[G4] Hard drive installation problem

[Ronald Steinke]

On Nov 23, 2007, at 9:04 AM, Kenneth Smith wrote:

> I would appreciate any information that will help me restore two 180  
> GB ATA drives to full capacity from the 28 GB "availabiile" that is  
> now reflected for each drive.  I installed a new  750 GB hard drive  
> in the front tray of my 1.42 GH mirrored door G4 and made it my  
> system drive.  Now the two 180 GB drives in the rear tray (one of  
> which was previously the system drive), show in "Get Info" that only  
> 28 GB are available in each of the drives.  Both 180 GB drives came  
> in the computer when it was new.

First, no G4 listed in Mactracker ever came with a 180Gb drive  
installed from the factory.

Second, no G4 was shipped with more than one drive installed unless it  
was a "BUILD TO ORDER" purchase.

Third, use Disk Utility to erase and format the drives. That will   
restore the available capacity of the drive to the original "new"  
capacity. Of course, you WILL lose any data that is on the drive when  
you do this.

Fourth, you should make sure that your drives do not have a bridge  
installed on the drive size limiter pins. That will limit the space  
available for use (according to the PC tech here in the office). I  
have never seen a size limiter bridge on a drive in a Mac chassis, so  
I can't verify the truth of his statement.