Member Avatar for blaine101675

Hello all.

I own a G4 with a 10 gig hard drive, and just got a 290 gig hard drive for iTunes. Unfortuately, I opted to go the external harddrive route via firewire and it freezes up ALL THE TIME. I can't enjoy my music like this, so I figured I would mount it in my Mac and it will perform more smoothly, right?

I've been told it is quite a simple process. Just open the side door and mount a new hard drive directly on top of the existing hard drive. No attachments necessary other than the mounting screws.

First of all, am I in the ballpark?

Second, where do I find the mounting screws?

Third, any precautions I should be aware of when mounting a new HD?

Can anyone help me here?

Thanks in advance,

Blaine :-|

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by Perigee
Member Avatar for kc0arf

Hello Blaine,

It might not be that easy. It depends on how the firewire interfaced with the hard drive inside the hard drive's box. If it is IDE, you may have a chance. If it is SATA, then maybe not.

You will need to tell us a little but more about which PowerMac G4 you have, and what the interface of the hard drive is.

Christian

Member Avatar for blaine101675

Hello Christian.

Thanks for replying. Here are the specs for my G4

Machine Model: Power Mac G4 (AGP graphics)
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (2.9)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 400 MHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 1 MB
Memory: 768 MB
Bus Speed: 100 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.2.8f1

Here are the specs for my hard drive (in my mac)

QUANTUM FIREBALLP LM10.2:

Capacity: 9.57 GB
Model: QUANTUM FIREBALLP LM10.2
Revision: A35.0700
Serial Number: 882006563827
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes

Macintosh HD:

Capacity: 9.57 GB
Available: 2.39 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: Journaled HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s8

These are the only specs I can find on the external HD:

Format: Macintosh PC Exchange (MS-DOS)
It is encased in a Venus DS-3 dock.

Did this help?

Member Avatar for Perigee

did you get this problem figured out? it is fairly simple, so long as you have an IDE ATA hard drive...you need to set the drive you pulled from the firewire case to slave (make sure the boot drive is set to master, not cable select), then attach it to the same bus that the boot drive is attached to...also, you may need to reformat it if OS 9 does not recognize it...I suggest you boot to a system CD if you have one if you need to format the drive...it's not necesarry, but there is far less chance of a crash...good luck

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