Many thanks for the responses on the first drive question. I bought a Maxtor 250 gig (for $99!) at Futureshop, plugged'er into the usb box, plugged it in and presto!

Questions.

USB is not that quick, is it? I'm getting throughput of 30mgs/minute. Kind of slow. I thought it was supposed to be quick, as in scsi or firewire quick?

Since I want to copy over data from my internal drives (10 gig master, 160 slave) to my 250 and not spend 2 or 3 days, I installed it into the the drive bay under the cdrw. The drive came up, but only 1 of the paritions (there were 3 at ?77gigs) came up, and with disk utility, it only showed a 128 gig hard drive.

I think I saw something, somewhere about non-recognition of drives over x size. Is this the problem?

Tanks,

SweetDoug

A good reference on all of this type of issue would be greatly appreciated!

sounds about right
the 128 gig cap

Many thanks for the responses on the first drive question. I bought a Maxtor 250 gig (for $99!) at Futureshop, plugged'er into the usb box, plugged it in and presto!

Questions.

USB is not that quick, is it? I'm getting throughput of 30mgs/minute. Kind of slow. I thought it was supposed to be quick, as in scsi or firewire quick?

Since I want to copy over data from my internal drives (10 gig master, 160 slave) to my 250 and not spend 2 or 3 days, I installed it into the the drive bay under the cdrw. The drive came up, but only 1 of the paritions (there were 3 at ?77gigs) came up, and with disk utility, it only showed a 128 gig hard drive.

I think I saw something, somewhere about non-recognition of drives over x size. Is this the problem?

Tanks,

SweetDoug

A good reference on all of this type of issue would be greatly appreciated!

First of all, you really should tell us what sort of system you have.
Second, given the relative age of your system (pre-2002 from what I can make out), it's unlikely that your system supports USB 2.0 which is much faster than USB 1.1 which is what your system probably has.
Third, yes, machines before early 2002, do not recognize more than 128 gigs.

Get a Firewire case and be happy

Since you have a 160GB in there already, your system must be capable of seeing drives larger than 128GB. Problem is, the bus the optical drive uses, does not. If you really need the 10GB, put it under the optical drive and put the 250GB on the same bus as the 160GB. Downside is, if the 10GB is your boot drive, you are putting it on a slower bus. Not great. Also, Apple doesn't recommend putting HD's under the optical drive. I have tons of customers that do it but we have found drives fail more often when installed there.

Also, Apple doesn't recommend putting HD's under the optical drive. I have tons of customers that do it but we have found drives fail more often when installed there.

Is it really a common occurance? Or just occasional.
I'd like to put an old 40gig there and store the stuff I don't access too much.
Would it be a good idea to back it all up first? I probably should anyway but just don't want to have to go on any salvage missions yet.

Cheers

Backing up is never a bad idea :D

Like I said, we see tons of systems come in here with drives installed up there.
I can't say 100% that the ones that failed becuase they were installed there but it is not recomended by Apple.

My 2c.
G4 dual 500
I have had 3 HD in my machine since almost day 1. Two of them nested in the main drive sled and on the main buss. The third under the optical drive in the mini bay.
I have had multiple failures of Maxtor and WD, in the main bay but never in the bay under the Optical drive.

FYI, I use the bay under the Optical drive for my non dayily stuff. Storage light backups. etc...

My 2c... Stick one there and use it for backups or storage but not as a main startup.



Chris