New HD - What to look for?

[LC_575]

I've come to find the 160mb capacity of my LC 575 to be too limiting, and I want to upgrade. What are specifications that I need to look for in a new drive? I know it has to be 50 pin SCSI, but are there size limits? Does it have to be an official Apple HD? What speed/interface of SCSI must it be?

 

[Osgeld]

if its 50 pin scsi pretty much most will do (apple or not) , its a matter of software which most will be able to breathe in a second

 

[PowerPup]

If you want to use a non-apple Hard Drive, you need to use a patched version of "Apple HD SC Setup 7.3.5" as mentioned here.

There are also a few other Utilities you can use mentioned here.

Some more info from Low End Mac.com

There isn't really any size limit. Mac OS 7.5 supports up to 2TB if I remember correctly.

 

[LC_575]

Would an SCSI-2 drive work in my LC 575?

 

[Anonymous Freak]

Hell, a 320 GB, Ultra-320 LVD SCSI drive would work just fine, with a 50-pin adapter. I used to use an Ultra2 18 GB 10,000 RPM drive in my SE/30 via an 80-pin SCA-to-50-pin adapter.

 

[PowerPup]

I don't think you can use a HD if it requires a adapter. If I remember right, it already has an adapter. I forget what it's called but it basically make it easier to pull out and push in. (Looks like the PCI connectors.)

So there won't be any room for any 50pin conversion adapter.

Found a 18gig 50-pin HD on ebay.

I have a 2gig that came from my PowerMac 6100 if you're interested.

 

[LC_575]

No, the one I found has a 50-pin connector, but it's only a gigabyte - I'd rather have a drive with a reasonable size for my Mac.

 

[Scott Baret]

Two commercial utilities for hard drive formatting are Silverlining and Hard Disk Toolkit. If you can hunt these down on eBay or Amazon, or perhaps see if a vendor like B&R or Wayne's has them in stock, you can format most hard disks just fine, Apple-branded or not.

If you do stick with Apple brand drives, avoid Quantum ProDrive ELS drives at all costs. It's unreliable and also noisier than its more reliable (and highly recommended) stablemate, the ProDrive LPS. Most Apple-branded desktop drives were Quantums (although they did use Conner and MiniScribe in some models, and some PowerBooks used IBM).

1GB should be fine for a 575 unless you plan on doing some heavy duty stuff with it (i.e. Photoshop).

 

[Unknown_K]

2-4GB 50 pin SCSI are what I generally use on old 68k machines (still have about 18 NIB 2GB quantums in stock on the shelf). You can use 68 pin drives that do SE (might need a jumper) with adapters in the back to 50 pin if you have room, same with SCA to 50 pin adapters but you need a terminator for those to work.

 

[LCGuy]

As Scott and Unknown_K said, 1GB is plenty for any 68k Mac. My LC475 has a 1GB drive in it, and that is enough for a fairly fat Mac OS 8.1 install and a truckload of games, along with AppleWorks and a few other bits and bobs. You'd be amazed at how little space you'll need.

 

[register]

If there is a budget to buy new components, consider to use a drive of a more recent make and adapt it to SCSI. Once you might benefit from the ease to go to the next computer store and simply buy a new drive in case of need.

How about an external SATA disk dock with an SCSI bridge adapter? The company Logilink provides cheap IDE/SATA converters (USD 20 for a bidirectional converter, cheaper and other makes might also be available). Add an IDE/SCSI bridge and you are ready to swap an external drive directly from your oldest to any recent Mac. External SATA to FireWire/USB docks are ready available. Extra useful when it comes to the task of making reliable backups.

If one finds a SATA harddisk drive would be a waste of speed and storage capacity, also consider to adapt a CF or SD card to replace the old drive. It's less waste and more silent.

 

[BeniD82]

Problem is that IDE --> SCSI bridges cost an arm and a leg, figuratively speaking ... well, not really, they are freaking expensive ... If I were to buy one of those for any of my other Macs I would probably go all the way and throw in a CF adapter and CF card, then call it good.

You have to consider that pretty much ANY recent CF card can easily saturate the SCSI II bus in terms of transfer speed, not to mention it's a "solid state" solution, no noise (granted, I love the "clickety" sound old hard drives emit), low power consumption, and last but not least, your data would easily be readable through any CF capable card reader.

In addition, a solid state solution is not going to suffer from performance issues due to e.g. fragmentation or drive geometry like a regular hard disk would. Since there are no physical sectors or tracks which have to be accessed, rotational delay isn't an issue. Access times are generally much faster than any hard drive and generally won't vary much like it would with a physical drive (seek time etc.). Before I switched to CF I used a quite decent Toshiba hard drive in my PowerMac 6500. Benchmark results with my CF adapter show a great increase in overall throughput and performance in comparison to the old drive.

-- BeniD82

P.S.: I use a CF solution for both my PowerMac 6500 and 640 Dos Compatible, works like a charm!

 

[LC_575]

Just bought a 1.2 gig HP SureStore drive on Ebay - exactly what I wanted.