Drive options for a Performa 550/575?

[Secret Chimp]

Forgive me if this is lore already - what are my options for a replacement hard drive for a Performa 550/575? I seem to be limited by the funny plug adapter and caddy, and I'm not sure if any newer-style drives will work. A fellow who's eventually coming to swap a 575 for my 550 is bringing along some extra drives but says they aren't much bigger. I'm just looking for a few hundred to 1GB-ish just so I can have a big fat 68k collection on one drive. What's my best option? Would I be better off with a bigger drive in some kind of external enclosure with the internal drive as the basic boot disk?

 

[jsarchibald]

From memory, these came with a 160MB or a 250MB drive. I see no reason why a 1GB drive wouldn't work.

 

[Secret Chimp]

Should something like this work? I don't know how cheaply I ought to be able to come by an older drive like this.

http://www.upgradebay.com/Products/ProductInfo.aspx?rid=26&ProductID=168747112&utm_source=googlepepla&utm_medium=adwords&utm_content=pla&gclid=CO7_16vklbQCFQuCQgodjEsA9g

 

[beachycove]

Seems a little overpriced, but not grotesquely.

Any 50 pin scsi hard drive will work, but some are easier to work with than others because of the software requirements for formatting them, and working with them in the long run. An Apple OEM unit would be the easiest to work with (they all have a logo or text to that effect on them), because they had Apple Roms that make formatting easier, using the standard Apple utilities supplied with System software. However, the alternatives are not terribly stretching, so long as you are able somehow to download software and make Mac floppies. There is in particular a patched/hacked version of Apple's HD Setup readily available on the web that will format any period scsi drive, which then will work just like an OEM one. Or you can hack the utility yourself with ResEdit.

1 gb is plenty for most any usage you are likely to dream up for an lc575. Internal or external does not matter speed-wise, but for compactness, I'd probably suggest putting it in the machine, and keeping the smaller one that came with the machine, assuming one did come with it, as an emergency drive. You could temporarily pop it on the scsi chain and copy System etc. across for safe keeping. This could be useful in future, because of the failure rate of old scsi drives these days.

I have external drive housings, cabling galore, and terminators if you are hard pressed to find such things locally, but shipping is expensive from Canada.

 

[James1095]

My current favorite SCSI drive is the Seagate Savvio series. It's a 2.5" SCA U320 drive that is very quiet and the power consumption is very reasonable. It seems to support termination too and works fine in my SE/30 with one of the $2.75 SCA to 50 pin adapters. The SCA model is available in 36 and 74GB capacities, ridiculous for a vintage Mac, but it works fine to just have one or two 2GB (or smaller) partitions. Those going for complete originality will want to look elsewhere, but if you just want to make the machine work without any serious hacking, this is one way to do it. The best part is they can be had for ~$20 bucks easily.

 

[MacJunky]

The problem with machines such as the LC/Performa 550 and 575 is that they used a cardedge-ish adapter plugged into the HDD. There is simply no room for any adapters at all or anything with it's connector in non-stock location unless you tear into the wiring harness.

You would be better off ditching the internal drive imo and using an external enclosure or something if you needed drives with adapters and whatnot.

 

[MinerAl]

It's been literally a decade since I had a 5xx, so take this with a grain of salt, but I recall most contemporary SCSI drives fitting the little card-edge adaptor thingy. Seems like I had a 2GB drive in one.

The fog of time obscures, but 50 pin SCSI drives don't have a lot of leeway for different configurations. As long as there's only the one thin plastic divider between the 50 pins and the power plug, the adaptor should fit.

 

[Secret Chimp]

The only problem with stacking an adapter on an adapter would be the drive doesn't click into place in its little caddy thing. As long as it doesn't poke out the rear to the point where the door can't go back on it doesn't matter too much.