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Failing 180GB Xserve hard drives

In the past couple of months, we’ve started to see the IBM/Hitachi 180 GB drives that came with the Apple Hard drive modules for the Xserve G4 and ATA Xraids fail.

We always have these in a software mirror RAID, so we don’t have any data loss, but we are proactively starting to replace these drives with new Seagate 250GB drives. These drives not only have better caches, but run cooler and with less power usage.

3 Comments

  1. Not a tech Anne
    Not a tech Anne January 3, 2008

    Can you run these Seagate ATA-100 drives in the Dual 1.33 GHz PPC G4 rack servers? They have Ultra ATA/133 drives. The first bay is a 60GB, the other three are 175GB IBMs All original and we really want to replace them before they die.

    Found a couple new drive modules but $600/each vs $125 for a drive? Would rather mount new drives to the module.

    Thanks for any assistance.

    btw, awesome blog.

  2. Brian Blood
    Brian Blood January 4, 2008

    You can definitely use them in all G4 Xserves.

    The ATA/100 vs 133 is not an issue at all.

    No need to buy new modules, you can easily replace the drive inside the existing module with any standard IDE/PATA drive.

    Only the G5 Xserve Hardware RAID cards have shown any pickiness over the drives installed.

    And thanks!

  3. Not a tech Anne
    Not a tech Anne January 7, 2008

    That’s great news. Have a quartet of 500gb Barracuda drives on the way.

    Thanks for the clarification/help!

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