I think I've overdone it.

Can a G4 power 5 or 6 hard drives?
I have 4 hard drives in it now, with room for two or three more.
Can I cram in a bigger power supply?


Here's the skinny:
I bought a used first year Quicksilver last year that had 1.4 GHz G4 & Ti4 video BTO upgrades. I maxed the RAM to 1.5 GBs and added hard drives to make it a video editing machine.
It has a 20 GB OS hard drive on the original ATA/66 bus, and a Superdrive but empty Zip slot on the other ATA bus.

This week I added a third large hard drive to the SIIG PCI/ATA card - 200, 200 & 180 GBs - with visions of turning the G4 into a home media server. But when I installed it and booted up, the keyboard and mouse - which were plugged into the 20in alum. display - wouldn't work. Plugging the mouse directly into the machine got the mouse to light up and work, but even that couldn't get the keyboard working.

It gets a little warm in there and I'm worried about how tightly packed the piggie-backed drives end up on the bunk-bed floor racks.
I reconfigured the internal power leads and now it boots (with a turbine wind-up sound) AND runs the keyboard and mouse through the screen - but I gotta believe I'm sending this power supply to an early grave.

I'll post the drive and power layouts if it makes a difference.

I'd take some of the additional harddrives external. That way you save on the heat/power issues that may occur.

Plus nothing looks more high tech than a stack of external drives :)

I'm with Roland on this...I've got three HDs in my G4 and i don't think that it's safe to put more in .

Check these out http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=31389&Sku=ULT31310 I picked one up yesterday. the reviews were pretty good and the ones they have are newer than the one listed. It does have an on/off switch. The case seems a little cheap until you get a drive into it. It took me about 5 minutes to get the drive in it, and hook it up. It does feel like it is going to break when you are taking it appart, but it did not. Plugged it in, plugged it into my Mac and it worked fine. I think it can take up to a 300 gig drive.

Gunner.

Yes, I could buy separate cases for each drive to be mounted externally with more fans, but I would like a more elegant solution, especially when this box has lots of room and connections to spare. Heat doesn't seem to be an issue so far, but I still wonder if there is enough airflow to cool six drives packed in the bottom of the case.

There are postings in the Apple forums of people with no problems with four drives and slots full of cards.

I'm hoping to simply retrofit a larger power supply, perhaps from a build-it-yourself place, but don't know how to calculate needed power. Is it as simple as adding up watts or amps?

Don't know if I could build this, but I'd like to.

Project Udat (http://www.mashie.org/casemods/udat1.html)

A small terabyte enclosure that can run alone on the network.

Check these out http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=31389&Sku=ULT31310 I picked one up yesterday.

Gunner,

Please can you tell me if the power supply is multi-voltage? I can't find any info at Tiger Direct or on the ULTRA site. I'm in the UK and wonder if that enclosure would work over here (240v).

Cheers
Nas

Don't know if I could build this, but I'd like to.

Project Udat (http://www.mashie.org/casemods/udat1.html)

A small terabyte enclosure that can run alone on the network.
Now that's what I call storage. I'd like to get a big rack where I can just swap HD's in and out.
Anybody seen something like this around?

http://i4.ebayimg.com/02/i/02/c0/1f/b9_1_b.JPG

I know you can get the racks, but never know where you can get the enclosures for multiple drives.
I used to think burning to DVD would solve me problems--and I don't mind the time it takes to burn a disc, but it's way slower to navigate around data DVD's than a HD.

I've found the five drive unit here locally:

Vision drive unit (http://www.tigerdirect.ca/applications/SearchTools/item-details.asp?EdpNo=705424)

but the raid has to be added. And we would definitely have to dig up a slick case like they used!

"Gunner,

Please can you tell me if the power supply is multi-voltage? I can't find any info at Tiger Direct or on the ULTRA site. I'm in the UK and wonder if that enclosure would work over here (240v).

Cheers"


Bossnas,

I'm not sure if this would work on 240 or not. The power supply is external, if that makes a difference. You may be able to purchase a power supply there, that would supply the appropite amount of juice to the enclosure.

Does that help?

Gunner.

I'm not sure if this would work on 240 or not. The power supply is external, if that makes a difference. You may be able to purchase a power supply there, that would supply the appropite amount of juice to the enclosure.


He needs the specs printed on the power supply. It should give an input voltage range such as "100 - 240 VAC" and a frequency range such as "50 - 60 Hz"

I think I've overdone it.

Can a G4 power 5 or 6 hard drives?
I have 4 hard drives in it now, with room for two or three more.
Can I cram in a bigger power supply?

With the 1.4 GHz processor, upgraded video card, 1 GB RAM and multiple hard drives you are definately pushing the boundaries of the stock power supply. The symptoms will be unexplained freezing, restarts and possibly failure to start. Unfortunately, Apple doesn't build its computers with standard ATX power supplies so you can't just buy an upgrade from your local computer shop. The Quicksilver requires a 27 volt input to the motherboard and that's not part of the ATX specification.

Thanks for the info Todd. I appreciate it.

Anyone know if it is possible to get a bigger P.S. for a QuickSilver?
Is this just not done on the Mac side, when PC users can choose up to 600 watts?

Not even OWC lists them for sale.

Here's another interesting product, and pretty unobtrusive. I wouldn't mind swapping S-ATA drives in and out of this thing... oh that sounded so wrong...
http://barefeats.com/hard43.html

Requires a PCI card adapter, but wicked speed compared to the competition.