HD limitations
 

Okay, I remember reading something about this a while back ago but could not remember, nor could I find the article I read to clarify my memory. Is there a limit on the amount of space a single volume can be in OS 9, and in OS X?

I want to say I read somewhere that in OS 9, the cap is 180gig??:confused:

Thats just per a volume too, not a drive. HFS, and HFS+ have limitations on the maximum amount of space that a single volume can be, I just cannot remember.

Thanks for any help in advance,
tom

HFS and HFS+ volume and file limits
 

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=8647

http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24601

The operating system or hard drive format are not a problem.

Some hardware (not-new firewire bridges, older G3's, etc.) can only support up to 137GB of storage per drive.

Perhaps mervtormel will find the corresponding Apple knowledgebase articles, although they do not cover everything you need to know about this topic, either.

For hardware that supports greater than 137GB, sometimes new software drivers are required.

okay what about G4's will the system handle lets say a 250gig in all one volume? Is there any documentation on what systems ide controllers can handle. I know with a PC a lot of times its a bios limitation and by updating the bios you can get around it (or using like ez bios, but ez bios is lame). I should have clarified my question a bit more. I do not need to know how much the file system can expand to, but how much will the hardware of a macintosh handle. Is the limit different from internally on the IDE controller Vs. an external FW drive?

Isn't the MDD G4 the first model from Mac that natively works with HD larger than 137 GB? (137 GB volume would format out to about 127.6 GB) The operating system will handle volumes up to 2 TB, but there is the 137 GB Drive size limitation for an internal HD total size (not volume size) A recent PCI IDE drive card will generally handle the larger drive sizes, you must check the tech specs. Most external FW cases will take the large HDs without regard to what the hardware system will support internally. Again, check the specs before buying.

No. Actually, the opposite is true.

Most (all?) G4's will support large drives internally.

Many older (and some current) external firewire enclosures will NOT support large drives.

OK, the MDD G4 is the first Mac whose logic board correctly supports formatting a partition to larger than 127.6 GB, therefore allowing full use of a large HD space (support for 48 bit addressing?) Sorry, I missed on explaining this completely. :)

NO.

deltamac, your post is completely incorrect.

Peaved, you're a little inaccurate about your opinion. Early G4s don't support 48 bit LBA, and can't utilize the full space in a 180GB HD, unless you add an IDE card that supports LBA, the logic board chip set certainly doesn't, until the MDD (note-I have come across some individual G4s that dispute my facts and work anyway) And I did miss on explaining it completely, so I couldn't have been completely incorrect. :) Enough on that, have any ideas about how a Mac can get that maximum volume size of 2 TB? maybe with a raid array?

Deltamac, you continue to post FALSE information.

Correct, early G4's will not support large drives.

However, MOST G4's will support large drives.

The MDD is NOT the first, or only, G4 to support large drives.

Do some research, you do not know what you are talking about.

Peaved, you keep saying that. Where are you getting your information, and why aren't you sharing it with anybody? Is this a competitive advantage thing or something?

What I see is a Tech Note saying the G4 tower uses an ATA-5 Ultra ATA/100 interface, "Resulting in the 128GB (137.4 billion Bytes) ATA-5 size limit."

Is that Tech Note obsolete, and if so, as of when?

Thanks for the documentation Craig. Does anyone know the limit on external drives. The problem I have is a user brought in their G4 tower (gigabit ethernet) and is having problems with a 250gig external firewire drive. The partition is gone, and it is recognized as a raw drive now. Diskwarrior cannot fix this, I tried that first. The user is running os 9 due to some applications they must use do not run in os X. I remember reading the 128gig limit for the IDE, but what about the firewire? The 250gig drive worked for a while (according to the user) and he took it over to a different mac to print some stuff out and the partition got wacked. There is a lot of info on the drive and the user wants me to recover it. Typically in the past I have just used diskwarrior to rebuild HD's but in this case it did not work. I no longer have the drive in front of me he took it back to their design firm. So I am just doing some research to try to figure out if the problem to begin with, was that the drive was too large.

Again all help is appriciated.

Looks like some of this info would be helpful to others also, Anyone? Which is the first G4 model to move past the ATA-5 IDE controller? I remember seeing a tech note referring to the MDD, but now I can't find it. Can anyone come up with the answer?

It appears the XServe uses ATA/133 ATA-6 interfaces.

Do the MDD's have the same controller?

Hard Drive size limitations, revisited.
 

For those that still wonder, or would like to update an older G4:

To the best of my knowledge and experience, the Quicksilver 2002 G4 logic board is the 1ST PowerMac G4 logicboard to offer support for hard drives LARGER than 137GB.

