Adding hard drives (G4 Powermac)

Hello. Please forgive my extremely uneducated questions.

I am about to come into possession of what I think is a single processor
400mhz 'gigabit ethernet' model g4. I don't have it yet so I'm unable to
have a peek inside but when I do get it it will be without any hard drives,
so I'd like to buy some in advance and save wasting any time setting myself
up. Since I will be mainly using it as a home fileserver with light use for
word processing and such, I'd like to have quite a few hard drives running
inside it. Am I right in thinking that getting 160gb drives+ is a waste of
time as this model only supports 128gb per drive?

On to the drives themselves, I heard that this model g4 supports quite a few
internally. I also heard that it requires SCSI drives which I'd prefer not
to have to resort to after having checked the prices. How easy is it to add
extra ATA drives if I get a card for them? How's the performance compared to
the two (? I think) that it allows of this type using the onboard
controllers?

Will I need to buy some more mounting brackets and cables for the drives
themselves? Does Apple sell these?

Incidentally are there any other upgrades recommended? I don't think I'll
need a faster processor in the immediate future and it's filled to capacity
with ram already but could the default rage 128 graphics card benefit from a
replacement? The monitor it's using is ADC type and I live in the UK, so
availability of parts is something I would need to research...

Any advice appreciated - I haven't had a mac to play with in a very long
time.

T

in article 408e3543$0$615$cc9e4d1f@news.dial.pipex.com, Tasogare at
news.RemoveThis@NOSPAMyoizuki.com wrote on 4/27/04 3:26 AM:

 > Hello. Please forgive my extremely uneducated questions.
 >
 > I am about to come into possession of what I think is a single processor
 > 400mhz 'gigabit ethernet' model g4. I don't have it yet so I'm unable to
 > have a peek inside but when I do get it it will be without any hard drives,
 > so I'd like to buy some in advance and save wasting any time setting myself
 > up. Since I will be mainly using it as a home fileserver with light use for
 > word processing and such, I'd like to have quite a few hard drives running
 > inside it. Am I right in thinking that getting 160gb drives+ is a waste of
 > time as this model only supports 128gb per drive?
 >
 > On to the drives themselves, I heard that this model g4 supports quite a few
 > internally. I also heard that it requires SCSI drives which I'd prefer not
 > to have to resort to after having checked the prices. How easy is it to add
 > extra ATA drives if I get a card for them? How's the performance compared to
 > the two (? I think) that it allows of this type using the onboard
 > controllers?
 >
 > Will I need to buy some more mounting brackets and cables for the drives
 > themselves? Does Apple sell these?
 >
 > Incidentally are there any other upgrades recommended? I don't think I'll
 > need a faster processor in the immediate future and it's filled to capacity
 > with ram already but could the default rage 128 graphics card benefit from a
 > replacement? The monitor it's using is ADC type and I live in the UK, so
 > availability of parts is something I would need to research...
 >
 > Any advice appreciated - I haven't had a mac to play with in a very long
 > time.
 >
 > T
 >
 >
I can only describe my own experience with a G3 and A G4. The problem with
the G3 was that it did not support more than one external drive. That
problem was solved by adding a suitable PCI card.

When I got my dual processor G4, I wanted to transfer my G3 drives to it.
That turned out to be a snap. I also added a large Western Digital drive to
use as my main drive instead of the (now) puny 6GB drive. I had no problems.
Western Digital included brackets and cables I did not need.

Bill<!-- ~MESSAGE_AFTER~ -->