[G4] G4 533Mhz Tower and a 200 GB hard drive - not !

[David Crandon]

>From the web site: http://www.xlr8yourmac.com


Q:  I have an IDE drive larger than 128GB and it does not format to the
full size 
A:    Updated Info: Apple's August 2002 G4 "Mirrored Drive Door" systems
support 48-bit addressing to fully utilize large drives like the Maxtor
160GB (and larger) drives. (Western Digital has a 200GB IDE drive now
also, and Maxtor's latest drives have capacities of 320GB.) 
In the past you needed either a PCI IDE controller (i.e. Acard ATA/100+,
ATA/133) or Intechusa.com's (OS 9 only) Speedtools v6 drivers, or a
Firewire bridge board with firmware that supported 48-bit addressing. 
(previous info follows from shortly after Maxtor released their 160GB
IDE drive... )

Maxtor was the first vendor to release an IDE drive larger than 128GB,
such as their 160GB ATA/133 model. As noted in past drive database
reports and main site news items, an ATA/133 compatible interface is
required (which uses 48-bit addressing)  to be able to use the full
capacity of the drive - or a driver that supports 48-Bit addressing. (If
used with an ATA/3, ATA/33, ATA/66, etc. card the drive max size is
limited to 128GB or so without a 48-bit disk driver.) 
Intech's 3.5 Disk Driver update added  support for large drives noted 
in the April 2002 www.xlr8yourmac.com news which had a Q&A with Intech
on SpeedTools 3.5 Update Large Drive Support - but as noted there - to
date they have no OS X support (yet at last as of late 2002). 

If you own an Acard ATA/100+  (or ATA/133 - SIIG ATA/133 cards are also
Acard based) Mac IDE PCI Card, there is an update that is reported to
allow full use of the >128GB drives. (This chip is ATA/133 compatible).
A reader noted in a Jan 2002 drive database entry for his Maxtor 160GB
drive that the Acard OS X driver update for this Acard ATA/100+ card
allowed full use of the 160GB drive. (See the Jan 4th, 2002 news page
for details. You can also see Brian's report by searching the Drive
Compat. Database by selecting Maxtor as the drive brand, HD as drive
type, IDE PCI Card as interface, Dual G4 as mac model, and OS X as OS
version.) 

(FYI - Readers have reported the SIIG ATA/100+ and Miglia ATA/100+ Mac
IDE cards are really based on the same  Acard controller, so this tip
may also work for those card owners.) 

Reminder on Drive Size vs Formatted Capacity: For those that missed the
older FAQ item here, remember no drive formats the the "rated" size.
This is due to the fact the drives are rated using decimal (base 10)
numbering system vs the computer using binary (base 2) numbering. [I.E.
1K in decimal is 1000, 1K in binary is 1024, There's an older FAQ item
in this section that covers this in detail. (See the question titled How
come my new XX GB Hard Drive is not XX GB after being formatted? .) 



David Crandon

James Asherman wrote:
> 
> Tony Charlton wrote:
> 
> >Thanks Jim,
> >
> >unfortunately yes - I can only get divisions of 128GB
> >
> >
> You might have to futz witht   erasing and formatting and maybe even
> low-level it to free up the
> extra space,and then try two 100 gig partitions .
> Maybe you need to have this done by someone with a newer machine?
> It'll never be 200. Should be about 185.
>  Jim
> 
> >
> >
> 
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