2.8TB in a Power Mac G5?

Pfhreak writes "Bare Feats has a couple of reviews: one of WiebeTech's G5Jam, and one of the Swift Data 200. Both add extra drive space to a G5. The G5Jam puts two extra drives in the space that would be taken up by long PCI cards, so you'll be limited to the shorter cards in two of the three PCI slots. The Swift Data puts three drives in the space in front of the CPU fans. The writer of the Swift review has an interesting thought in the conclusion: 'Hey! Maybe I could install both the G5Jam and the Swift -- that would give me 7 drives -- and if I get seven 400GB Hitachi 7K400s, that's 2.8 Terabyte total -- Moo hah hah!'"

Comments

Power

[Anonymous Coward]

The article mentions cooling, but is there enough power (5V) to handle that many drives? Drooping voltages can lead to all sorts of strange behavior.

Re:Power

[Polymorph2000]

At 5V it uses 780mA per drive (http://common.ziffdavisinternet.com/util_get_imag e/6/0,1311,sz=1&i=67140,00.jpg).

780mA * 7 = 5.46A

Apple uses a 450W - 650W power supply in their G5's (http://www.welovemacs.com/g5serviceparts.html), and they should be able to support this (650W give something like 40A on the 5V line).

Although I don't know what the power requirements of the other components are, or how well the power supply handles the load.

Ventilation?

[scottblascocomposer]

I don't know... The cooling system in the new G5s is pretty well thought out, I don't think I'd want to go cramming things where they don't belong for fear of messing with airflow.

Of course, now that we're going liquid cooled, some of that will be less of an issue, but overall the case still needs good airflow if it's going to stay cool (i.e., not melt), right?

More drive space is always nice

[cheide]

Personally I think the G5s should have come with three drive bays standard and let you set up a RAID-5 array. Power users like reliability too...

Re:More drive space is always nice

[Anonymous Coward]

What, you mean like systems based on whatever Intel processor they're currently trying to wrest the CPU crown away from AMD?

I say that generically because it's a moving target, those systems are virtually impossible to get ahold of until ~3 months after Intel's announcement. Shortly after supply catches up and ship dates get realistic, another king-of-the-mountain comes out and Intel magically can't meet demand for the new, faster-than-fast, processor all over again.

Intel's gotten away with this for over a decade, now somehow Apple's supposed to change the laws of physics (not to mention economics) to make demand not outstrip supply?

Granted, Intel's track record shows this routinely amounts to preannouncing products, done in a vain effort to "steal thunder" from a competitor who's actually shipping product the day of their announcement. The marketing wonks are in charge at Intel, and man, their current lineup shows this. Thank god the 90nm process effectively derailed their maniacal plan of ever-smaller-processes with ever-smaller-realworld-performance-gains, now they have to concentrate on making well designed processors again without blockbuster clockrate increases.

XServe G5s are shipping. You may not get one for a while. If you've ordered a particularly odd hardware combination that depends on one part that Apple is having trouble sourcing for some undisclosed reason, your ship date may keep getting pushed back... and back... and back...

Just like how if you want the latest "Intel EXTREME! " processor, you will have to play the waiting game. By the time your proc comes in, Dell might have sold out of some other esoteric bit you asked for, maybe - maybe not, all depends on how wacky you want to configure your system.

Wacky/Odd being relative terms of course, nobody outside of Apple or Dell really knows what qualifies, and even internals may not entirely understand since supply constraints - you know, like an earthquake knocking out the sole factory - aren't always predictable.

Limits

[Anonymous Coward]

2.8 Terabytes and still only one free hand...life's just not fair.

Re:Sweet Jebus...

[Puggs]

*Looks at pictures again, just to make sure*

NO, they dont go in the same space - one (the G5Jam) goes in the space in front of the PCI slots; the other (the Swiftech) goes down the bottom at the front between the air intake for the CPU's and the fans.

*wonders if parent looked at the pictures*

External arrays

[Hungus]

I have 7 drive spaces (plus the DVD burner) in my Quicksilver 2002 but I have routinely run my systems with external drives. A dremel tool and 10 minutes of work make a nice slot on an expansion slot cover (what do you call those little metal strips anyway?) and I feed the ribbon through and into another case. No problems with having enough power (seperate power and ventilation) oe heat build up. Why force the drive to be internal? I would rather have a lower system temp than internal drives.

Note this does not assauge the geek factor of mounting 2 different hacks in a box where one should be and I admire the thought, I just think external via SCSI, Fibre, or Firewire is a better solution and it needn't cost any more.

Heating Issues

[Polymorph2000]

It's insane putting that many hard drives in that small of a space. Many HD's that close together is just asking for a heat related failure, plus the additional hard drives will obstruct the hot air outflow at the back of the G5, and they'll generate a fair amount of additional heat. Add in the additional cables and this will case a drastic increase the case temperature leading to more noise and potentially component failure.

You can't just cram hard drives into a case as long as there's an open drive bay. I've put 3 hard drives in adjacent drive bays with one 80mm fans for cooling(I now use 2 30mm fans per drive)., and all of the drives overheated causing drive failure and data corruption.

Combining these two ideas will likely cause several of the drives to die within 6 months or less due to the extreme heat.

MOO!

[Anonymous Coward]

"Moo hah hah!"

Not to be overly picky, but the correct usage is Mwahaha!. Moo hah hah makes you sound like a retarded cow.

Re:4 or 5 bay Firewire case?

[FredFnord]

Just bought one from Granite Digital. It's a hardware-RAID-5 4-drive chassis that works with Firewire 400, and it costs $900 or so. The Firewire 800 version costs $1100 or so.

There are alternatives, ones without the hardware RAID that only cost $250 or so, but if you're going for reliable and fast, the Firewire 800 hardware-RAID-5 case is the way to go. (For us, it was reliable and large and Linux-compatible we were going for).

-fred