Dumb Question for a Dumb Guy??

tdblanchard · Post by **tdblanchard** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 7:15 am

i have a dual 1.25 MDD.
there seems to be a "slot" for another hard drive.
i don't know the symantecs or any of that, but just to put in lame mans terms...
can i buy another hard drive, plug in the power supply, which i'm pretty sure is the one lingering female plug right there and then somehow plug it into the motherboard? is that the ribbon-lookin' cable?
i know. "who is this guy and who showed him how to open up a cpu?"...
i'm just a musician trying to make some music with these cool computer thingys!
i know internal hard drives are always a better option than external and i would love to switch.
you guys have always been so helpful in the past. i appreciate it.

cleantone · Post by **cleantone** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 7:43 am

Yeah I think that is pretty much the deal. Carefull putting that ribbon cable end onto the drive!

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 1:18 pm

Yep, it supports another drive. After installing it you press the option key while pressing the eject button on the keyboard and it ejects the second drive. All cables are there ready to go. MDDs rock.

tdblanchard · Post by **tdblanchard** » Fri Sep 09, 2005 1:48 pm

any limitations of what size/type of drive i can put in there?
what does ATA 66 and ATA 100 mean?
im an idiot

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Fri Sep 16, 2005 10:23 am

ATA is a drive interface and the number designates the theoretical top end speed. That's why I suggested putting the OS on the ATA66 bus since it doesn't benefit from the extra speed of the ATA100 bus as much as accessing your data does when using programs like DP.

You can put the biggest ATA100 drive you can find in there.

Realistically, I would stay around 200GB. You do need to back all that data up after all. You do back up don't you, don't you?

tdblanchard · Post by **tdblanchard** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 9:03 am

yeah. definitely a "back-up" type of guy..
i've been backing up to an external lacie drive of late.
i should use DVD's i guess.

so the drive that's in there now is connected to the ATA 100? and i should switch them?

any suggestions on a good drive, both size-wise and money-wise?

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Tue Sep 20, 2005 4:18 pm

tdblanchard wrote:yeah. definitely a "back-up" type of guy..
i've been backing up to an external lacie drive of late.
i should use DVD's i guess.

so the drive that's in there now is connected to the ATA 100? and i should switch them?

any suggestions on a good drive, both size-wise and money-wise?

Yea, the default Apple location for the OEM drive is under the power supply which is the ATA 100 bus. I'd slap the OS drive on the ATA 66 bus in the master posistion, put (2) 80GB Seagate 7200 RPM drives on the ATA 100 bus and RAID 0 stripe 'em into one 160GB drive. Then get one more 200-250GB drive for the slave posistion of the ATA 66 bus as a high speed backup drive. Under Tiger, an external FireWire drive would be almost as fast as the internal on the ATA 66 bus so that's up to you. An internal will be cheaper. If you go external FireWire, save yourself some headaches and go with a Rocstore drive.

tdblanchard · Post by **tdblanchard** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 6:15 am

i think i'll just get a 200 gig 7200 drive for now and put that in the ATA100. 320 gigs should be plenty!! 4 drives seems like a lot.
plus i'm not too familiar with RAID...

what are you doing about the fan noise? have you replaced your 120 mm fan with a quieter one?

zerosin · Post by **zerosin** » Wed Sep 21, 2005 4:11 pm

The MDD I use is at work and a noise free environment is far from being a concern in the opinion of those who can make a difference. So no, it hasn't been improved. That being said, it isn't one of the really noisy ones either.