G4's and harddrive capacity

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pishnaris

Registered
I have run into a sort of problem with harddrives. My G4 Dual 450 has a 100mhz bus, and won't support harddrives with capacities greater than 120gb, I believe. The problem is, I have 6 harddrives on this machine now...a 40gb, 80gb, and a Sonnet striped raid set consisting of 2 - 120gb drives, all internal. I also have a 200gb firewire drive and a 250gb drive, also firewire. The problem is, the 250gb drive seems to decide to quit from time to time, which I'm assuming is either a result of overloading the firewire bus, or maybe a heat issue, as the drive is in a case.

Before I get creative with this setup, I'm considering my next move, which will be a new Mac, when they have finally been released. The question I have is two parts;

1. Is there an obvious problem with the configuration of this setup?
2. How large a harddrive will the newer Dual 1.42 machines support? I'm afraid it may be only 180gb.

Thanks for the help,

Pish
 
It could be the FireWire controller of the hard drive part that doesn't like large drives - you should check the tech specs of it.
Using the first 127 GBs will probably work fine, but once a byte outside of that limit is touch, it will most likely crash.

You could also consider getting a PCI ATA controller card or two for your Mac - they are way faster than FireWire ;)
 
I appreciate the reply, but the firewire cases are good for the capacity of the drives. The 200 gb drive works flawlessly. The 250 gb, which has the same brand case, but with an advertised >250 gb capacity does work, but takes itself out of the picture from time to time.

The Sonnet card that's doing the RAID right now, may be able to expand the drive capacity, but I don't think even it supports greater than 180. Not sure. How far would a ATA card take me?

Thanks,
Pish
 
Are you running the 260GB on one FW port all by itself? Leave it all connected and reboot into OSX single user mode. Then let it sit for the amount of time it usually takes for the 260GB to "vanish". If you see something like "IOFireWire...failed...retry", you have a FW port that is bad. I've had the same symptom on my Dual-867G4 and it's now in the shop for a new motherboard under warranty.

Originally posted by pishnaris
I appreciate the reply, but the firewire cases are good for the capacity of the drives. The 200 gb drive works flawlessly. The 250 gb, which has the same brand case, but with an advertised >250 gb capacity does work, but takes itself out of the picture from time to time.
.........
Thanks,
Pish
Click to expand...
 
It may just be me, but anytime I see the words "Sonnet Card" I freak out. Ever tried one of their processor chip "upgrades"? Yuk! Crash city.
 
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