![]() ![]() SMART Utility also allows running a drive’s built in self test, which can also indicate malfunctions on the drive. This allows time to hopefully backup, and then replace the drive. SMART Utility can read and display these attributes. The attributes can be used to detect when a hard drive is having mechanical or electrical problems, and can indicate when the hard drive is failing. SMART (Self-Monitoring, Analysis, and Reporting Technology) is a system built into hard drives by their manufacturers to report on various measurements(called attributes) of a hard drive’s operation. CF cards are already PATA devices, so a pin-converter from CF/PATA will allow you to use them as standard drives, without some of the worries over boot compatibility that some SATA/PATA adapters may present on G4 Macs.SMART Utility is an application to scan the hardware diagnostics system of hard drives. It would be easier, and much less expensive to buy a Dual-G5-a system twice as powerful, with SAT on the mainboard, plus three PCI-X slots-than to add a bootable SATA PCI-33 card to the MDD. You can find SCSI RAID chassis on the cheap now, and SCSI accessories, such as scanners, printers, and the like, and LTO/LTO2 tape drives (use with IOSCSITAPE), so that might be a more reasonable avenue to follow, if you want a better drive host that you can use as a boot device.Ĭonverter boards (SATA/PATA or CF/PATA) sell at around £5. You could find a SCSI-II or SCSI-III card from the era, and put a high-speed (10K or 15K RPM) drive in the system, which would be able to give you a nice boost, along with a with a faster drive bus speed, but this again, is an expense that you likely do not need, unless you see future use of the SCSI expansion. You would probably do better to buy a PATA SSD, or a very fast CF card and a CF/PATA adapter (which is in essence, a pin converter), as you would see a greater impact from the NAND operational speed, than from the bus speed change from ATA/100 to SATA on PCI. It really isn't worth the time, or expense, to install a dedicated SATA-I card in this system. You probably wouldn't even notice the difference, as the speed would be comparable to ATA/133, due to the bottleneck. The primary reason for buying a SATA card is for RAID support, and on a G4 MDD, you only have 33MHz PCI sockets, not PCI-X, or PCIe, so your selection is horribly limited. ![]() A simple PATA/SATA bridge adapter should work in your situation. You don't need a true SATA card, unless you are concerned with drive bus performance. Thanks for the good information and advice. The are getting pretty cheap on my local Craigslist. I've also been considering switching to a G5 setup. I may end up springing for the Sonnet/Seritek card. I would like the ability to boot from SATA. I've looked into adapters, but my understanding is one cannot boot from them. The recent thread covering flashing a PC SATA card was promising, but I don't have access to a PC for the flashing, so it won't work for me. I have been recently thinking about how to make that happen. Your advice to switch to SATA is well taken. If it dies, I can easily reinstall it on a new drive. I don't bother backing up my Linux drive because I only use it to access online financial records and make secure online transactions I don't keep any permanent data on it. I purchased it new quite a few years ago. I have Superduper on an automatic schedule to clone my boot drive twice a week to a 200GB Maxtor 6L200P0. I received both drives in used systems a few years ago. It is also a 120GB Segate 7200rpm ST3120025ACE. The second failing drive is my Linux drive. ![]() The drive with the 9 reallocated sectors is my boot drive. ![]() An Apple XRAID will refuse to use any drive that is 'failing'. SMART Failing drives will also cause problems if configured as RAID, depending on the RAID system, which although not a problem for your MDD, is important to remember. You can also use a CF to PATA adapter and a CF card, for a boot volume, if you want a NAND solution. When you replace these, it would behove you to buy SATA drives and SATA adapters, as ATA/100 drives are more than twice the price per GB: In fact, you can buy enterprise-rated drive for less/GB than new/NOS PATA drives. if these are just standard desktop drives (not enterprise rated drives), then you can anticipate they are ending their lifespan. I also advise against using one that is failing as a boot device.Ī failing drive can run another three years, or another three hours. If a drive is marked 'Failing', you should make a backup (clone), and make routine, incremental backups. That is only about three years of (continual) use. ![]()
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