Upgrading DVD - Add SATA card & Drives -SIMPLE

I just thought I would pass on my successful upgrading and expansion of my Dual 2.0A G5. I'm not endorsing the following products - just want to identify what worked in my scenario.
I bought an internal Pioneer DVR-111D DVD burner (16X and Dual Layer capable) for under $50 new. I followed the owner's manual that came with the G5 for replacing your optical drive. The instructions are clear and straight forward. The only thing you must do first is pop out the disk tray on the new drive using the paper clip emergency eject hole (before you install the drive). Then lift up on the front plate/door to remove this plastic piece so that the tray will open and extend out of the bay without hitting the computer frame. Out with the old 4X and in with the New 16X/DL. Booted up, called up System Profile and there was my new drive. Burned a 4.17GB test disk at 16X and all worked A-OK. No drivers, no configuring, Notta. Just Plug and Play.
Next, I bought OWC's Serial ATA 2-Channel PCI controller card, also OWC's dual bay external SATA HD enclosure box and two Maxtor 300 GB SATA hard drives. At $110 per 300 GB internal drive price, I've decided to archive all my paying video projects to their own individual drives and store them. Between the drive and original tapes I'm covered and the price for storage only gets better.
Again I followed the G5 owner's manual for installing a PCI card. Here is the first snag to watch for IF your G5 has the PCI-X slots where Slots 2 & 3 are 64 bit, 100 MHz and Slot 4 is 64 bit, 133 MHz speed. This OWC SATA card was recognized in Sys Profile in Slot 4 but would not display the drives in the ATA Bus profile nor in Finder. I moved the card to Slot 3 and the 100 MHz speed was apparently more compatible. Sys Profile will identify the PCI Card as a SCSI type but don't let that throw you off. The ATA Bus Sys Profile recognizes two additional busses - one for each Maxtor drive ID'd as disk 2 and disk 3. Your DVD drive will also be listed as an ATA bus component.
The Maxtor internal drives I have come with two pair of jumper pins next to the cabling plugs. The drive arrived in a non-jumpered setting. You need to move the jumper over to the left pair to enable 1.5 Gb/s SATA transfer speeds. Its labeled J4 and also 1.5 Gb/s.
Lastly, this one bit me twice before I solved the mystery. I only had ONE drive show up in System Profile and on the Finder window initially. After much cable swapping, port swapping, rebooting, I went back INSIDE the dual bay enclosure to check cable connections. I noticed the data cable plug on the no-show drive was slightly askew due to other wiring pressing against it. I lined it back straight, powered everything up and that drive showed up now, BUT the other drive disappeared. Back in the box, yep, I bumped that ribbon cable plug on the other drive. Lined it back up and all works fine now. Watch out for these very "position sensitive" data cable plugs.
Summarizing: Even with the SATA card and dual external bay and the two new drives, there is NO configuring (other than giving a name to your new hard drives using Disk Utility). Truly PLUG & PLAY! The SATA card comes with a disk containing the instructions for setting up your 2 Channel card and dual drives in a RAID configuration. Very detailed. I'm not running RAIDs so I did not perform this very extensive procedure. Not sure if this would even be necessary once Disk Utility recognizes the new drives and DU has the ability to configure RAID drives much easier. Lastly, since I do a lot of video work and especially now in HD, larger drives are a necessity, BUT data speeds are also important with the high demands of realtime playback in FCP HD. I decided to go with the SATA bus speeds and drives rather than USB or Firewire drives to match the capabilities of my two internal SATA drives. If you plan to work in HD its probably a better way to go.
G5 Dual 2.0A / iBook G4 14" Mac OS X (10.4.7) 1.5GB ram/1.35TB SATA HDs/2x19"LCDs - 768MB ram/Airport, Sony Z1U, ADVC100

