Need bad azz 2.5 inch IDE harddrive for macmini g4

Cube

[H]ard|Gawd
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Oct 19, 2005
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I Need a model number or name of a bad ass 2.5 inch IDE harddrive for a 2005 macmini g4 that is bigger than 80gb.

and a durable enterprise class like the seagate constellation series drives if possible.

I cant find any they are all sata....


thanks
 
i don't think you should be making such stringent requests.


You should be happy to find a new idea hard drive at all these days.
 
Tada: http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/SSD/OWC/Mercury_Legacy_Pro

But honestly, the legacy hardware isn't worth it. Don't bother unless there is a really specific piece of software you need to run on 10.4 or before on PPC. If this is just a toy to you and you make 6 figures: then blow money on whatever you want to I guess. But, if you need this to be a practical machine, you'd be better off spending $400-$600 on a Mini from the last 2 years. It will eclipse the processing power and speed of that G4 by at least 50 times. Even if it is "only" running a mechanical drive and the G4 is running an SSD.
 
I dont think there is enough room in the mac mini for an adapter of any size or I would use one and shove a large 1tb or 2tb seagate or wd enterprise drive in it or one of sandisk solid states. the 80gb drive in it is not big enough for me.

you can see in the video how tight it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RE1vXYdGVw


I might try the soild state but it is a brand i never herd of so that makes me kinda wondering how well its made........


I use the mac mini to open old maya/ photoshop files that refuse to open on newer versions of maya or 3d studio max and games with its classic mode and ppc cpu. So i just want a drive that works good for a long time to make the thing reliable.

thanks.
 
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I dont think there is enough room in the mac mini for an adapter of any size or I would use one and shove a large 1tb or 2tb seagate or wd enterprise drive in it or one of sandisk solid states. the 80gb drive in it is not big enough for me.

you can see in the video how tight it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RE1vXYdGVw


I might try the soild state but it is a brand i never herd of so that makes me kinda wondering how well its made........


I use the mac mini to open old maya/ photoshop files that refuse to open on newer versions of maya or 3d studio max and games with its classic mode and ppc cpu. So i just want a drive that works good for a long time to make the thing reliable.

thanks.


OWC isn't "unheard" of. Just as a point of reference. They are a very well known and proven third party brand that generally tends to make things for Apple. They have an excellent track record of trying to make things at least up to the same level as first party hardware. If you search around a bit, you can read about them.

They were the first, and for a long time only third manufacturer of Apple's proprietary SSD "sticks" that are in various Air's and rMBPs (which of course later got standardized and turned into M2... although Apple themselves don't adhere to that standard). They also are usually one of the first companies to do teardown and figure out upgradability of various machines.

Also, you asked for "bad ass" 2.5" drive. Not going to get more badass than an SSD. It's just a matter of if this is even worth the investment. I would probably try to find ways of porting all this stuff forward (maybe open each file sequentially in newer and newer versions of the program to have it "slowly" update each file to open in later versions of the programs).


There are IDE SSDs on Ebay if you look.

True, just be aware of what you're buying. There were a lot of not-so-great legacy PATA SSD manufacturers that wouldn't be worth investing a cent into.
 
I dont think there is enough room in the mac mini for an adapter of any size or I would use one and shove a large 1tb or 2tb seagate or wd enterprise drive in it or one of sandisk solid states. the 80gb drive in it is not big enough for me.

you can see in the video how tight it is.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4RE1vXYdGVw

Look at 2:19 on that video . Looks like there would be enough room lengthwise.

And at 2:22, you can see that there is a bit of space between the optical drive and the hdd.

From the looks of the adapter I linked to and a picture of one mounted on a drive in another listing, it looks like you could make it work if you used a 7mm thick drive. The drive that came with it is at least a 9mm thick drive if not more.
http://www.ebay.com/itm/New-SATA-HDD-Hard-Disk-Drive-Adapter-to-IDE-44-Pin-Cable-for-2-5-HD-Type-B-/280669721994?hash=item415938158a

You would of course have to drill new mounting holes in the mini for the hdd, but that would take like 5 minutes.

edit: at 2:58 you can see the ide port placement. That adaper looks like it would just fit in there from what I can tell.
 
