Upgrade options for G4 (Mirrored door)

On 3/11/08, dave wrote:

Question: I have a mirrored door Power Mac G4 Model PowerMac 3.6 CPU PowerPC G4 (3.2) with 2 CPUs at 1.25 L2 cache (per CPU) 256 KB, L3 Cache (per CPU) 1MB and 2 GB of memory bus at 167 MHz Boot ROM V 4.5.7f1

I am out of room on my original hard drive and want to install Leopard (which I have just installed on my other newer machines.)

Can I install a new larger internal drive on this machine and re-assign this drive as the start up drive?

What kind of drive should I use (largest possible?) Can this be done without a major reinstall of software etc.?

I never use OS 9. Even if I install a new larger (and quicker?) drive in one of the open bays should I delete this software? Is it easy to remove? Does it matter if I install another new drive?

Other upgrade possibilities and Costs?

Answer: G4's usual used IDE hard drives. They are getting harder to find and I would recommend at least a 250GB drive but perhaps you could start by archiving some data off your current drive before going through the pain of a drive exchange. If your drive is mirrored then you will need two of the same drives that are identical. There isn't a lot of space inside of the G4 for extra drives so I would also recommend getting an external drive case to house your current drive that connects with USB or firewire to do the transfer of data and programs.

As for OS9 that was a remnant of the upgrade to the first OSX that doesn't need to be installed on your new drive. As far as a major reinstall of the system you can try using a Ghosting software to save an image of the drive and restore it onto the new drive but this doesn't work all of the time.

Any change over of hard drives usually works best with a fresh install of the operating system and the programs. Then transfer the data onto the new drive. If you are missing original software CDs this can be a problem so that's why I recommend the external drive chassis that hooks up to a USB port or firewire.