Kool, thanks

Similar Messages

G4 MDD supports SATA internal drives or ATA/IDE

hi all
I'm looking to add more internal hard drive power into my G4 MDD and was curious if it supports only ATA/IDE drives or can I add SATA internal drives? I was told it can handle larger than 120GB hard drives and will I need to get a fan to cool them down? Thanks, Web dude

you talk about putting larger hard drives on rear bays only
I looked over what I wrote and don't see where I said that. Can you clarify?
Maximum theorectical data transfer rates for ATA100 (aka ATA-6) are a little faster than ATA66) aka ATA-5) but only if the hard drive is fast enough to take advantage--most new ones are more than that at ATA133. One Wikipedia article I read says that, in the Windows world, ATA66 commonly has drive size limitations of 137GB due to the OS and drive controller limitations. I've not seen this in Macs. Nothing I've seen here or elsewhere says you can't put big drives in the front bay.
I personally like to keep the boot drive in the rear bay in case that drive is fast enough to take full advantage of the faster bus. As 2 x 250G is enough space for me today, I tend to use the front bays as temporary mounts when pulling data off drives from some of our older Macs. Those often end up being smaller, older drives between 10G and 120G.

KT4AV will not boot with SATA card installed and no SATA drive

I put a Promise brand SATA II card in a KT4AV motherboard. There is an IDE drive and a DVD drive hooked up to the IDE1 port on the motherboard. That IDE drive has Windows XP Pro SP2 loaded on it.
If I have a SATA drive plugged into the card, the machine works fine. If I remove the STAT drive and leave the card in, I cannot boot to Windows. If I remove the card, it works fine. The only time there is a problem is when the SATA card is plugged in and there is no drive on the SATA card.
As one possible solution, I tried to boot to a Windows CD to reload Windows. It will not even allow me to reload from the CD, it says there is a file missing from the CD. If the SATA drive is hooked up, it will work fine on the CD. Also, I tried multiple CDs and they all give the same message. Because it makes a difference whether the SATA drive is connected or not, I do not believe the CD is the problem.
I have tried looking on Promise's web site for a FAQ or an updated BIOS or for other information about this problem and I found nothing. I have e-mailed them and they did not reply yet.
There is no reason to think this is the fault of the motherboard, but I wanted to see if anyone had any ideas about this problem. Because of the symptoms, I believe it also cannot be the CPU, memory, PSU, video card, etc. Sorry if that makes this post off topic.

Quote from: HenryW on 16-March-07, 02:56:44
Have you tried to disable card in Device Manager when you don't use it? What is the model number of the card you are using?
It is a SATA 300 TX2, which means that it has two SATA ports and one IDE port. I have never used the IDE port, only one SATA.
I have never tried to disable it, but I could try, just to see what it did. It sure would be a lot more work to disable and enable it so that isn't a good long term solution. Among other things, it would mean that I would have to boot up in order to remove the SATA drive. Since it won't boot with the drive removed, it will require more planning.
Will post the results once I have tried. Still no reply from Promise :-(

Should I Get A PCI Sata Card For Internal Drives

I'm transferring Files from old G4 to a new G5 and it's taking forever. The sata drives seem to work slower. When I transfer the same way(Firewire)on my G4 it's much faster. Someone said to get a PCI sata card and hook up my internals to that instead of the factory connection. That it's faster that way. I'm going to have to burn to dvd and transfer that way, but it seems to defeat the purpose. Any suggestions are appreciated.
G5 Dual Core 2.0 with 2.5 GB and 2 250 Drives

Come to think of it, the last time I needed to transfer some media from my G4 to G5, the quickest and easiest way (mind you they are in separate rooms), was to pop out the G4 drive and use one of these cheap IDE USB adapters. Since the G5 is USB2, the process was pretty quick.
My guess about the G5 in target mode is there must be some kind of overhead, but the SATA is FAR and away faster than the FW connection between them, so a SATA card won't help.
Shane Ross and I are currently using "popsicle stick" internal RAIDs in our G5s. See this thread:
http://discussions.apple.com/click.jspa?searchID=-1&messageID=2162848
Patrick

