New Internal Drive for G5

November 23, 2005 11:39 AM

My happy G5 needs disk space, and I've found a good price on an internal 320gb drive.. Question: Does Ultra ATA100 play well with a standard build dual 2.7ghz G5? i.e. - can I toss it in and expect everything to work fine, without slowing anything down?

"Western Digital Caviar SE WD3200JB 320GB 7200 RPM IDE Ultra ATA100 Hard Drive - OEM" is the model, price is $122.49 w/ shipping, link is http://www.chiefvalue.com/app/productdetails.asp?linkid=119&item=22-144-392

posted by icetaco to Computers & Internet (8 answers total)

for any flavor G5 (imac or tower) you will need a SATA drive.
posted by ShawnString at 11:46 AM on November 23, 2005

No, you need a serial ATA drive, unless you want to use some workarounds. If you're purchasing a new drive, just buy a SATA.
posted by letitrain at 11:47 AM on November 23, 2005

Response by poster: Thanks, any recommendations on an affordable/reliable 300-400gb SATA drive?
posted by icetaco at 11:55 AM on November 23, 2005

Response by poster: Ok, went with 300GB Maxtor DiamondMax 10 7200RPM SATA HD, guaranteed to work with G5. Thanks all.
posted by icetaco at 12:08 PM on November 23, 2005

You can install this new drive as a second one with no additional cabling needed. You may however need to take a trip to the Apple store to get the little "bumpers" that allow it to slide in to the internal drive slot.
posted by omnidrew at 1:19 PM on November 23, 2005

the little "bumper" screws are included in the mchine...check on the side if the "wall" between the optical drive and hard drive compartments.
posted by ShawnString at 1:21 PM on November 23, 2005

If the PATA drive were an especially good deal, couldn't you also just chuck it into a cheap USB or Firewire enclosure?
posted by ROU_Xenophobe at 2:58 PM on November 23, 2005

(to ShawnString) doh! thanks.
posted by omnidrew at 8:54 AM on November 24, 2005