Good Afternoon gang.
I need some expert technical advice so here I come again,
I am having a recurrence of a previous problem on my computer so rather than trying another bandaid I have decided to do a reformat and clean install of the OS.
Since I will have to reinstall everything I have decided to add another Larger internal HD.
I'm considering the 160GB Western Digital Caviar SE ATA 8MB Cache 7200 rpm. My Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver) has the Ultra ATA/66 hard drive bus. Will the aforementioned HD work if it is Fast 7200 RPM spindle speed and EIDE (Ultra ATA/100)
I beleive I read somewhere the 2001 G4 Quicksilver would only acknowledge up to 120 MB in a HD, hence the 160

Thanks in advance for your assistance

choker

Big hard drives are a crap shoot on the QS's. Stick with a 120 G drive. I have seen problems with drives over 128G on those machines. It will only recognize 128 of the 160, but it's not a good way to run.

I have seen where the big drives cause no problem, and some even format out to the full size, but I have also seen major data loss on some that only format to 128, so I recommend sticking with a 120.

Don't get a WD POS either, get a Seagate.

Good Afternoon gang.
I need some expert technical advice so here I come again,
I am having a recurrence of a previous problem on my computer so rather than trying another bandaid I have decided to do a reformat and clean install of the OS.
Since I will have to reinstall everything I have decided to add another Larger internal HD.
I'm considering the 160GB Western Digital Caviar SE ATA 8MB Cache 7200 rpm. My Power Mac G4 (QuickSilver) has the Ultra ATA/66 hard drive bus. Will the aforementioned HD work if it is Fast 7200 RPM spindle speed and EIDE (Ultra ATA/100)
I beleive I read somewhere the 2001 G4 Quicksilver would only acknowledge up to 120 MB in a HD, hence the 160

Thanks in advance for your assistance

choker

Thanks Reboot, I'll pay attention. Will the ATA100 work or do I have to find an ATA66?

I forgot to mention that. ATA 100 or 133 will work fine on ATA 66, it will jst work at ATA 66 speed. You'd have to really saturate the HD bus to see any real world difference in speed between 100 and 66.

Thanks

Just a quick question Reboot.
OWC replied to an online inquiry about that 160 GB drive with the suggestion that I buy a controller card to upgrade the G4 to be able to read larger drives. They suggested one they sell of course but I got their message AFTER I ordered a Seagate 120 gb from someone else.
Would that have worked and is it something to consider down the road?

choker

The Seagate 120 will serve you well. I had two in my G4 AGP Graphics which are still going strong - one is still my boot drive for my Mini + MiniStack. The other is waiting for me to buy it an enclosure so I can continue using it. An extra controller would be overkill for your machine at this late date.

I wasn't aware that adding a new controller would work.
When Reboot made the point to stay in the 128gb or under that's what I did. I'm still curious if OWC was just hustling me (not likely from all I've heard) or if that was really an option.
I might have popped for the controller just to have the extra real estate but they did not reply until AFTER I ordered the Seagate.

Still curious if I was being hustled!

choker

Sorry about that chief. I didn't realize you wanted to pump it up that much. A new controller would work fine, but like MacBozo said it's not really worth putting that into a machine that old IMO is why I didn't mention one.

If you plan on keeping it for a long time and really need the space, don't open the HD you get, send it back, maybe for a small restock charge, and get a controller card. If you want to go that way get a SATA controller, SATA is the current standard for new machine HD's as opposed to ATA in the older models. Make sure it's a controller for PCI, not PCI-E, X, Express etc, just plain PCI.

Possibly if you get in touch with the people you bought the drive from, if you tell them what happened and buy a bigger drive from them, they may take the other one back without a restock fee and only make you pay to ship it back.

I'd recommend a Sonnet card BTW.