On Sep 19, 2008, at 8:34 PM, Eric Volker wrote: > I recently acquired a dual G5 on eBay. Unfortunately, it came with a > measly 80GB SATA drive. I happened to have a 320GB EIDE/PATA drive and > a Firewire 400 enclosure sitting around. Presto! 320GB boot drive, > right? Not so fast, methinks. Firstly, my enclosure has much-maligned > Prolific PL-3507 chipset. Secondly, it strikes that me that booting > off of an external drive might not be the best idea (e.g., what > happens if someone trips on the cord?) > > I'm somewhat concerned about the reliability of the Prolific chipset. > If I remember correctly, I had problems with bootable systems just > disappearing. However, I have since flashed the firmware, and have > also copied back and forth 40GB or so of data without any problems. > > So what does the list think about using that 320GB as a primary boot > drive? Am I just asking for trouble, or is it a reasonable solution > given the fact that I don't want to cough up $100 for a new SATA > drive.
I booted my G5 for almost a year on a FW400 and then FW800 external HD. There wasn't much difference in speed. Later I stripe raided two 500 GB internal SATA drives and thing were much quicker. I'm saving for an SATA II card now to hopefully double speed again. I've owned several of the PL-3507 enclosures, and mine were an early revision A that wasn't bootable for Mac or upgradeable for firmware. All the newer ones are upgradeable, but there was some problem with the firmware, and you must have the latest firmware for OS X. There were revision A, B, C and D chipsets, and each had it's own firmware. I big hassle to update, you probably need a PC running Windows. Check with your manufacturer first, and then with Prolific which had "generic" firmware (will change the Vendor ID).<http://www.prolific.com.tw/eng/downloads.asp?ID=44 > If you enclosure boots, and you run a day or two without error, it should be good. Personally, I'd buy two SATA HDs for cheap and use them as an internal striped RAID pair, and using the FW external as a Time Machine backup disk. PriceWatch has 500GB SATA for $51 each with free shipping.<http://www.pricewatch.com/hard_removable_drives/sata_500gb.htm >. Yesterday I saw USB2/eSATA external 500GB for $55. With these cheap prices, a 1 TB Raid pair will more than double the access speed of the FW box, and you'll be set for a long time (until your 320 GB backup is full) for only $102 total. --~--~---------~--~----~------------~-------~--~----~ You received this message because you are subscribed Low End Mac's G3-5 List, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com To unsubscribe from this group, send email to [EMAIL PROTECTED] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list?hl=en Low End Mac RSS feed at feed://lowendmac.com/feed.xml -~----------~----~----~----~------~----~------~--~---
