Member Avatar for jfro

does anyone know if you need a siig card to install an 200gb hard drive in a 1.25GHz G4?

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Short, practical checklist and gotchas to follow before dropping a larger drive into that G4.

As started, the physical install is straightforward — but first confirm the drive's interface. If the 200GB device is PATA/IDE it can be fitted to the internal IDE wiring; if it is SATA you will need either a PCI SATA controller or a PATA–to–SATA adapter. Pick the correct type to avoid surprises.

Before powering up: back up the boot disk; mount the new drive securely; set the drive's jumper/cable-select exactly as the drive label instructs so both drives are reliably seen; and connect the drive to an internal cable that the system actually boots from if you intend to make it bootable. Use Disk Utility (Partition → Options) to choose the correct partition scheme for a PowerPC Mac (Apple Partition Map) and format as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) before installing or cloning the system.

After install, verify recognition and reported capacity in System Profiler (About This Mac → More Info… → ATA/IDE or Disk Utility). If the full size does not appear, possible causes include an incompatible interface, a legacy addressing limit, or the drive being on a different controller. Try moving the drive to another internal connector, update the Mac OS and firmware for that model, or attach the disk externally via FireWire/USB to test it. If none of those work, a PCI SATA/IDE controller is a practical fallback.

If cloning the system, use Disk Utility restore or a cloning tool so the new disk is bootable. For speed and reliability, avoid mixing very old and very new drives on the same cable; a slower device can limit transfer mode. Thanks to and for the original pointers — the steps above cover the common follow-ups and troubleshooting to get a large disk working cleanly.

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Member Avatar for alc6379

I split this thread out, so your question will get the attention it deserves. In the future, just post your question in a new thread, not piggybacked on someone elses.

Thanks!

Member Avatar for Kezz

You can just plug it in, on top of the existing drive - the cables are right there waiting for it :)
Remember to set the drive to slave, using the jumpers.

Member Avatar for yellow

A single 1.25GHz processor? No, that should be an MDD 2003 model. Will not need a new ATA card to install a 200GB disk in there. You WILL however, have to put it on the same bus as the boot disk. That's the ATA/100 bus which will recognize greater then 128/137GB. The bays to the left of the chasis are ATA/66 and are limited to 128/137GB.

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