Have Upgrade Graphic Card Driver, But Still Cannot Adjust Screen Brightness and Sleep Button Not Showing After Clean Installation of Windows 8.1

I have done clean installation of Windows 8.1 on my HP Pavilion G4.
Then I realize that I cannot put my computer on sleep mode and cannot adjust screen brightness.
I understand that those problems caused by the graphic card driver.
My computer is running on AMD Radeon HD 6400 series.
Thus, I manually search on internet and found a latest graphic card update on microsoft site that is claimed compatible on windows 8.1 (link: http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windows/apps/dn344644.aspx).
I've upgraded it into the latest one. I've check on Device Manager, the driver is running well.
But my problem did not solved!
Please give me the solution!

Hi,
How about go to Device Manager, then uninstall Graphic driver and restart your computer, system will install its build in graphic drver. You can have a try.
In addition, access to HKEY_CURRENT_USER\Software\Microsoft\Windows\CurrentVersion\Brightness and set its value to 100 for test.
Roger Lu
TechNet Community Support

CD/DVDs Not Mounting But Drive is Recognized / SCSI Card Not Seen

Apologies for this mess in advance, but I thought it was worth seeing if anyone had an idea of what to try on either of these two issues from a system software perspective before I start breaking the computer apart and tinkering with hardware.
My G4 is the 733 MHz model which first shipped with the SuperDrive. That SuperDrive died years ago and I replaced it with an HP DVD Writer 300n which worked fine up until some version update of 10.4 though I can't recall the specific version. In any case, now the drive will not mount any CD or DVD that I insert, commercially-pressed or otherwise. The eject key on the keyboard functions properly, the tray opens and closes without problem and when a disc is inserted the activity light goes on and the disc spins for a minute and all seems normal, but the disc never appears on the desktop nor in any Finder window. The drive is still recognized in the System Profiler and I've double-checked the CD/DVD settings under System Preferences to verify that nothing is set to ignore there. I suppose it's possible the laser suddenly went bad, but as I said, the symptoms showed up following an update (though it was a while ago and at the time I had no need for a optical drive on this computer so I didn't address it then).
The second issue I discovered when I attached an external optical drive via the SCSI port I hadn't used in many years. That drive wasn't recognized at all and when I looked in the System Profiler the SCSI card isn't listed under PCI Cards. Is there a generic SCSI card driver I might be missing under OS X or will I need to open up the computer and determine which card I actually have in there?
Any suggestions would be appreciated and hopefully I've provided enough information to make that possible.

Hi K Roth, and a warm welcome to the forums!
I find Optical drives fairly short lived myself, but on the Internal, you might try PatchBurn...
http://www.patchburn.de/
Do you have another Mac with Firewire and a good optical drive?
If so you can boot the Other Mac into Target mode...
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
Boot this G4 with the Option key held down, see if the Install Disc in the other Mac shows up as a boot choice.

Can I add a SATA optical drive to my G5?

I want to replace the optical drive on my G5 (PPC 1.6 GHz) with the latest dual-layer Pioneer DVR-115D (IDE) or 216 (SATA)
The 115D is not widely available any more, most shops only seem to have the 216.
Can I add this drive to my G5? I already have 2 SATA hard drives in place, so is it possible to add another SATA device? If so, how do I add a 3rd SATA cable and where would it plug into?
Thanks.

Hi Japamac and everyone else,
I'm a new Mac user and received a used G5 from a friend. I made a very stupid mistake and purchased the Pioneer Dvr-216 instead of the 116. So now I have a SATA burner with an IDE interface. Unfortunately, NewEgg won't refund this particular product.
So I've thought of two options:
1.) Turn it to an external burner and have two optical drives (although the original is about to crap out soon). But I'm not sure what enclosures are compatible. I've looked into the NexStar DX NST-530S2 but the tech rep said that they haven't tested that enclosure with the DVR 216.
2.) Try to find a SATA controller. But since I'm really new to Macs and this computer is slightly older, I'm not sure which controller to buy. It says on the side panel of the G5 that it has a PCI-X slot.
Any help/suggestions would be greatly greatly appreciated (I've spent the last three days researching, but I'm still not completely confident in what I've found)
Thanks.

