn't a quicksilver,
but a mirrorred drive door G4.

In first generation Quicksilvers you were stuck at the 128 GB limit.
(up to 2 x 800 MHZ dual)
In second generation QS (and all later G4-s) the limit doesn't exist.
(up to 2 x 1 GHz dual)

So in all likelyhood no card will be needed,
and you can put in whatever IDE you want.

And no, you can never have too much HD,

Jan

It is hard to know what to suggest without knowing why your daughter
needs more storage. However, basically she has 3 options, in order of
cost:

You can put an ata disk in the spare bay; it won't need any extra card,
it connects directly to the motherboard

You can add an external firewire drive

You can install a sata card and then add a sata drive in the empty drive
bay

Hope this helps. If you need to be 'talked thro'' any of these
alternatives email me - without the 'notthis'!

Tony Lennard