New HDD For Powermac G4

[maximusimo]

HI,

i have a simple question in relation to getting a new hard drive for my Powermac. My manual tells me

"... my computer provides support for the following types of internal storage devices:

Ultra ATA/100 devices (in rear bay only)
Ultra ATA/66 devices
Ultra ATA devices
ATA devices, including ATA, ATA-2, ATA-3, up to ATA-6 devices.
And then on about SCSi devices...."

Now my two rear bays already have ATA/100 devices in them. What i want to know is are Ultra ATA/100 disks backward compatible and will they work in my front bays? Even suggestions of type to get would be good although will prob get Seagate anyway as my secondary drive is a Seagate and very pleased with it. I want to get as large a capacity as i can as current 160GB is running out of space

All help is greatly appreciated, thanks in advance

 

[jmgalvin]

The rear bays support ata 100. The front ones are ata 66 only. You should not put the 100 device in the 66 bay.





Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4

 

[maximusimo]

Yeah thats why i was asking if the 100 are backward compatible?

 

[jmgalvin]

I was told by the folks at Other World Computing, where I buy most of my mac add ons that a 100 device would not work in a 66 bay. That's why I said no in the earlier post.

If you need storage, you're not going to notice that much difference between 66 and 100, so you could buy a 66 and drop it into a front bay. Here's a link to where I get mine

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/3.5-IDE-ATA

You could also buy an outboard firewire drive. All my outboard drives are firewire 400 and I don't notice any great performance hit when using them. The good thing about outboard drives is that you can just plug them into another machine and have all your data ready.

Using OSX 10.3.9 on a G4