G4 MDD additional internal hard drive

[2socks]

I am looking to add a second internal hard drive (250gb) to my G4 MDD 2003 mac but i am unsure about whether I can use any drive or I need a specific drive compatible with macs.
To my knowledge the drive must be 3.5" ide 7200 rpm ata/100 some guidance would be gratefully recieved.
I did look at a mac upgrade store and the drive they said was compatible was a IBM (Hitachi) Deskstar but i've heard they are liable to break and want an alternative option

 

[Spawn_Dooley]

Hi 2socks, AFAIK most drives that fit the above specs or the specs of your G4s internal HD would be fine and most probably will need formatting when you fit it to your Mac ... you don't have to go with the IBM as that's probably the only drive they have on offer but by all means just ensure the specs match.

When you buy the drive it may be factory formatted NTFS but you would just reformat it when you install it.

Standard Hard Drive: 80 GB (7200 RPM) Int. HD Interface: Ultra ATA/100*
Details: Can officially support four internal hard drives -- two Ultra ATA/100 (ATA-6) and two Ultra ATA/66 (ATA-5) -- drives larger than 128 GB are supported. By default, a single Ultra ATA/100 drive is installed.

It also could be configured with up to four 10,000 RPM Ultra160 SCSI drives at the time of purchase (SCSI PCI card required), or a combination of ATA and SCSI drives (four total).

Here are a couple of links:

Drive Compatibility Database


Formatting & Partitioning a Hard Drive in OS X - Tiger

You didn't stipulate which OS version you have installed so if you don't use Tiger, oops!



 

[2socks]

Thanks a lot, I'm using tiger so there's no problem

 

[dave 47]

http://lowendmac.com/ppc/gigag4.html
this may be too late or your model will recognize larger hd's
Scroll down to the bottom there is a caution about HD size. I just put a 160 in one of my silver G4's and it only recognized 128 of the 160.