PowerMac G4 Hard Drive Upgrade

[mikecel79]

A friend of mine wants to upgrade the hard drive on his PowerMac G4 (400 Mhz AGP graphics model). He currently has a 13Gb drive in there I think. He went out and purchased a 200GB drive before talking to me. Once I did a little research it seems this model can't go above 128GB limit since it does not to 48 bit LBA. So will his Mac only see it as a 128GB drive or will it not recognize it at all?

 

[myjaja]

It will recognize it as a 128gb drive. You can stick the 200gb hard drive in your PC, partition it as 2 100gb partitions, and stick it in the Powermac G4. I believe that should work.

 

[LiekOMG]

The older G4 models are limited to 128GB. The best solution is to purchase an ATA100/133 PCI controller card and hook the drive up to that. There is a software solution, but its kind of gimicky and you have to pay for it, and the price is the same as buying a PCI card, so you might as well go for the hardware solution.

 

[ViRGE]

Originally posted by: teh meow
It will recognize it as a 128gb drive. You can stick the 200gb hard drive in your PC, partition it as 2 100gb partitions, and stick it in the Powermac G4. I believe that should work.

That won't work. The mobo's ATA controller physically doesn't know how to reference more than 128GB on the disk. He'll need a controller card.

 

[myjaja]

Originally posted by: ViRGE

Originally posted by: teh meow
It will recognize it as a 128gb drive. You can stick the 200gb hard drive in your PC, partition it as 2 100gb partitions, and stick it in the Powermac G4. I believe that should work.

That won't work. The mobo's ATA controller physically doesn't know how to reference more than 128GB on the disk. He'll need a controller card.

Thanks for the info. I thought it might have worked, but I guess not.

Anyways, OWC gives quite a good selection of ATA controllers. Personally, I've always liked Sonnet's products. This Sonnet ATA controller is a good choice. Also, FYI, you can add SATA controllers to your Powermac G4. They are a little cheaper than Sonnet's ATA controller card. The Firmtek SeriTek goes for $63.99, while the SIIG SATA controller goes for $59.95. You have other controller cards you can choose from on the OWC site, but they are more expensive. I suggest you check them out to see which one you would prefer.

 

[mikecel79]

Thanks for the help. He is going to use just use it as is and only get 128GB out of it for now. He plans on buying a new Mac next year and we'll move it to that machine when he does.