g5 hard disc

[Splendid]

Im a bit confused about what internal hard drive i can put in my g5 1.8. Can I use any ATA drive or do they have to be mac (g5) specific? I need the drive to be fast as I am using it mainly for audio so was hoping to stick to an internal drive instead of going firewire (I heard these sometimes had slower writing speeds than internall). Probably go for about 160GB.

Any recommendations would be greatly appreciated, thanks for your time.

 

[edesignuk]

Any SATA drive will work, Mac drives aren't anything special.

 

[neilrobinson]

yep! SATA is the way to go,
1. They Fit!!! (mate of mine brought a pata and wondered why the connections didn't work)
2. they are slightly more expensive
3. most pata to sata adaptors dont working in G5's for your info
4. I reccomend seagate becuase they are much quieter than maxtors. THIS IS ONLY MY OPINION! Everyone thinks different. for eg
i dont like maxtors for noise, good quality but! seagate = quiet, good quality, quantum = fail mode and sandpaper built in.

sorry, couldn't resist

 

[Splendid]

Thanks for your help, just a quick query, what does the 'S' in front of ATA mean, is this the same thing as an ATA drive or something different. Sorry, I'm pretty cluless about drives

Thanks again

 

[neilrobinson]

SATA = serial ata, PATA = Parallel ata, ATA = AT Attachment why? dont ask me

in theory SATA is faster and better. 1 good thing is that it only uses 7 wires instead of 40 = smaller cables, better airflow ect. the cables can be longer as well (a couple of meters i belive)

 

[Blue Velvet]

Thanks for your help, just a quick query, what does the 'S' in front of ATA mean, is this the same thing as an ATA drive or something different. Sorry, I'm pretty cluless about drives

Thanks again

Most crucially, different connections.

A 'normal' ATA-IDE drive won't go into your G5.

 

[jsw]

I second the recommendation for Seagate. I have two 160GB Seagate SATA drives (model ST3160023AS). The first came with my system (purchased 9/03), the second I bought this winter. Both are quick and quiet.

This doesn't mean that other drives won't be as good or better. Just wanted to let you know of a specific model which has worked well for me.

 

[iBert]

Quick question.
If you add another internal HD. How can you make an image copy to the new drive and make it the primary drive? I'm thinking of getting a new HD, but would like to bypass the installation procedure.

Thanks for the help!

 

[Blue Velvet]

Quick question.
If you add another internal HD. How can you make an image copy to the new drive and make it the primary drive? I'm thinking of getting a new HD, but would like to bypass the installation procedure.

Thanks for the help!

Use Carbon Copy Cloner to clone your existing installation -- it's free.
http://www.bombich.com/software/ccc.html

 

[Splendid]

Thanks a lot for all your help, i appreciate it! With regards to the Seagate...is that the drive that is installed in all the G5's to begin with, i.e is it the same as the one I already have?...if so I will prob go with that as it has been excelent so far. Looking into hard drives I've been quite surprised with how cheap internal drives are, the seagate 160GB is about £55 or so, much better than firewire.

Thanks again

 

[neilrobinson]

have a look under system profiler, hardware, ATA, it should say. if the model starts with a ST its a seagate.

firewire is more expensive becuase you have encolosure to put the hard drive in and a converter. so its external not internal

 

[CanadaRAM]

g5 hard disc

When pricing out hard drives, make sure of what warranty you are getting. Standard is 1 year, you can often get the same drive with a 3 year factory warranty for $10-$20 more, which is worth it in my opinion. Every hard drive will fail in time, and enough of them fail within 3 years to be worth the coverage.

Be careful about the lowest-priced sellers, sometimes these are drives with 90 day or no factory warranty at all (these would be OEM drives that the manufacturer sold to a computer manufacturer at a discount for limited warranty as the computer manufacturer would assume the warranty obligation to the customer. These are not supposed to be sold outside of a computer, but some sellers will get these and resell them).

Get the warranty in writing before spending your moolah.

Thanks
Trevor
CanadaRAM