Using SATA Boot Drive & Promise UATA Card

I recently decided to put an extra 2, 200 gb hard drives into my system using a PCI ATA Controller Card. The only problem I have doing this is that my SATA Boot drives won't boot. The system Bios keeps trying to boot from the PCI Hard drives. Is there anything I can do to fix this or am I pretty much SOL and should just buy a K8T800? Specs are listed below.
MSI K7N2D-ILSR
Athlon XP 2500
2x256 PC3200 CL 2.0
NVidia 5700 Ultra 128

your out of luck unless msi sort the bios out,which i dout will happen
its a shame as other older boards have multiple boot options,ie onboard raid or a card

Upgrading Video Card Driver

Hi there,
I want to upgrade my video card driver because my old one does not support some games I would like to play. I was just wandering which I should get, one that's cheap, but supports most games. Computer info:
Here's what it says in System Properties:
System:
Microsoft Windows XP
Home Edition
Version 2002
Server Pack 3
Dell Vostro 1500
Intel(R) Core(TM)2 Duo CPU
T5270 @ 1.40GHz
1.40 GHz, 1.99 GB of RAM
Help would be appreciated, thanks
popy2308

In general, laptops can not have their graphics cards upgraded and the ones that can were extremely expensive and large, and the upgrades that are available are expensive to get installed and not worth it unfortunately.
Crystal
Superuser
Forum Guidelines | Terms & Conditions | Community Guidelines | What is a Superuser?
*Remember to mark your questions solved and click the star to give kudos to show your thanks!*
While I used to be a Best Buy Employee, I no longer have any affiliation with Best Buy.
My opinions do not in any way shape or form represent Best Buy's Official decisions.

Sata Card for Dual 2.5 External Drives

Loking for a four port card that works with my G5 and have no idea what I need PCIX etc.
Looking to buy it here.
http://eshop.macsales.com/Search/Search.cfm?Criteria=SATA%20High%2DSpeed%20Contr oller%20Mac%20Cards&sort=a&pg=2
Thanks in advance, tried to search but could not find an answer.

Hi Michele
If you have the first generation of dual 2.5GHz G5s, you have PCI-X. If you have the later model, you have PCIe (PCI Express). You can check which you have by launching System Profiler (from the Apple menu - About This Mac - More Info).
Check the "machine model".
PowerMac 7,3 - early G5 - PCI-X
PowerMac 11.2 - late G5 - PCIe
MacGurus has more information on SATA card compatibility here.
I've used two SATA cards - the Seritek 1VE4 was okay, and supports external booting, but has problems with some Seagate drives. I'm now using a Lycom 4-port card, which supports port multiplication (so you can hook up to 5 drives per port with enclosures that support the feature).
Good luck!
Matt

Upgrade DVD Cannot Be Used As A Start Up Disc To Repair Drive

I tried to use the Upgrade DVD disc to repair the hard drive but a warning came up when restarting indicating that I could not upgrade because it could not find Tiger on my system. (Tiger is missing because Leopard is installed) I went to the menu to find disc utility and launched it. My external drive and the upgrade disc were the only discs showing. I then thought that I had to use my Tiger disc to repair the drive so I went to the Start Up disc file to restart from my hard drive as opposed to the upgrade disc but my hard drive was no longer showing. I restarted the computer holding down the eject button to eject the disc. The disc ejected but a blue folder showing a question mark showed up. (Shades of OS9). I hit the power button and restarted and the computer restarted ok. My hard drive did not need repairing, I was just trying to see if I could repair permissions and repair the disc with the Upgrade disc. Apparently this is a problem. Is anyone else experiencing this and If I do need to ever repair the drive, can I use my Tiger disc?

