Mac G5 HD questions

[Radd]

Background:

The only mac experience I have is with my own and my knowledge of them regarding specs and a lot of basic stuff is very limited. I need to upgrade soon to a G5 with more ram and hard drive space.

Right now I'm on a G4 quicksilver dual processor with ram maxed at 1.5.
60 GB hard drive & 60 GB storage drive.
I have 32 GB left on my storage but down to 10 GB left on my HD.
There is nothing big enough that I don't use worth trashing and the 1.5 ram is killing me anyway so I have to move on.

I've read that dual processors are significantly faster than singles for music production so I'll stick with that. I'll need 2 GB of ram with room to upgrade if needed.

Now comes the questions...

I'm assuming that my storage drive is just that and has nothing to do with a hard drive?

I've been seeing a lot of G5's that have 80 GB on one drive and say 200 GB or something on the other. These are closer to my price range. I'm concerned that the 80 GB drive will be filled quickly. Would this be a problem for me or would the other drive have me covered and behave the same as the 80 GB and continue to allow me to install more software. (unlike my current storage drive which won't accept most software installs)
What problems if any could I run into with this?

Will I need to leave a certain amount of HD space on each drive for virtual memory?

Would I want to move some of the bigger drive to the smaller drive? Can I even do that? Would it matter? I'm guessing if so, then it would be a bad idea and could result in hard drive failure?

I'm also seeing a lot of dual processor G5's with 160 GB HD.
Are these just 1 HD or 2 split with 80 each. If it's 1 then I could add a 2nd internal drive later I guess.

Any thoughts or suggestions about anything mentioned?
I'm hoping someone can guide my in the right direction. I wish I had known about this stuff before I got the G4 but I was even MORE clueless about specs then. The positive side is that it has shown me the ways of a mac. I really do love it. No viruses or worms. No crashing. Freezing is never permanent and that is only due to my low ram anyway.

So no windows for me and no I'm not going to build my own Jbroll.
I just don't have it in me plus I'm set on a G5.

 

[Noumenon]

I have 250gb in each HD-slot. Just put in a size you want.

 

[James Murphy]

to get a G5 you'd have to get a used one. just go for a new MacPro.. that's what the top line boxes are called now that they have been revamped a bit and sport intel processors... the case is still the one introduced with the launch of the G5 a few years back, thus the confusion i suppose. i only scanned your post because i'm working right now and can't take the time .. but something about virtual memory stuck out to me.... virtual memory is no longer anything you have to worry about. that's an old OS9 issue... if we're talking about the same thing, that is.

 

[Radd]

I have 250gb in each HD-slot. Just put in a size you want.

Yeah, but I wouldn't be planning on doing that for a while. I'm just concerned that If I have an 80 Gb drive (cheaper which is why I would get it) that when it fills up, then what? The other drive will cover me until that one fills up? Then comes the question as to how do I transfer everything (not just music/daw stuff) to a new drive when the filled up ones are running in the system? Would it have to be done with an external drive?

I'm just thinking about the future and trying to cover my ass so I don't have to spend another grand for a long while like I have to now.

 

[Radd]

to get a G5 you'd have to get a used one. just go for a new MacPro.. that's what the top line boxes are called now that they have been revamped a bit and sport intel processors... the case is still the one introduced with the launch of the G5 a few years back, thus the confusion i suppose. i only scanned your post because i'm working right now and can't take the time .. but something about virtual memory stuck out to me.... virtual memory is no longer anything you have to worry about. that's an old OS9 issue... if we're talking about the same thing, that is.

Thanks for the reply James as always. I didn't know that about the macpro but thats way above my price range.

 

[Kenny Lee]

80 gig drive filled up? WOW..... That's alot of .wav files. At 24bit [at] 44.1k I've done 30-40 minutes of songs averaging 5:00 minutes fit in a 5 gig space with room to spare. Then I just dump the tunes on a DVD. DVD's can hold 4.7 gigs each (Single layer). Once it's on the DVD.... just trash the tunes folder from your drive. DVD's are fairly cheap now, you can even grab some cheap ass CD-R's and put them on those. My Buds were with RoadRunner and the raw tracks from their CD are on immation CD-R's (Each tune on a CD-R) sometimes 2 CD-R's

 

[Radd]

80 gig drive filled up? WOW..... That's alot of .wav files. At 24bit [at] 44.1k I've done 30-40 minutes of songs averaging 5:00 minutes fit in a 5 gig space with room to spare. Then I just dump the tunes on a DVD. DVD's can hold 4.7 gigs each (Single layer). Once it's on the DVD.... just trash the tunes folder from your drive. DVD's are fairly cheap now, you can even grab some cheap ass CD-R's and put them on those. My Buds were with RoadRunner and the raw tracks from their CD are on immation CD-R's (Each tune on a CD-R) sometimes 2 CD-R's

It's mainly future apps that I may want to get that concerns me.