Best storage solution for PM7500?

[matthew28845]

Hi everyone,

 

A couple of months ago, I bought a Power Mac 7500, and it did not come with a hard drive. I bought a 1GB SCSI drive on eBay that was comparable to the original, but after installing an OS on it the computer has tended to lock up when moving around a lot of data, so I'm pretty sure something is wrong with it. At this point, I've decided it would probably be smarter to just try to find a more modern solution. A SCSI2SD would be ideal, but those are over $100 for the cheapest ones available. Is there a cheaper solution to install an SD card in it, or even a more common regular IDE drive?

[PowerMac_G4]

Is the drive a Quantum Prodrive? I think those drives have a rubber bumper in them that deteriorates over time and eventually causes the heads to stick in "park".  It's possible to repair but you have to work crazily carefully to avoid crashing the heads or getting too much (any) dust on the platters.

 

You could try to source a bootable PCI IDE host but I doubt that'll be easy and finding a compatible early IDE drive would be tricky too. Your best course of action is probably just to save up for a SCSI2SD. It's not cheap, per se, but it might be the cheapest option after finding a working SCSI drive. 

[matthew28845]

4 hours ago, PowerMac_G4 said:

Is the drive a Quantum Prodrive? I think those drives have a rubber bumper in them that deteriorates over time and eventually causes the heads to stick in "park".  It's possible to repair but you have to work crazily carefully to avoid crashing the heads or getting too much (any) dust on the platters.

 

You could try to source a bootable PCI IDE host but I doubt that'll be easy and finding a compatible early IDE drive would be tricky too. Your best course of action is probably just to save up for a SCSI2SD. It's not cheap, per se, but it might be the cheapest option after finding a working SCSI drive. 

The drive is a Seagate, so I'm guessing that's not the issue. But yeah, if a SCSI2SD is the best solution, I'll just get one of those.

[sstaylor]

Some models of the SCSI2SD are over $100, and all the ones I've seen on ebay are similarly priced, but go to Inertial Computing's website  https://store.inertialcomputing.com/SCSI2SD-s/100.htm and they start at like $60.  It's not the fastest model, but should be fine for a 7500.

[matthew28845]

4 hours ago, sstaylor said:

Some models of the SCSI2SD are over $100, and all the ones I've seen on ebay are similarly priced, but go to Inertial Computing's website  https://store.inertialcomputing.com/SCSI2SD-s/100.htm and they start at like $60.  It's not the fastest model, but should be fine for a 7500.

Oh awesome, I didn't know about that website. I'll buy one from them.

[Unknown_K]

Bootable IDE PCI cards should be found cheap enough and that gives you the option of using cheap IDE optical drives as well. You can also use a PCI SCSI card and SCA drives with adapters.

[Cory5412]

Moving this to the PCI powermac subforum.

 

In addition to those things, there's SATA cards that will boot these machines, which also work with SATA optical drive.

 

SCSI2SD should work fine for this machine, it probably merits going for the v6, I believe the 7500 had the faster SCSI bus, I have one like this in my 8600 and it works great, although, for the cost of a SCSI2SD v6 you'll be able to buy an IDE/SATA card or a newer/better SCSI disk.