The Definitive EVB-002 Guide to Adding Large Hard Drives/SSDs (Power Mac G4 AGP)

[DieHard]

FBz and I have expanded our knowledge and broken known boundaries in the 1st quarter of 2022 with respect to installing large storage drives into various Power Mac G3/G4 models.  We will be explaining and showing real world results realted to upgrading internal storage with large IDE/PATA drives, large mechanical SATA drives, and of course, SATA SSD drives.  This topic/guide will ignore SCSI technologies and SATA add-in cards, since we will be focusing on the absolute cheapest way to go for our members on a low budget.

This low-cost approach to adding storage will target using internal IDE/PATA controller(s) with the $5 EVB-002-3 IDE to SATA adapter known affectionately here on the forum as the “bribge” IDE to SATA adapter. Also, we will included some new undocumented knowledge for G4s that can natively address drives larger than 128GB (macs that have an IDE controller that is 48-bit LBA compliant)

Lastly, we be adding information that has been discovered via trial an error for successfully installing different drive combinations into many beloved macs.  No doubt, this info will be valuable to beginners and have some real surprises in store for our veteran users.

[indibil]

Hello! Did you finally make the tutorial?

[DieHard]

Unfortunately, the DA G4 got all the "love" regarding the time and energy to document this adapter:

http://macos9lives.com/smforum/index.php?topic=6233.0

The fact the DA G4s we tested (in Mac OS 9 only) could address hard drives of over 128GB in size (not documented anywhere on the web), kinda blew our minds and ate up many days to verify and re-verify those findings, So the "guide" for other models is still a work in progress and may never get done

[aBc]

Yeah, that lazy slacker FBz did not complete this assignment!

But certainly anyone else is welcome to take up this project.
Unless FBz can find the time after a current ATX PSU project.