Oxford is the manufacturer of one of the chips used in firewire to IDE bridge boards as are found in external FW cases; specifically, the Oxford 911 chip. It isn't the only one out there, but it is regarded as the best in terms of speed and compatibility with Macs. Some macs refuse to boot from FW drives with other chips in the bridge board; others apparently aren't as picky. My eMac will boot from a non-Oxford chipset drive.
Since the Oxford 911 is better than the others, it is a selling point and is usually specified by vendors as being present if it is. If you want to know what you have in your box, you can look at the bridge board and see the chip maker's name stenciled on the chip. If it doesn't say Oxford, it isn't an Oxford.

Upgrade processor or graphic card

Hello there. I was wondering whether I could upgrade my processor and graphic card.
Here's my laptop model.
Product Name HP Pavilion 14-n208tx Notebook PC Product Number F7Q12PA Microprocessor 1.8 GHz Intel Core i7-4500U with Intel HD Graphics 4400 Microprocessor Cache 4 MB cache Memory 4 GB 1600 MHz DDR3L SDRAM (1 x 4 GB) Video Graphics NVIDIA GeForce GT 740M (2 GB DDR3 dedicated) Display 14" diagonal HD BrightView LED-backlit (1366 x 768) Hard Drive 1 TB 5400 rpm SATA Multimedia Drive SuperMulti DVD burner Network Card Integrated 10/100 BASE-T Ethernet LAN Wireless Connectivity 802.11b/g/n (1x1) and Bluetooth 4.0 combo Sound DTS Sound+ with 2 speakers Keyboard Full-size island-style Pointing Device Touchpad with multi-touch gesture support PC Card Slots 1 multi-format SD media card reader External Ports
2 USB 3.0
1 HDMI
1 RJ-45
1 headphone/microphone combo
Dimensions 34.7 x 23.9 x 2.25 cm Weight Starting at 2.03 kg Power 65 W AC power adapter
4-cell (41 WHr) Li-ion What's In The Box HP TrueVision HD Webcam (front-facing) with integrated dual array digital microphone
Can I upgrade my gpu from GT 740M to GT840M?

Hi
Manual: http://h10032.www1.hp.com/ctg/Manual/c04439608.pdf
Go through Page 22, motherboard is specific to a processor, the graphics system, the type of dedicated card, pre installed operating system. You cannot replace processor or graphics alone - they are integrated or soldered on to board.
Regards
Visruth
++Please click KUDOS / White thumb to say thanks
++Please click ACCEPT AS SOLUTION to help others, find this solution faster
**I'm a Volunteer, I do not work for HP**

New DV7T-How to add extra hard drive? (Resolved)

Hello:
I figured this out. The hard drive cover was very hard to unlock and I didn't want to break it so I thought it was more complicated than it really is. The laptop is very well made and engineered.
Thanks!

si1960mon wrote:
My hard drive is nearly full and I'd like to add an extra hard drive but I'm not sure what to get. I can't locate where to connect the data cable to PC board. Any thoughts. Thanks.
Hi,
Specs: http://h10025.www1.hp.com/ewfrf/wc/document?docname=c01077654&tmp_task=prodinfoCategory&cc=us&dlc=en...
There are only 2 SATA slots. One is for the hard drive and the other for an optical drive (DVD/CD-ROM..). There are also 2 PATA/IDE slots for PATA devices. There is also a PCIe x1 slot so you can use this slot to get this: http://www.span.com/product/SATA-3Gb-SATA2-PCIE1x21-PCI-Express-x1-Card-1x-SATA,-1x-5x-eSATA-support...
which is a PCIe x1 SATA card which gives you another SATA slot for a SATA device if the slot is still empty.
BTW: This section is for laptops.
Dv6-7000 /Full HD/Core i5-3360M/GF 650M/Corsair 8GB/Intel 7260AC/Samsung Pro 256GB
Testing - HP 15-p000
HP Touchpad provided by HP
Currently on Debian Wheeze
*Please, help other users with the same issue by marking your solved topics as "Accept as Solution"*

Can I add an SSD drive to an Omni 27?

