Installing 3rd hard drive in my G4

[Urbansory]

I installed 2 hard drives on the main ide chain, the cd/dvd is on the other and there is one slot left open. There are 3 power supplies available, 1 for the left over slot from the cd/dvd where the zip would go. Ok, i don't want it on the same chain as the cd/dvd- rom, so hw do i add a new connection?

[DeltaMac]

Adding an HD to the 2nd IDE bus as a slave to the CD will actually work just fine, with slightly slower access (probably not noticeable unless you do vid editing). The only other way to add another IDE device, assuming you do not have an MDD G4 or newer, will be adding an IDE drive card to an open PCI slot. The MDD G4 and newer have 3 IDE buses for a total of 6 IDE internal devices possible!

[Urbansory]

ok, so how do I get this zip drive mountings out? I haven't found any info on the removal of the manufacture installed zip bracket.

[Urbansory]

ok, I managed to put the drive in the zip bay, good or bad idea? Problem is the drive works but the CD-rom/DVD isn't showing up. How are the jumpers supposed to be set up on the harddrive? And the hard drive has no direction for these settings unlike the other drives I have installed.

[ksv]

Isn't it possible to place the hard drive next to the other two? At least you can buy a bracket to do it, but that's no point if you don't need the zip drive bay.
The drive should be set as slave. Also make sure the optical drive is set correctly - some drives have different settings for "single" and "master with slave". It should be "master with slave" of course. You can find these jumper settings on the drive's manufacturer, they are usually the same on all drives made by the same company.

If you're looking for good performance though, I wouldn't connect it to the optical drive bus, because it's only ATA-33 on your computer. At least if you're copying something from/to a CD at the same time, the hard drive will be painfully slow. Get a PCI ATA controller if you're using that drive for pro stuff

[Urbansory]

So the CD/DVD drive won't slow down right? I don't want to have issues with my CDs and DVDs

I just want it for a back up drive, this drive was just sitting under my desk collecting dust, so i figured i'd put it to use.

[Urbansory]

ok, I got the info from western digital (doesn't compare to the 2 maxtors I have), everything works fine now, thanks.

[legacyb4]

With drive prices the way they are now, I swapped out my internal 60GB x 2 drives for a single 120GB (was IBM, now Hitachi) and am pretty pleased as my G4 has gotten quieter again.

I had an external Firewire drive (20G/5400 rpm) so I stripped the drive out, replaced it with the quieter of the 60GB drives, and now have a fast backup drive that is only powered on when I need it.

Also, can anyone confirm if the older G4s support drives larger than 120GB?

Cheers.

Originally posted by Urbansory
So the CD/DVD drive won't slow down right? I don't want to have issues with my CDs and DVDs

I just want it for a back up drive, this drive was just sitting under my desk collecting dust, so i figured i'd put it to use.