Performa 630 IDE Hard Drive Replacement

[LazarusNine]

Elfen, the only reason I got the 160GB drive was because it was cheap and easily available. It was also advertised as 'new' with Amazon Prime shipping. Turns out it was a 2006 drive and didn't work no matter what machine I put it in; my MDD dual boots in both OS X and OS 9 and it wasn't recognised by either one. Nor was it recognised by the OS X 10.4 boot disk, so it was a dud. max1zzz has a 10GB drive with System 7.5 on it; that should solve all of the issues. I may eventually go the CF-IDE route, which I've done in my PowerBook to great effect. However, I'm also curious about the SD-IDE adapters as well, as SD media is so inexpensive. Has anybody had any luck with one of those?

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

I've picked up 80GB WD Black refurbs for $10 on Amazon, you may check that out.

 

[CC_333]

80GB? WD Black?!?

$10?!?!?

That's not a bad deal.

c

 

[TheWhiteFalcon]

It's in my Cube now.

 

[Elfen]

Elfen, the only reason I got the 160GB drive was because it was cheap and easily available. It was also advertised as 'new' with Amazon Prime shipping. Turns out it was a 2006 drive and didn't work no matter what machine I put it in; my MDD dual boots in both OS X and OS 9 and it wasn't recognised by either one. Nor was it recognised by the OS X 10.4 boot disk, so it was a dud. max1zzz has a 10GB drive with System 7.5 on it; that should solve all of the issues. I may eventually go the CF-IDE route, which I've done in my PowerBook to great effect. However, I'm also curious about the SD-IDE adapters as well, as SD media is so inexpensive. Has anybody had any luck with one of those?

Interesting. NOS (New Old Stock - stuff they had but did not sell then) equipment, I see. It must have a bad case of stiction from sitting around for years - where all the internal lubrication dries out and solidifies and everything gets stuck.

Though a couple of members of the forum consider KingSpec as a 4-letter curse word, I have had good luck with them myself since I started using them since 2005. The only problem I do have with them is that they only have them in 2.5in format, and to put it in a machines like a P630 or a P6214CD for me, you need to get a 2.5in to 3.5in IDE Adapter.

I believe the company is SwissBit, they have a SSD that does not work with old PowerPC Macs at all, and I'll reason that it won't work with 68K/IDE Macs either. Poor guy tried everything to get it to work but it did not. That information is on this post:

https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23095-ide-ssd-problem-with-pb-1400/https://68kmla.org/forums/index.php?/topic/23095-ide-ssd-problem-with-pb-1400/

I do not know about SD-IDE Converters as I have not tried them, but I'll assume that it is a bit slower than SSD or CF/SSD because the signal has to be converted to/from parallel to serial for it to work and all this conversion is done in the converter's hardware.

 

[LazarusNine]

Interesting. Thanks for the link to the discussion. I feel sorry for that guy and his SSD. In any case, I'm not too worried about speed given that the Performa 630 is PIO only. I'm sure the connection will be the bottleneck and not the speed of modern SD cards or even the adapter for that matter. From what I can tell, a decent SD adapter costs more than a CF adapter, but CF cards are more expensive. The added benefit of SD is its ubiquity and the ability to plug it quite easily into a modern Mac (assuming you have HFS support in Disk Utility). I recently experienced the wonders of networking my LC III with a Power Mac G4 MDD. Installations have become so much easier!

 

[Elfen]

Strangely enough there are SD to CF adapters out there (Ebay link is to show one, not to recommend the seller) like this one:

http://www.ebay.com/itm/Extreme-SD-SDHC-SDXC-to-CF-Type-II-CompactFlash-II-Adapter-8-16-32-64-GB-/171044499768?pt=LH_DefaultDomain_0&hash=item27d30bf138

Whether it is bootable or not I do not know. But for under $20 it might be worth to experiment with. So... a SD on a CF Adapter to a CF to IDE Adapter. It is works, I'll be damed. Talk about a Frankenstein Machine!