The G4 has been upgraded...

[Jay]

Hi everyone!

I decided to go with the 1ghz processor and the radeon9000pro mac edition video card.  I also bought Panther.

Processor and video card came in before panther so i put them in right away because i just couldnt wait anymore!  Installation was a breeze.  The only thing I have ever done in my computer before was install more RAM.  This was just as easy.  Turned on my computer and checked System Profiler...  Everything showed up correctly.

Panther came in the mail a couple days later.  I took out the new Radeon card and put my old one in for the installation of Panther.  I figured it was a smart thing to do because of them not playing nice together.  Tried to install Panther, it wouldnt install...  Tried again...  Wouldnt install.  Did it a couple more time and it wouldnt work.

Booted from the Panther CD, ran the disk utility and it said there were errors on my installation drive.  Tried to fix a few times, and it wouldnt work...  Solution says to erase hard drive and start over...  Booted back into Jag, salvaged everything i needed, and reformatted...

Installed Panther no problem after that,  Updated it via software update to 10.3.2, put my new video card back in..  Viola!  It works beautifully

Just wanted to say thanks to everyone that helped in my other posts about upgrading.  Next thing I am going to buy is a new HD  Is there a difference between mac and PC hard drive.  Like, could I run to Best Buy and grab any hard drive from there and plug it in?  Or does it have to be a special Mac drive?

Thanks everyone!  Happy New Year!
-Jay

[pendragon]

Good story Jay, thanks for posting it. For sure many will benefit from it.

About the only 2¢ I have to add, is to suggest you Repair Permissions, if you have not already, and that you run DiskWarrior just to ensure there are no lingering directory errors.

Ah, success!

Harv

[george]

Hi Jay, I'm more of a learner I have a G4 yet I fitted as a slave (with advice from TS gurus) a Maxtor 40gb ATA from my PC and it works a treat.
Were I you I'd wait to get the advice that can be depended on from those that know (on TS) and as sure as fate they will be along shortly.
Good luck
George
Happy Noo Year

[kelly]

Yes. Any PC Hard Drive will work in a mac.

Many good deals to be found.

http://dealmac.com/sections/storage.html

Adding a 2nd IDE hard drive

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE/add_2nd_dri...rive/index.html

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/IDE.html#drives

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/

[kbeartx]

What Kelly said...and a bit more:

[just to add my $.02 of clarification], there are no Mac IDE drives or Peasea IDE drives; an IDE drive is an IDE drive is an IDE drive.

IDE drives do vary in certain performance characteristics, so generally speaking you'll want one that is faster than one that is slower, and a larger buffer is preferable to a smaller buffer.  

But a drive's effective speed does not always correlate directly with its rotational speed, although when comparing drives from the same manufacturer this is generally true.

Drive electronics are not all created equal, and I have personally experienced an IBM 5400 RPM drive that is as fast or faster at transferring data (reading or writing) than a 7200 RPM Maxtor.

 - kbeartx

[Bernie]

"an IDE drive is an IDE drive is an IDE drive. "
Correcto mundo!    Anyone got a spare UDMA/IDE ATA Drive  FS?  anyspeed will do. Yes, It's for a older mac ready for donation. Really.

[Paddy]

Further to the drive question - look at the warranty! Many "consumer" drives these days have only a 1-year warranty, instead of the 3 years drives had in the very recent past. So, my advice - go for one of the 7200 RPM, 8MB cache drives from Western Digital. Fast, quiet, and a 3 year warranty. Look for "Special Edition" Caviar drives.

Like this:

http://www.z-buy.com/product.asp?item=HD-WD1200JG - 120GB drive for $93 including shipping (less than I paid on sale a while ago!!)

Check on http://pricewatch.com - click on storage/Hard drives, then search by brand with the search term "Special Edition". NewEgg and others have the 80GB drive for around $73.

[Jay]

Hey Harv,
The first thing I did before check the disk for errors was check for permission errors and corrected them...  After that when I checked for disk errors, there was apparently some major errors that could not be fixed.

Good thing I didnt have too many things on that hard.  Most of my major stuff is on my external, so doing a reformat and complete reinstall wasn't too much of a problem.

As for everyone else's posts about hard drives, I am going to start looking into a new one in the near future...  I need to cut down my spending for a bit...  Being broke after I got back from Europe and having to charge most of my Christmas gifts is gonna set me back for a bit   Not too bad though  

Thanks for the posts!

-Jay

[Stef]

Eeh Hi Jay!

I changed my hard drive in my B&W G3 and I found out that the IDE/ATA 100 bus, ehh, well, whatever!!, would not support harddrives over 120 Gig's... So I installed a 120 Gig hard-one, I mean, the difference in prices between 80 and 120? Pff... But I dont know if the ATA/IDE system-thing in your G4 is different, it could be it supports more, but still....

Greetz & a Happy New Year!  Stef

[kelly]

Stef. Hello. Welcome to the Forum.

Yes. That machine would have trouble with larger than 120 GB Drives.

See Mayo's Thread for more details.

http://www.techsurvivors.net/forums/index....t=ST&f=1&t=4155