2 Hard Drives in a G4?

[Chris18]

I have a G4 that's about 6 years old (ice & graphite one).

The stock hd is 20 gb, which is getting small these days. I can't afford to upgrade it, but have a 10 gb hd sitting around... I opened up said G4 and saw that there is an extra set of cables for hd's. I had 2 hd's on my old 7500, so I am wondering if I can hook up this 2nd hd in the G4. The main reason i don't want to try is because there doesn't seem to be a physical "seat" for it. The 7500 had 2 sets of plastic slots the hd slid onto so it wouldn't just be loose in there. The G4 has an area that looks like it'd fit it, but no slots or rails...

Does anyone know if this can be done? Without buying anything...


Thanks for any help. Chris

 

[TrancerTong]

In the bottom of the case, next to the other hard drive is where it should go. There should be a panel that unscrews from the bottom of the case, and comes off, you mount the hard drive to that panel, and then screw it back down to the case. It doesn't really matter that much, if you connect another hard drive and sit it down there, as long as you don't go throwing your computer around, it should be just fine, although if you can figure it out, it would be a better idea to mount it.

 

[sinclair_tm]

ya, it will go in, i got 3 in mine. just make sure that you set the other hard drive to slave if it is ide and you are adding it to the onboard controllers. as far as mounting it, look at the current hard drive ( this is assumeing that its like my digital audio g4) in the bottom of the case. if you dissconnect the data cable, you will see one screw. this holds the tray the drive is mounted to in the case. the drive is screwed to the tray from the bottom. now look to see if you can find another like screw in the bottom of the case in line with the first. if you do, it should be holding down a second tray. just remove the screw and pull the tray out. mount the drive to the tray with the same kind of screws that held drives to the trays in your 7500. now screw the tray back into the bottom of the case and connect the cables and presto, a second drive in your g4. if there is not a sceond tray, look to see if the tray holding your current drive is a 2 drive tray. my g4 came with one. the tray is shaped like a 'u'. the bottom drive in the tray bolts to the bottom of the tray, and the upper tabs of the tray had holes that line up with the holes on the side of drives where you mount the second drive. but this only works if the bottom drive is not a double high drive. hope this helps.

 

[eric2006]

How do you get 3 drives in yours? Anyways, heres some pictures of how I got 2 in a 450 powermac/AGP. I didn't do it they way you guys described.. I kinda mounted it on top of my other hard drive.

 

[Qion]

^^^ LOL

Sorry, but that's very funny... seeing that I'm using that same sorta "floating" technique of putting two hard drives on top of eachother in my 450/AGP

(I'm running an 80gig, a 40gig, and a 20gig external)


On a side note, I attempted a ghetto-RAID of my little floating stack. I concatenated the internal 40 and 80... It mounted A-ok on the G4 and on my network, but it would not boot OSX.

 

[sinclair_tm]

not fair, you have both single drive trays, mine only came with one single and one double. this guy is using the 'u' shaped tray i was talking about. and to the left of that are 2 single drive trays. those are the 3 places you can mount drives.
as far as mine having 3 drives, i have them plugged into a sonnet tempo trio card (ata133 drives on a ata133 controller, nice and fast) and only the superdrive and zip plugged into the mobo. so i could still plug in 3 more drives if i felt so inclined, and got 2 more dual drive trays.

 

[Qion]

(question)

Along with the two hard drives, my G4 has a Zip and a DVD-RAM drive in it. For some odd reason, I have to keep the Zip drive or another drive unplugged in order for the computer to boot up into the OS. Also, when I try to attach a 3rd HD, my DVD-RAM drive stops working. I think it's a power issue, but that's just me...