Thanks, Wayne. > see if it's really the hard drives that are making the noise and not a fan or > optical drive.
Indeed, that's part of my problem. As near as I can tell, having listened and doubted and listened again many times, the noise is from the hard drives. And noise is really the only problem as yet - no weirdness with the system. (Unfortunately, I have nothing like the old Apple Hardware Test I got with OS 9, assuming that its diagnostic capability was beyond that of Disk Utility.) I disconnected power from the one acting as the main drive. No change. I disconnected and removed both drives and reinstalled them to my satisfaction. No change. I saw that the repair shop had jumpered both drives to Cable Select, whereas I had set them to Master and Slave all those years ago. I considered changing it back, but since the system was registering them as 0 and 1 just fine as it was, I let it be. The repair shop had connected the drives to different power cables. I put them on the same one (as they had been before) to see if this would tell me anything (it didn't). I disconnected the ancient and unused Zip Drive just to remove it from the equation in case it was even there. There are probably even more variables - cables? power supply? - but since a new and larger-capacity hard drive won't be wasted in any case, I've ordered one, having figured out the compatibility question. It's a 160 GB Seagate. I recall reading something to the effect that my system might not recognize more than 128 GB on it, but that's not a problem or a bridge I can't cross later. As far as I can tell. Oh, I did notice an oddity that might not be new except in the noticing. I used to see S.M.A.R.T. status in System Profiler. Didn't know what it meant, but it seemed reassuring to see "Verified" there. Since I'm using Disk Utility (booting from the install disc and restoring one hard drive to the other) more often now, and with (possible) hard drive problems on my mind, I happened to notice that Disk Utility says the S.M.A.R.T. status is "Not supported." Since I know what S.M.A.R.T. stands for now, I gather that my hard drives are in fact not capable of warning me that they're dying. At least not politely. > One good option would be to get an external firewire hard drive to back > everything up on. (On a G4 a USB hard drive is very very slow, > even if you have a USB 2.0 card) Yes, an external FireWire drive is smart policy in any case. Living on a shoestring and until recently having lived comfortably with 40 GB has made that one of those "I'll get around to it" things. For now, I copy one hard drive to the other more frequently, banking on the unlikelihood of both failing simultaneously. I have a lot of irreplaceable stuff backed up elsewhere already. > Another option is to pick up a SATA card and add a SATA drive to your > machine. I did that to my G4 when it was my main machine. It was > noticeably faster than my original drive and I never regretted for an > instance. Such possibilities have dawned on me as I've researched and reeducated myself lately. Please clue me in on the specifics of how you did this (drive itself is simple enough, but the cables and cards and such are where I need the help), bearing in mind that my technical prowess is slight and my technical intuition naught, and that I'm likely to ask "um, what is that?" and "um, where does that go?" frequently. 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 g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
