Adding/replacing a hdd in a mac

Jojo7

Senior member
May 5, 2003
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Is this possible with just a store bought 120 gb wd ide or something similar?

The mac is an older power pc g3 350mhz.

Can I just pop another hdd in there and set it up as slave and go to town? The ide cable from the mobo has just 2 connectors (one to mobo, other to the drive). Can I put in a normal ide cable without problems?

Ideally, I would clone the current 11gb drive over to the new drive. Is this even possible? Is there a ghost type program compatiable with macs?

Tia.
 

Dennis Travis

Golden Member
Oct 9, 1999
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Ok, first you need to know if you have a Rev 1 or Rev 2 G3 board. You can tell by the IDE controler chip made by CMD. Do a search in Google for Mac G3 B&W Rev 1 or 2 and it should come up. Some sites show a pic so you can tell which board you have. The Rev 1 boards had problems with more than one Hard Drive and sometimes Data Corruption with even one large drive.

Second I am not sure the limit of a G3 Rev 2 but I know it for sure won't go past 120GB. Might be less but you can put a good sized IDE drive right in there without a problem if you have a Rev2 board. If I find the info I will update my post otherwise just google and you will find it. Low End Mac might have a page on the problem and how to ID the controler.


Also yours is one of the G3 B&W's with the blue and white case correct?



Update, found it on Google first try. Read all this link. about half way down the page it shows you what to look for. There is all kinds of other info there too.

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-...emite/newfeatures.html


Checked and if it's a REV2 128GB. That is the Max.
 

Jojo7

Senior member
May 5, 2003
329
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Originally posted by: Dennis Travis
Also yours is one of the G3 B&W's with the blue and white case correct?

Yes. I'm working with a B&W G3.
I checked the link and it appears that I have the Rev 1.
To avoid data corruption, I think I'll add a pci ide controller card.

This mac is getting a serious upgrade. From 64 mb of ram to 256, firewire cd-rw drive and new hard drive.

Thanks again for the help and the link.