Can I add an SSD drive to an Omni 27 (1200ev) or do I have to replace the original drive? Ideally I'd like to retain the 2TB hard drive and have at least the OS on the SSD. Kind Regards, Brad

Hello Serguey. I understand you'd like to add an SSD to your system.
Hard drives today use what is called a SATA connection. Normally, you could not add a hard drive to one of these connections. However, I believe you could add an expansion card to the slot which would give you more SATA connections. Here is a link which contains products which fit this description.
However, I have a feeling that this card would not work very well because this is an All-in-One unit and it has a very limited amount of space inside.
Is there a reason you wanted to add an extra SSD as opposed to upgrading your main hard drive to an SSD?
I am not sure of any way to power off the monitor with the computer on other than by adjusting your power plan's settings. This Microsoft article contains more information about power plans.
Let me know if this helps and have a great day!

Upgrading 12" Powerbook G4 hard drive & OS X 10.5--please help?

So, I’ve decided I want to venture into upgrading my Powerbook G4 hard drive, RAM, and OS. Currently I have:
512 RAM
1.5 Ghz
80 GB 5400 HD
Mac OS X 10.4.11
What I would like to upgrade to:
1.25GB RAM (max)
1.5 Ghz
160-320GB 5400 (7200 if possible) HD
Mac OS X 10.5
Now here comes my questions. The RAM upgrade is straightforward. The HD upgrade seems simple enough when using tutorials on ifixit.com. I am wondering though, does the HD need to be ATA-100 or could it be ATA-133? Are DMA, Ultra DMA, UDMA, DMA-100, ATA, ATA-100, IDE, and EIDE all the same thing and all compatible with the 12" powerbook G4?
Assuming the hard drive speed is 5400 and I have RAM maxed out, are there performance differences between say a 160GB 5400 HD and a 320GB 5400 HD? Would it be better just to get the biggest HD that is compatible with my PB?
Also, FRYS.COM has "retail hard drive kits" and "bare HDs" What’s the difference between the two?
Finally:
Once I figure out which HD I want, I will have new: Hard Drive, RAM, and a Mac OS X 10.5 DVD Purchased from an Apple Store. I will install the RAM. Now I will be left with a HD and OSX 10.5 DVD...how do I get the new OS on the new HD?

The hard drive needs to be a parallel ATA 2.5" notebook hard drive. ATA-100 or ATA-133 or the others you listed don't matter. You cannot use a serial ATA or SATA hard drive, that's important. Here are two online stores and their parallel ATA drives available: http://www.newegg.com/Product/ProductList.aspx?Submit=ENE&N=2010150380%201035907 889&name=ATA-6 and http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/2.5-Notebook/ (Click on 2.5" ATA laptop drives).
You'll note there aren't any 7200rpm drives listed, as they aren't made anymore for the parallel ATA interface. Choose whatever size works for you, and if increasing the size, make sure you have capacity to backup the new, larger hard drive, as you fill it up.
You only need the bare hard drive. There can be a difference between a retail boxed version versus OEM, as the warranty can be different, but that's about it.
After you install the hard drive, you insert the first OS X disk in the system, boot holding the C key down (so the system boots from the disk), choose Disk Utility from the menu bar, and partition the drive. Once done, you can do the OS X installation. If you don't hold the C key down and the system wants to install OS X, after you tell it what language you want, as soon as a menu bar appears, then you can run Disk Utility.

Upgrading DVD - Add SATA card & Drives -SIMPLE

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for