Here is my Apple System Profiler report for my QS 2002 and the Seagate 160GB hard drive I purchased 3 hours ago:

Hardware:

Hardware Overview:

Machine Model: Power Mac G4
CPU Type: PowerPC G4 (3.3)
Number Of CPUs: 1
CPU Speed: 1.33 GHz
L2 Cache (per CPU): 256 KB
L3 Cache (per CPU): 2 MB
Memory: 1.5 GB
Bus Speed: 133 MHz
Boot ROM Version: 4.3.3f2
Serial Number: XB21303TM1X
Sales Order Number: 0100591456XB21303TM1X

Software:

System Software Overview:

System Version: Mac OS X 10.3.7 (7S215)
Kernel Version: Darwin 7.7.0
Boot Volume: OS X HD
Computer Name: Joel Schmidt’s Computer
User Name: Joel Schmidt (joelschmidt)

ATA:

ATA-4 Bus:

ST3160023A:

Capacity: 149.05 GB
Model: ST3160023A
Revision: 3.06
Serial Number: 5JS1FPBJ
Removable Media: No
Detachable Drive: No
BSD Name: disk0
Protocol: ATA
Unit Number: 0
Socket Type: Internal
OS9 Drivers: Yes

Appleseed HD:

Capacity: 10.02 GB
Available: 10.01 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s10
Mount Point: /Volumes/Appleseed HD

OS X HD:

Capacity: 20.02 GB
Available: 14.89 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s12
Mount Point: /

Macintosh HD:

Capacity: 118.62 GB
Available: 103.53 GB
Writable: Yes
File System: HFS+
BSD Name: disk0s14
Mount Point: /Volumes/Macintosh HD

I just formatted a 250 GB HD on a G4 Digital Audio 733 (aka G4 five slot) and it saw every last bit. So at least one model earlier than Quicksilver 2002 supports larger drives...

sighup9, this contradicts the experience of many people on Accelerate Your Mac's Drive Database. As Joel Schmidt says above, the first Mac whose logic board offers support for drives larger than 128 GB / 137 GB (depending on how you count GB) is the Quicksilver 2002. The first Mac that Apple admits that their logic board supports drives larger than 128/137GB is the Mirrored Drive Door models.

Is one of the following true in your case?

1. You formatted the drive in another computer, then put it into the Digital Audio 733? If that is the case, you will appear to have access to all 250 GB, but will have file system problems with that drive as soon as you start to write to the area above 137 GB.

2. You are using an IDE/ATA PCI card and connecting the large drive to that card. This will work just fine, but does not say anything at all about the logic board of your Digital Audio 733.

3. You are using a third party IDE/ATA driver? This will work just fine as well, but the conversation above is referring to built-in support, not third party workarounds.

Trevor

lol

this thread is so old it has a merv post and a little peaved post on it.

Anyways I got a third party utility for the larger drive support now and it works great!

Oops... I made 3 volumes ~77 GB each :o

Totally blew past where it said single volume . Replying to posts in a sleep deprived state is probably not a good idea in the future for me... MY BAD

sighup9 , the hardware limitation for drive size is just that, drive size. You can partition your drive with volumes smaller than 128GB, but that does not get around the 128GB limitation. You will still have problems writing to areas on the drive that are outside of the 128GB, or, more likely, you will end up with corrupted data when you store data in the last 1/2 of the the drive. Just creating smaller partitions will NOT prevent this, if you are using the on-board controller.
Good Luck !

Along the same lines as this thread, I've a bit of a problem.
I moved my 160G drive from an old G4 tower (533DP, for sale sans hard drives, keyboard and monitor ifn anyone wants it), where only 128G was recognised and formatted.
Is there any way to recover the missing space now that I've converted it to an external Firewire housing? Could the same utility tear down the existing partitions, as I no longer wish it to be partitioned either.

Javarod's problem has probably been solved by now (or not), but for reference for anyone else reading here now, all he needed to do was to initialize (erase) the 160 gig drive after he moved it to the Firewire enclosure. This will work as long as the enclosure isn't so old as to not support drives larger than 128 gig--for some of these older enclosures, not even a firmware update will help them see larger drives.

And I can confirm the consensus about drive sizes vs Mac logic board versions: I work with a lot of Mac models, and did experiments on each of the models being discussed. The Quicksilver 2002 logic board is the first that can see all of a larger-than-128 gig drive, as a single volume, connected to the logic board's ATA hard drive bus (not the optical drive bus, in case anyone is getting picky and tries their hard drive on that bus). For older Mac models, use a PCI slot ATA controller board, preferably one that's ATA133 for best compatibility (proper read/write, etc.) with large, newer drive models. Don't use an old ATA66 board--it might work for some drives, but not others (probably not the drive you decide to use).

I know this thread is old, but maybe this additional info will help someone, so I would like to share a link with you that I found:

http://support.apple.com/kb/HT2544?viewlocale=en_US

I am German and I do not know wether I have understood everything under this link, but as far as I got it, it says:

There are to ways:

1. you have a mac that allready supports drives larger than 128GB (or 137GB respectively), which is Mac from until June 2002.

2. If not:
a) install an OS X, higher than 10.2 and you can utilize a bigger harddrive
b) For OS 9 Users, they should use OS 9.2.2 and make partitions of not more than 200GB each. (Example, if you have a 320GB HDD make one with 200GB and one with 120GB)

2 b) contradicts one of the posts above so I guess I got something wrong, huh? Or the point is, that the 200GB per partition thing is executable in OS 9.2.2, but if you have lets say OS 9.2.1 installed and use a 160GB HDD it will use the drive but somewhen it will write out of the 128GB space and the drive will get problems. (concerning the last point I got an answer from hitachi, they told me I would have to buy a 120GB model, because I will run into problems with a 160GB HDD later, though in first place everything will look fine.