[G4] New hard drive for DP 500 G4

[Ron Steinke]

On 7 Jan, 2005, at 14:30, Jonathan I. Nori wrote:

My problem is that the drive is a 200gb drive, but the all three OSes 
see it as a 128gb drive. I'm running the most recent firmware on the 
machine (4.2.8f1).

Neither Apple's support site nor Maxtor's support site were any help in 
telling me what's wrong here. Is the IDE controller in my G4 *that bad* 
that it can't recognize space above 128gb?

And if yes, could I replace it with an external firewire drive and 
still usit for digital video? (Would an external firewire be fast 
enough?)


Your machine, and all manufactured within the same time period with the 
same hardware, is limited in how much hard drive space it can 
recognize. The limit IS 128Gb, as you have noticed already. Your 
controller isn't *that bad*, simply <that old>.

If you want to recognize and use all the space on your new drive, I 
suggest that you buy an ATA 133 controller card and install it in your 
case. Then, attach the new LARGE drive to that controller card and you 
will see the full capacity of the drive. Yes, it will be a bit more 
expensive than a PC controller card because it is compatible with 
Macintosh, but it will be worth it if you get a good reputable card.

By doing this, you can also use the original controller on your 
motherboard to connect to a smaller drive, like the original drive you 
had before the upgrade, and have a built-in backup device without 
having to buy a FireWire box.

I installed a Sonnet ATA 133 controller card in my G4 Gbit Mac and now 
have FOUR drives where I could only have two before. It needed a set of 
custom IDE ribbons from Sonnet, but it works and gives me plenty of 
room. The old controller connection is sitting idle right now, but I 
may get some idea of what to use it for later on.

Hope this info gives you some ideas.