any mac experts out there?

starving_artist

I have a G4 power mac with a 20 gb hard drive and need more space. Can someone advise me on the different options - internal, external, portable etc.? Also the difference between ATA/ultra ATA/SCSI etc.
Thanks!

moomintroll_3

If you're using a G4 powermac it'll take normal-sized 3.5" disks. Its very simple to upgrade the HD in the mac, just need to unclip the side and take the ribbon off the disk that goes to the motherboard and unscrew. Screw the new one back in and start from your install CD (hold C down on boot). The installer will give you the ability to run disk utility from where you can partition and format the new disk.

If you don't want to lose any data then the best thing for you to do is buy a firewire disk and clone your existing HD to that (I recommend Super-Duper, makes the whole thing completely painless). Install the new internal HD and format as above then boot from the firewire disk and use Super-Duper to clone that to the new internal HD. Reboot and use as normal enjoying the extra drive space! ;-)

It depends on the age of the powermac as to what disk size it will take - the older ones will only use 127GB of any disk you put in as they can't see more than that. I bought an 80GB disk for system and applications and used an old 80gigger from a PC to store my music and photos on, 160GB in total. The powermac will almost certainly have an ATA33 or 66 bus (again, depending on age - the MDD powermacs had ATA133 and can see disks larger than 127GB).

That's what I did when I upgraded mine anyway...