A pple has released a hard drive firmware update. Hard Drive Update 1.0 is intended to help your drive last longer, though as we discuss in the Spin below, some are reporting problems. This from the Hard Drive Update Read Me file:
The Hard Drive Update 1 improves the longevity of some hard drives shipped in certain Power Mac G4 computers, including:
- Power Mac G4 Cube
- Power Mac G4 (AGP Graphics)
- Power Mac G4 (Digital Audio)
- Power Mac G4 (Gigabit Ethernet)
- Power Mac G4 (Quicksilver)
Most drives do not need this update. You can check the drives in your computer by running this update. If the update is needed, a message will appear which says that "one or more hard drives in your system need updated firmware. " You will be allowed to quit (cancel) at this point in order to complete backup prior to the actual update.
Important: It is strongly recommended that you back up the data on your hard drives to an external drive or removable media before running this update. Do not reset, shut down, or turn off power to your computer while updating the firmware. If an error occurs during the update process, your hard drive(s) may become unusable. In that case, all data on the drive(s) would be lost.
To back up your data, copy all important information from the hard drives to an external drive (such as a USB, FireWire, or SCSI hard drive) or to CD-R or DVD-R media. All important data should be backed up before continuing with this update.
You can get the OS 9 version, or the OS X version of Hard Drive Update Version 1 at the AppleCare Knowledge Base Web site, or you can use the Software Update Control Panel in OS X.