[X-HW] Hard-drive size limit question

[Eugene]

On Sun, Oct 31, 2004 at 10:10:22AM -0500, albo wrote:
: 
: I have one of those annoying older G4s (400 AGP Graphics) that has the 
: limit on the size of hard-drive it'll recognize.  I have a 160 GB drive 
: in it, of which I can only use 126 GBs.  If I pulled it out and stuck in 
: a firewire enclosure would I have access to all 160 GBs?

It's an IDE issue.  Which means it depends on the Firewire-to-IDE bridge
in the enclosure.  Older bridges could only see below 127 GB.  The newer
ones can see much more.  Look for keywords like "48-bit LBA" or "ATA-6",
or something less technical like "we support drives larger than..."

: If so, I'm 
: wondering if this would do anything to the data that's currently on the 
: drive?  Will it get "confused", or will it just show me the current 
: files with more space available?  There's no OS on there; I use it as my 
: video drive for editing. 

I don't know if you data will be safe or not.  I think it should be
okay if you decide to move it to an external Firewire enclosure.  It
would be a good idea to check the volume anyways (e.g. DiskWarrior).

However, since you mentioned that you are using it for video editing,
there may be throughput issues (i.e. you may have slower transfer rates
which may affect any kind of real-time editing).  If this is the case,
get a Firewire enclosure with an Oxford 922 chipset.  Or, get an ATA PCI
card that has 48-bit LBA support (i.e. it supports large hard drives :).


-- 
Eugene Lee
http://www.coxar.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/