SCSI drive compatibility

[bigmessowires]

I'm looking to possibly upgrade the SCSI drive in my Power Mac 8500. What type of SCSI drive should I be looking for? I'm a little bewildered by wide SCSI, ultra SCSI, sooper-dooper SCSI, etc.

Are all these newer SCSI standards backward compatible with the older SCSI controller in the 8500? Is the internal cable connector the same 50-pin square connector?

 

[ClassicHasClass]

Any 50-pin SCSI drive will do, as well as any that can be converted to 50-pin such as many 68-pin SCSI drives. So as long as you can get a 50-pin parallel SCSI connector out of it, you can use it. Note that some very fast drives may not reach their peak performance due to controller limitations of these older Macs.

Also, make sure that your drive doesn't run too hot. A 7200rpm half-height drive I installed in my 7300 once died a rapid death due to heat -- it could just fit, but it couldn't ventilate. So stick to the conventional third-height size.

 

[bigmessowires]

Wow, what's up with classic SCSI drive prices? They're more expensive than the Mac systems themselves! Looks like you could make a fair business out of buying up old Macs, removing the hard drives, and reselling the drives alone...

 

[kite210]

Wow, what's up with classic SCSI drive prices? They're more expensive than the Mac systems themselves! Looks like you could make a fair business out of buying up old Macs, removing the hard drives, and reselling the drives alone...

I've thought the same thing, I wanted to replace the hard drive that died in my color classic. I went on ebay, searched for an 80Mb Quantum, and the cheapest I found was $46 dollars + $13 dollars shipping. Seems like quite a bit for a 80Mb SCSI drive.

 

[Dog Cow]

Someone(s) must be buying them, else the prices wouldn't be so high.

But that's just economics.