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I have dismantled the mac mini once already for a ram upgrade and stuff when I bought it off ebay..

you can fit an adapter in there but the screw holes to mount it will no longer line up so ya I would have to get a drill for holes. I would rather not do it and mess it up.

I had an incident like that installing carbon fiber vinyl on a corsair case that cost me $100.


also the drive in it has bad sectors that is how I got it for about $60 I am guessing. but I dont want the garbage the other people have left on it either if there is any. I was going to dump the drive and put a better one anyway in even if it was good.

I might try the OWC hard drive I am sure they are fine but I just never herd of them. I am not a mac guy I just use them sometimes at work and I use to them in school and I find the console like ease of use to get old stuff to run is nice.

maybe look at drilling holes in it


the whole reason I use this mac mini is because it can fit in a tight spot next to my main pc's under the monitor and it dont take up anymore room. or I would just buy a big ass old power pc cpu mac pro workstation off ebay or something. the mac mini takes up almost no space and runs things from the 90s and early 2000s just fine.

I have used it already to recover some of my old junk from macromedia extreme 3d that I used to play with in high school and some renderman junk I used to use that was for mac only...

MacRenderMan_-_Manual_and_Disks.jpg


4-1.jpg
 
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How about a CF to 2.5" adapter?

http://www.amazon.com/Syba-Compact-Adapter-Enclosure-SD-ADA45006/dp/B0036DDXUM

Then just buy any old CF card (16 to 256GB available in the link below):

http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=9SIA4P025Z9018

It's not quite as fast as an SSD, but should be fast enough, considering how underpowered the G4 is.

And no dongle needed. The CF card sits flush inside the 2.5" enclosure. And if that's not the right size, I''m sure you can find what you want if you look around a bit.
 
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the new version of renderman /maya/power animator/ (I use on pc) dont help me open old files from high school in mac formats I am trying to recover then would have to redo every material in the file to the new version. (if it opens at all.) things was not super cool file formats back then. then i have to install renderman as a plug in on the version the file opens on.

Hell I have a tuff time getting things in .fbx 2011 format to open in fbx2015 format the right way. and I have a pixar student material library disc from the 90's full of stuff to open and convert.,

the class room made us use macs.



I could use a compact flash sure but what is its read and write speeds and durability like? I can try a couple of these.
 
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I could use a compact flash sure but what is its read and write speeds and durability like? I can try a couple of these.

Wear Leveling is standard on all modern flash devices:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wear_leveling#Comparison

We standardized on formats that used microcontrollers to manage flash access (SD, CF, USB) rather than direct read flash like SmartMedia. because the interface didn't require a whole standards update every time you doubled te capacity of a flash chip. It also provided automatic wear leveling, instead of hoping the flash reader firmware included it.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SmartMedia
 
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OWC isn't "unheard" of. Just as a point of reference. They are a very well known and proven third party brand that generally tends to make things for Apple. They have an excellent track record of trying to make things at least up to the same level as first party hardware. If you search around a bit, you can read about them.

yep I have an OWC SSD in my 09 17" MBP and it's been excellent... the 09 mbp had all sorts of issues with 6gb/s sata ssds for some reason but the OWC worked 100%
 
On the "will it fit?" topic - I agree with cyclone3d a few posts up. It looks like it'll fit.

For some added flexibility, you could look at SSD teardowns and see if you can find one that's smaller than the 2.5" enclosure it's in. That way, if things just aren't in your favor, you could remove it from the enclosure and otherwise engineer it to fit. ex - http://images.anandtech.com/doci/8216/inside1.jpg
 
Oh, believe me, you can make it work.
Just look at the Quadra 950 in my sig; it has a Seagate Savvio 10K RPM SCSI-320 from circa 2004 running on a SCSI-1 bus and system from 1992. ;)
 
ya those savvios are great, I have one in my LCIII... OC'd that sucker from 25MHz to 33MHz too :)
 
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