As you can see by the attached image, I got the wrong type of hard drive for my iMac G3. I denoted which is old and which is new. Is there an adapter I can use to make the new one work? Or is it simply a different realm of hard drives altogether?
Also--while we're on the topic--can you tell me where I went wrong in choosing the incorrect new one? I did my research beforehand and looked for a 3.5 inch IDE hard drive.

Thanks! ;-)

You want a 40pin pata/sata adapter with the Marvell 88sa8052 chipset. Most commonly folks order the red starTech units for best results. They're about $20 USD.

Hey thanks so much for the response! Super helpful, as always from this awesome place. Can I ask one more favour? I've found a few PATA/SATA adapters, but none that seem to have the right plug for the new hard drive. Would you be able to actually find a product and send me the link? Just so I can see what I've been doing wrong.
Thanks again! ;-)

You're looking for something like this. Quite a few listings on eBay as well.

StarTech 40 pin pata to sata adapter.

You plug the sata side into the hard drive and the ide ribbon cable plugs into the 40 pins pata connector on the opposite side. Connect molex power & set the adapter to master and you're off. Here's a nice vid by @Action Retro That illustrates the use of a sata/pata adapter to install a sata hard drive in an imacg3 tray loader, hurdles n all that he encountered along the way.


OG ActionRetro at his finest :)

Ahhh you and Action Retro to save the day! Thanks again so much you guys ;-)

>> bryanambition said:

As you can see by the attached image, I got the wrong type of hard drive for my iMac G3. I denoted which is old and which is new. Is there an adapter I can use to make the new one work? Or is it simply a different realm of hard drives altogether? Also--while we're on the topic--can you tell me where I went wrong in choosing the incorrect new one? I did my research beforehand and looked for a 3.5 inch IDE hard drive. Thanks! ;-) Click to expand...

Well, the drive they sent you is sata (Serial-ATA) and what your imac needed was a pata (parallel-ATA) drive. IDE and PATA commonly refer to the same 40 pin connector thus can be used interchangeably, so assuming you requested either a pata or ide interface from an auction that specified ide/pata, no error was made by you and you should have received the correct drive. My guess is they goofed up on their end & sent you the wrong drive. That or your accidentally bought the wrong drive which is NBD and part of the learning curve of messing around with these elderly computers that use old standards.

You could always request a replacement drive if it's a vendor error or use a pata/sata adapter. Either way a fun Christmas break repair/upgrade. [christmas-tree]