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TICKET ARCHIVE -> adding 160 gb harddrive g4 quicksilver

remcknight - Jan 15, 2007 - 10:30 am

I am trying to add a western digital 160 gb hd to my g4 quicksilver 876 mhz/512mbram/40gb hd, and I understand that I need a ata 100 controller card. Do I simply add this card or does this card replace one that I have now. Obviously I am information challenged so a wider overview would be helpful as to what the best configuration would be i.e. I've heard of 'mirrored' harddrives etc. I realize this will take a good bit of effort so I appreciate any help tremendously.

bobw - Jan 16, 2007 - 9:32 am

Hi Rory

You would add an IDE/ATA PCI Controller card. It would go into one on the exisitng PCI slots in your machine. You would just be adding this and not replacing anything.

This is a good one;

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Sonne...nology/TAT133/

It will support any size drive.

If you want to mirror the drive to the old one, the easiest way would be to use SuperDuper;

http://www.shirt-pocket.com/SuperDup...scription.html

If you want to use Raid, post a separate question for that once you have the drive installed.

bobw
http://www.macosx.com

remcknight - Jan 18, 2007 - 9:43 am

Okay, I installed the hd and the adapter card and followed the formatting instructions; now when I start the machine I get an icon that alternated between the apple computer smiley-face and and a question mark. Then this disappears and things go as usual, maybe a bit slower. and now I have one big disc with nothing on it.
I guess I am just asking what is the best way for me to make the computer do things with this new hd in the same way as when there was only one. I don't edit movies, I type a lot, watch tv shows listen to music etc. Altogether I have my 40 gb drive full of stuff--hence the new disc.
Disc utility gives me three raid options, striped, mirrored and concatenated, but I am not sure which would be best for my computing habits.

bobw - Jan 18, 2007 - 11:22 am

Rory

Open the Startup Disk in System Preferences and select the drive that has OS X on it for your boot drive.
This should eliminate the question mark.

Now Boot from your OS X disc by holding the C key.

Then use Disk Utility to format the new drive as Extended.

If you have Panther (10.3), once you see the installer window, go up to the Installer Menu to Disk Utility.

If you have Tiger (10.4), go past the Language screen, then up to the Utility Menu to Disk Utility.

When done, quit Disk Utility.

You can then proceed to install OS X, or reboot normally and use SuperDuper to clone your original drive to the new one.

I'm not familiar with Raided drives, that why I said to post a separate question for that. But I believe both drives have to be the same size for Raid.

SuperDuper will do what you want if its a clone of your original drive.

bobw
http://www.macosx.com

remcknight - Jan 19, 2007 - 9:40 am

Okay, I got SuperDuper and everything seems to be working fine. I still get the qmark though when I start the machine. This is a minor thing but it's a little annoying. I tried selecting the original hd and the machine rejected my selection when I tried to restart--as if it's already starting from that disc.

bobw - Jan 19, 2007 - 9:48 am

Rory

Restart and hold the Option key. This will give you the choices of which drive to boot from. See if this helps.

bobw
http://www.macosx.com

remcknight - Jan 20, 2007 - 11:10 am

Thanks, the question mark is gone. I'm starting to experience some sytstem errors. Could this be because my 40 gb disc is completely full? Should I maybe replace it with another disc the same as the one I bought?

bobw - Jan 20, 2007 - 12:11 pm

Rory

yes, I would get a larger drive.

You need to keep 15% of free space on a system drive. Otherwise you'll get slow downs and could result in data corruption and loss.

bobw
http://www.macosx.com

remcknight - Jan 21, 2007 - 2:27 pm

Thanks, I got another disc and everything seems fine.