Garbage collection is the process of zeroing out the block that is no longer being used, which is sometimes handled in the background by the SSD itself. When the operating system attempts to write to an invalid (free but not yet erased) page, the SSD rewrites all of the valid pages in that block to a new block, adds the new data to empty pages in that block, and marks the entire original block for erasure. This process is known as garbage collection (see Garbage Collection and TRIM in SSDs Explained – An SSD Primer for a good overview of this subject), and it is kind of messy. When writing data to an SSD, you can write to any unused page, but you cannot write to a used page until it has been erased – and that only happens at the block level. But SSDs manage data differently, using pages and blocks (sets of pages). There is no need to wipe the old data the new data simply overwrites it.

When you write data to a hard drive, it is free to write over any unused sector on the hard drive. When it comes to SSDs, data is managed differently than on a hard drive. 3 drives do not support the older, slower 1.0 protocol. 3 drive, be sure to verify compatibility with the Rev. 2.0 and 3.0 hard drives are backward compatible, and most SATA SSDs are also backward compatible, making a wide range of storage options available for your Power Mac G5. Hard Drives and SSDsĮvery Power Mac G5, including the last generation, has two 3.5″ SATA ( Serial ATA) drive bays and a 1.5 Gbps SATA Rev.

This means that you can freely swap AGP video cards between pre-PCIe G5 Power Macs. AGP VideoĪll of these machines have an 8x AGP Pro slot for their video card, and all of their video cards included DVI output and most also included Apple’s proprietary ADC (Apple Display Connector), which provided video, monitor power, FireWire, and USB to any Apple ADC display. For the more powerful versions, you got two 100 MHz 64-bit PCI-X and one 133 MHz PCI-X expansion slot, which are backward compatible with PCI cards. Expansion CardsĪll pre-dual-core models are compatible with PCI expansion cards running at up to 33 MHz on a 64-bit PCI bus. In addition to standard 3.5mm input and output jacks, there is also TOSLINK optical input and output. In those days, 56k modems were still a standard feature, and the G5 models used Gigabit ethernet across the board. It also has FireWire 400 (2 ports) and 800 (1 port), which only the January 2003 Power Mac G4 had.Ī nice new feature with the Power Mac G5 was including a USB port and a FireWire 400 port on the front of the machine, along with a headphone jack. The Power Mac G5 was the first Power Mac with built-in USB 2.0 (3 ports), so that was one less add-in card for Power Mac users to buy.

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