- #MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT MAC OS X#
- #MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT INSTALL#
- #MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT SERIAL#
- #MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT DRIVERS#
- #MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT UPGRADE#
(Ultra ATA speeds are measured in mega bytes per second, USB and FireWire are measured in mega bits per second. You have to move to Ultra ATA 66 before you find a good match for today’s 7200 rpm hard drives. The Blue & White G3 and Yikes G4 have a 33 MBps IDE bus, which is twice as fast – but still slower than all but the cheapest hard drives you’ll find. If you’ve got a Beige G3, the IDE bus runs at 16.7 MBps, and that’s a significant bottleneck for any modern hard drive. The older the Mac, the slower the IDE bus. There are two reasons for this: support for big drives and better performance. PCI IDE CardsĪdd-in cards are not an option with iMacs, and using a PC Card with an external drive kind of defeats the whole point of the PowerBook, but they can be a good choice for desktop systems. (For more information, see Choose FireWire 800 over USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 for Best Throughput.) 2. FireWire 800 will let them run flat out, but you do a pay a higher price for FW 800 enclosures. USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 are fast, but today’s 7200 rpm drives are even faster. In terms of performance, if your Mac has FireWire 800 or you may someday own a Mac with FireWire 800, consider an enclosure with FireWire 800 support. If you create a Windows partition, it’ll be that much easier to move big files between your Mac and a Windows PC. In terms of flexibility, we suggest you consider an enclosure with both FireWire and USB 2.0 support. We’ve noticed that some drives really heat up the smaller enclosures. If you’re looking at a 7200 rpm drive, cooling might also be an issue. The key is buying one that has big drive support.Īlmost any enclosure released in the past year or two should be just fine, but older ones may not support big drives, so be sure to check before buying something on close-out. If you have a HARMONi card that’s had this issue, be aware that updating to OS X 10.4.7 or newer should fix it.Įxternal FireWire enclosures range from cheap (under US$30) to awesome (many newer ones designed to complement the Mac mini even include USB 2.0 and FireWire 400 hubs, and prices start at about US$100).
This problem was fixed in version 10.4.7 (if not earlier). The FireWire port would tie up 100% of CPU resources.
UPDATE: The Sonnet HARMONi card was incompatible with early versions of Mac OS X 10.4 Tiger. Beige G3 Power Macs don’t have built-in FireWire support, but you can add a FireWire PCI card inexpensively.
#MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT UPGRADE#
FireWire EnclosuresįireWire drives are not an option for tray-loading iMacs, unless you have Sonnet’s HARMONi G3 upgrade card, which provides a 600 MHz CPU and FireWire for US$300.
#MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT DRIVERS#
The Intech drivers are the only practical solution for older PowerBooks. This is only now becoming an issue for PowerBooks, as the first 160 GB laptop hard drives have only recently begun shipping.
#MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT SERIAL#
For the fourth, see Is Serial ATA a Viable Alternative to Ultra ATA and FireWire? This article examines three: Intech’s drivers, third-party IDE PCI cards, and external FireWire enclosures. There are four ways you can use a drive over 128 GB in older Macs and access their full capacity. 3 Options for Using Big Drives in Macs Never Designed to Support Them All Titanium PowerBook G4 models with DVI video and all 15″ and 17″ Aluminum PowerBooks support big drives. Neither do the first Titanium PowerBook G4 models (the ones with VGA output), although TiBooks with DVI output do.īig drives are only supported under OS X 10.2 Jaguar and later in iMac G4s, eMacs, 2001 Quicksilver G4s,* 2002 Quicksilvers, and all later desktop Macs. On the notebook side, no G3 PowerBooks or iBooks support big drives. Macs that don’t include big drive support include tray-loading iMacs, slot-loading iMacs, beige G3s, blue & white G3s, Yikes! G4s, Sawtooth (a.k.a. This is also an issue with external FireWire and USB enclosures: Although the FireWire and USB specifications don’t limit drive size, not all of the bridge chips used in external enclosures support big drives. Big drives need 48-bit addressing, and almost all Macs built before 2002 don’t have built-in support for it. Older IDE specifications made no provision for what have since come to be called “big drives” – those with over 128 GB of storage space.
#MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT INSTALL#
If you simply install a big drive in your older Mac, it’s only going to see it as a 128 GB drive.
#MAC POWERBOOK G4 HARD DRIVE REPLACEMENT MAC OS X#
You must also be using Mac OS X 10.2 or later, as earlier versions of the Mac OS do not support big drives on the built-in IDE bus. The long answer: Yes, you can, but you may not be able to use more than 128 GB without some third-party assistance. Can I put a 160 GB or larger IDE hard drive in my iMac, eMac, Power Mac, iBook, or PowerBook?
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