Ask Jacob
Archive for the ‘Storage’ Category
What is a Start Up Disk?
Backups, Hard Drive, How To, Storage, Troubleshooting / 0 Comments
I’m trying to download a movie from iTunes but I keep getting a message that my startup disk is full and that I should delete files to create room.
What is a startup disk? Read More ยป
Quicksilver G4 hard drives – how big can these get?
G4, Hard Drive, PowerMac, Storage / 0 Comments
How big a hard drive will work with my PowerMac G4 Quicksilver?
My dad had a hard drive over 100 GB that did not work in his PC a few years ago, so I know that just because a hard drive fits does not mean it is compatible. I currently have an 80 GB drive.
- Stephen
The original Quicksilver G4 PowerMac towers could only use hard drives that were 128GB or less in size. The 2002 Quicksilver G4 PowerMac tower could take any size ATA hard drive.
If you have a 733, 867 or Dual 800 MHz processor than you have the original Quicksilver. If you have a 800, 933 MHz, or Dual 1GHz processor you have the 2002 Quicksilver and can use larger hard drives.
Hope this helps.
- Jacob
Is a 2006 Mac Pro limited to 500GB storage per drive bay?
Hard Drive, Mac Pro, Storage / 0 Comments
Jacob,
Looking to add more hard drive capacity to my 2006 Mac Pro. I’ve heard I might be limited to 500GB in each bay for a total of 2 TBs. Is that true or is more possible? Also, any brand recommendations would be appreciated. Currently it runs off the base 250GB SATA.
Thanks
- Nancy
Hi Nancy,
There is no drive size limit for SATA based Macs, like yours. You should be fine going up to 2TB in each drive bay. Take a look at our internal hard drives, as we carry both Western Digital & MCE. These brands will certainly fit the bill for your storage needs.
- Jacob
Which backup drive would you recommend?
I’m shopping for a back-up device for my iMac Core Duo. I understand the faster transfer speeds of firewire and would prefer this type.
The size of my backup is really small; Sibelius music notation files and corresponding PDF files for the instruments. In the last 9 months, I’ve only generated 3.74 GB of material, so a smaller (250GB or even 500GB) is perfect. I don’t want to pay too much for this and have been checking various drives on Amazon, etc.
They all seem to have their pros and cons; LaCie, Western Digital, Seagate, Vebatim, etc. Do you have one you’d recommend?
You’ve helped me in the past, and I hope you can do it again. Thanks in advance…
- Bo
LaCie 1TB Hard Drive
But if you just want to backup small Data files that will total under 8GB per year, look at a LaCie USB itsakey drive.
This will store a years worth of your data and you can easily take it with you.
- Jacob
Backups, Networking, Storage, Time Capsule, Wireless / 0 Comments
Dear Jacob,
I’ve seen much on the web that complains about setting up an Apple Time Capsule. What is your opinion? Does it deliver? Is it a good option for getting my wife (who deals with plenty of large image files) backed up and connected to extra disc space?
I think the Apple Time Capsule is a good solution for people who are using laptops and stay wireless 80% of the time.
The largest issue with backing up is remembering to do so. Time Machine makes backup easy and automatic. However, a small subset of people who never leave a computer at the desk long enough to backup to a USB drive were not being protected by Time Machine. Those people need the Time Capsule so that they too can take advantage of Time Machine’s automatic backup.
If you have a desktop, or leave your laptop connected to external devices on a desk for a few hours a day, you would be best served by using a directly connected external USB hard drive for your backups. The Airport Extreme base station will allow you to connect an external USB drive for network file storage. That drive will be accessible from the network or you can always connect it directly to a Mac and retrieve the data if one day your Airport fails. If the drive in your Apple Time Capsule fails it’s harder to get access to.
Hope that helps you make a decision,
- Jacob
How can I boot my G4 from an external drive?
G4, Hardware, Storage / 0 Comments
I’d very much appreciated if I could find out how to boot from an external 500 GB Firewire disk on an aged G4 1.2 MHz. All these years it has been running 9.2, and has a now dead, non-replaceable DVD drive with just one partition in the HD – meaning, no alternative start drive options…
Right now my external drive, with a fresh installation of 9.2, is being recognized as a boot disk on an [option] start – but the process stops with a blackout. After that the machine boots with its native system. Is there anything that can it be done?
Many thanks in advance.
The problem you are having probably has to do with how the FireWire drive was formatted. Often new external Firewire hard drives come formatted in a universal format but that is not compatible for booting the drive. Any time you get a new drive, it is best to Erase it and reformat the drive from the OS you plan to use it with.
In OS 9 you use Drive Setup (inside the Utilities folder on your hard disk) to initialize a hard disk. You will loose all information on the drive but you will then be able to boot off of it. You need the drive to be an Mac OS Extended (HFS+) format.
After that you can clone your boot drive over to the external drive and it should work as your boot volume. You can use the Startup Disk control panel or hold down the [option] key on startup and select the external drive.
- Jacob
