Sata2 hard drive compatibility

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Mabeysk

Registered
Hello. I'm looking for a new hard drive and after waiting for sata2/300, the SEAGATE BARRACUDA 300GB SATA2/300 7200RPM 16MB is my main suspect. Does anyone know if its compatible with G5's? particularly the dual 1.8's or older versions.
Thanks
 
The on-board SATA is SATA-I (150Mb/sec)... why buy a SATA-II (300Mb/sec) when it will operate at the same speed as a cheaper SATA-I drive?

If you intend to use the SATA-II drive at it's native speed and expect to see improvements over a regular SATA-I drive, you'll need to add a PCI SATA-II controller card. The G5's built-in SATA hardware will show no improvement using SATA-II drives over SATA-I drives.
 
...it seems maxtor have a slight better general review from what i've read. But some feedback from other people would be nice.
 
I wouldn't buy a Maxtor hard drive if someone paid me to. I wouldn't consider a Hitachi-branded drive, either. Reviews that say that Maxtors and Hitachis are reliable don't sway me.

I would definitely go with a Western Digital, but avoid the 400GB SATA model -- it apparently has compatibility problems with the on-board SATA in the G5 machines... something to do with the drive's "Spread Spectrum Clocking." If you use the 400GB Western Digital drive in a G5, I would highly recommend connecting it to a SATA PCI card instead of the on-board SATA controller.

Seagate would be my second choice.

Just my opinion from years of hard drive experience, purchasing, and use.

SATA-II cards tend to be a little expensive:

http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo-x_esata44.html
 
I've had some Maxtors that are still running some years after purchase. And these are the ones from CompUSA. Of course, these are PATA hard drives so there might be a difference. :D
 
Yeah -- I'm sure we all have personal experiences that lean us to one brand or another. I also have two Maxtors (actually, Quantums) from the 90s that are still operational today. In addition, I also have a Western Digital that failed on me, even though I prefer that brand.

I just picked up a Seagate 200GB 8Mb cache drive from BestBuy (they're on sale for $80 -- get 'em while they're hot!) that I'll be putting through the paces shortly. It may or may not sway my feelings about Seagate -- we'll just have to find out!

Does anyone know of any reliability reports? I know there are plenty of performance reports, but I don't think I've come across any reports of how reliable drives are over time...
 
hmm, i've just had a thought, will buying a sata2 hard drive, enable me to enjoy its 300/Mb sec when i upgrade my computer in the future? are there any negative affects to using a sata2 hard drive in the G5, the price difference seems to be surprisingly small.
thanks nixgeek
 
not really, it just run at the slower speeds. second, are the sata2 connectors the same as sata1? i thought they were different, but could be wrong.
btw, seagate and maxtor are one and the same now being seagate bought maxtor. whats funny is that i've never had a problems w/seagate scsi drives in my old 68k macs. my g4 has only maxtor(all ide ata133), and my pc has only wd(one ata100, and one sata150). i have no idea how that happened. but they all worke fine.
 
Yes, you can use a SATA-II 300Mbit drive on a SATA-I 150Mbit bus just fine -- it's fully backward compatible. Of course, you won't see any speed difference over using a regular SATA-I 150Mbit drive, but if, in the future, you do acquire a computer with SATA-II 300Mbit capabilities, you can then swap that drive into the new computer and enjoy (theoretically) twice the throughput.
 
Sorry for dragging this out a little. The Maxtor HD seems to be the only one between Western Digital and Seagate with a 16MB cache. ...this leaves me almost wantng the maxtor...
 
OK! cool, this brings me round full circle a little. my original problem was wondering whether the sata2 hard drive would work, connectors and all. Does anyone have a link that can make it sure the seagate sata2 will work absolutely?
thanks a lot ElDiabloConCaca and sinclair_tm
 
Cache is irrelevant when it comes to the G5 -- it's solely a function of the drive itself. You could, theoretically, slap a 1GB cache on a drive and it wouldn't work any differently from a drive with a 2MB cache.

I can't find a link that says the Seagate SATA-II is fully-compatible with the G5, but I don't see why it wouldn't be. It may be prudent to check and make sure that the drive does NOT use Spread Spectrum Clocking (or at least has a way to disable it via jumpers), as that is known to cause problems in the G5. The Western Digital 400GB uses SSC, and requires software running under Windows to turn it off -- something useless to a Mac users.
 
this is a response i got from seagate support... "The G5 Doesn’t support SATA II, so therefore the Drive
must have the SSC turned off, and in some cases, be jumpered down to 1.5
Gb/sec.
After this is done, then the drive functions normally."
 
Mabeysk said:
this is a response i got from seagate support... "The G5 Doesn’t support SATA II, so therefore the Drive
must have the SSC turned off, and in some cases, be jumpered down to 1.5
Gb/sec.
After this is done, then the drive functions normally."
Click to expand...

This is true if using the internal SATA controller. If you purchase a PCI SATA-II controller that stipulation would be moot.
 
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