About time I discovered Low End Mac and this group, after 10+ years of owning a G4.
My question: What are my limitations in terms of selecting a new hard drive that I can install without any additional upgrades/replacement as far as ATA, Ultra ATA/100, SATA "and all that" (giving myself away here) goes? I have had good experience with Seagate - if you can specifically recommend one of their models that would work with my Power Mac G4 "Sawtooth" (I think - see below) 450 mHz single- processor, please do. Capacity (120 GB or so would be nice) is less of an issue than hassle-free compatibility. If it matters, I'm running Mac OS X Tiger 10.4.11. Background: In 2000, I (we - I was married then) purchased a new Gigabyte Ethernet Power Mac G4. Until December 1 of this year, the only problems I ever had were a hard drive failure and the apparent death of the installed Zip Drive. Then, the internal power supply died without warning. I brought it to an authorized service provider, intending to have them repair or replace the power supply. Before they attempted this, they called to tell me they had a similar machine they could swap my hard drives (2) and RAM into. Waiting to have the power supply issue addressed - IF it could be addressed - would have meant waiting another 2 weeks or more. Time was of the essence. I hated to give up my original G4 - surely a bad deal if I was a trader or collector - but I needed a home computer back up in less than 2 weeks or a month or whatever the power supply issue required (and no, I wasn't interested in tackling that replacement myself - just not a good time for such a project.) So now I have a new old machine that seems to be in excellent condition, but also a new problem - alarming noises from both of the hard drives (I've been using one to entirely back up the other and rotating them). The noise is like that of a car engine idling irregularly. The whirring varies in frequency and sometimes sounds very labored. No clicks or grinding. The hard drives are both 6 years old, which makes me think I should suspect the health of the hard drives ahead of suspecting the repair shop of improper installation or of swapping my drives/RAM into a lemon. Straighten me out if I'm overlooking anything, which is likely. More background: I want this G4 to last for (at least) the 6 months it's going to be before I can afford a new Mac, at which point I plan for it to go into semi-retirement as an external storage device and guinea pig for tinkering (if you were I and had my technical skills, you'd save the tinkering for a secondary computer). All suggestions and comments are welcome, but particularly those pertaining to the original question, as I'm finding it surprisingly difficult to find a simple compatibility answer online. I haven't kept up with the world of hard drives since installing my current ones 6 years ago. Thanks. Sean -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
