Maximum hard drive space for an Xserve G5

[wjlafrance]

At my college we're upgrading an Xserve G5 (RackMac3,1) to be a file server for some courses. Currently it has one sled with a 75GB drive. Obviously, this isn't enough.

I've tried some Googling on this matter and I'm hearing a ton of different stuff - custom firmware, size issues, etc. So, for anyone who knows, what's the actual lowdown on this machine. We want to put in three 2TB drives using three standard sleds, replaced with third-party drives. Is this possible?

 

[motomullet]

I can't help you on the 2tb drives, but I do have a 1tb western digital green in mine.

From what I read, some drives need to be throttled to sata 1.5 in order to be recognized. This is done with a jumper on two of the pins next to the sata plug (which pins depends on the drive)

I believe I have my drive jumpered, and I think I had to reformat it once when I put it in because of the large block size.

At any rate, its in there, and it works.

 

[Mord]

There's no reason why it shouldn't work with 2tb drives.

 

[173080]

I have an Xserve G5 that came with 2x80GB ADM and tried putting 2x750GB drives in those modules.

It detected only one of the modules. Another one of my Xserves has 2x500GB ADMs, so I used one module (drive sled) from that Xserve with the 750GB drive and put it in the other server. It worked.

The modules are supposed to be the same, but obviously aren't. That "faulty" module works fine with smaller drives.

You'll have to set the drives to 1.5 SATA.

 

[onecajun]

Max Hard Drive in Xserve g5

I would agree with 2tb.. I use the 2tb Hitchai 7200 rpm drives..I have not had luck with the western digital green drives.
I also seen the 2tb Hitchai drives work in the Xserve G5, Xserve 2008, and xserve 2009. My Xserve2006 was very flacky.

I do think the 3tb drives will work in the 2008 or newer xserve, but I have not tested it. I will report back on that

 

[Moofo]

It works with 2 Tb drives. However...

I have one Xserve G5 in use here to run PresStore and I successfully upgraded the three drive modules to 2 TB with no issues.

The only thing to remember is simply that the Xserve is not SATA 2 and the controller seems to ignore the drives that are SATA 2.

Even weirder is the fact that some sleds seems to switchs the drives automatically to SATA-1 while others don't.

So, if like me, If you end up with drives that are not visible, follow the manufacturer's instructions to set them to SATA-1 Mode. It's either a jumper or you have to plug the drive in a PC and use a boot CD.

I used Hitachi Deskstar and they are great. Expensive, but great.

 

[wjlafrance]

We only have two sleds but I went with Hitachi Deskstar, HDS722020ALA330. There's a jumper on the back but it's unlabeled and mostly undocumented. I don't know what it does, and it didn't matter.

As a precaution, which I think was important, I put each drive on an SATA USB adapter with my MacBook and formatted them both to HFS+ with APM. Apparently the controllers hate GPT.

They both worked perfectly, much to my pleasant surprise.

 

[onecajun]

Jumper

If I remember correctly I needed the jumper on 1.5 for my xserve 2006, but I left everything alone on all the other xserves even my g5. I want to say something else about my old trusty g5....it have a slightly faster network transfer rate than all my other xserves

OK I tried a 3tb Hitachi in my 2009 xserve and it only reports 2.2tb, so I think 2.2 is the limit.

 

[Scoutmasta]

Maximum hard drive space for an Xserve G5

We only have two sleds but I went with Hitachi Deskstar, HDS722020ALA330. There's a jumper on the back but it's unlabeled and mostly undocumented. I don't know what it does, and it didn't matter.

As a precaution, which I think was important, I put each drive on an SATA USB adapter with my MacBook and formatted them both to HFS+ with APM. Apparently the controllers hate GPT.

They both worked perfectly, much to my pleasant surprise.

Quick question guys....Do you mean 2gb's as in maximum for all the 3 sledge (1 gb/sledge)?

I took a part some of the external hd's i have around and realized that the hd connectors in the sledge are quite different from the pins on these Barracuda 7200..? are do these Hitachi Deskstar, HDS722020ALA330's have the same connectors? thanx

Consider the lily crazzzzzzzzy

 

[orestes1984]

I know this is an old thread, but rather than making a new one. Could I put a 3TB or 4TB HDD in one of these without any problems? I'm in the process of looking for another drive sled for my Xserve G5 based home server as the third sled is a blank and am wondering... 1.5TB is not quite enough.

OK I tried a 3tb Hitachi in my 2009 xserve and it only reports 2.2tb, so I think 2.2 is the limit.

Pays me to actually read... I'm wondering if anyone else has had any luck with this?

Further reading also shows this...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2422

So any limit would be a physical machine limit which I'm wondering if the G5 Xserve has one.

 

[onecajun]

2 tb per sled

I know this is an old thread, but rather than making a new one. Could I put a 3TB or 4TB HDD in one of these without any problems? I'm in the process of looking for another drive sled for my Xserve G5 based home server as the third sled is a blank and am wondering... 1.5TB is not quite enough.



Pays me to actually read... I'm wondering if anyone else has had any luck with this?

Further reading also shows this...

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2422

So any limit would be a physical machine limit which I'm wondering if the G5 Xserve has one.

Use 2 tb per Sled

 

[orestes1984]

Thanks, saves me wasting money on a 3TB drive I guess. Next step after my next drive upgrade will be pulling the SSD if I want more storage over quicker boots.

 

[sauria]

Thanks, saves me wasting money on a 3TB drive I guess. Next step after my next drive upgrade will be pulling the SSD if I want more storage over quicker boots.

IS this model SATA 1.5 only?

 

[Shaydy]

I dropped in 2x Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM SATAIII drives into my dual G5 Xserve with no drama.

The drives were instantly recognised and I now have them in a RAID 0 config for streaming media to my HTPCs.

Drive set me back $118 AUD each from MWave.

 

[sauria]

Many thanks!

 

[sauria]

I dropped in 2x Seagate Barracuda ST2000DM001 2TB 7200 RPM SATAIII drives into my dual G5 Xserve with no drama.

The drives were instantly recognised and I now have them in a RAID 0 config for streaming media to my HTPCs.

Drive set me back $118 AUD each from MWave.

What OS are you using?

Cheers.