Help me turn a G4 into a media server

October 17, 2007 1:00 AM

How can I use large ide drives (200GB+) in old powermac G4?

I've searched for answers on this (see http://ask.metafilter.com/21793/Mac-Migration for instance) but I'm not sure I understand.

According to the interweb old powermac g4s will only see a maximum of 128GB of a drive. There are ways round this according to my research (drivers and hardware), but I'm confused as some information is contradictory.

I need to add a 200GB as a secondary drive and I will be using Tiger or at least Panther on the G4. I think that means the computer will see the extra space, it's just the original operating system of G4s (10.2?) wouldn't see it?

Does it make a difference that this 'large drive' is not going to be my boot drive, it's in there to act as a media server.

posted by sdevans to computers & internet (4 comments total)

Can anyone who knows the answer also say whether using Linux will allow me to use large IDE drives? I also have a G4 tower. Like sdevans, I'm planning to use a smaller drive for the boot volume, but I'd rather not buy large drives and then find out I can't use them.

I think the limit is around 137GB.
posted by oaf at 6:24 AM on October 17, 2007

You need to add an IDE controller that supports larger drives. I got mine from OWC and had no trouble with it.
posted by sudama at 7:38 AM on October 17, 2007

It's a hardware limitation, that the OS does not work around. The real solution is to get a PCI IDE card and plug the drive into that. At this point, unless you already have the larger drive, I would recommend skipping IDE and going straight to SATA.

Another hardware solution is to get a firewire enclosure, and use it as an external drive.

However, there is a software solution. I've been using the ATA Hi-Cap driver for a couple of years with no problems. You do have to partition the drive into a 128MB partition and a leftover partition, though.
posted by notbuddha at 7:50 AM on October 17, 2007

It's a hardware limitation, that the OS does not work around.

So it should work fine under Linux, then, since I'm not booting from it.
posted by oaf at 8:05 AM on October 17, 2007