250 GB Hard Drive

D

decepty

Registered
I just bought a 250 GB Western Digital Caviar drive for my (older) G4 Tower, as the previous one (a 12 GB IBM Deskstar) recently crapped out. However, when I went to re-install Panther , it initially only recognized 137GB of it and upon updating the firmware, etc. it now only recognizes 128GB. At this rate I'm going to be back to a 12 gig drive before I figure this out :)... Any ideas on getting it to recognize the larger drive in full?
 
The ATA/66 and 100 interfaces in all production Macs can only address <137GB. To use the full 250GB capacity, you would have to have the drive on an ATA/133 controller card offering firmware support for these larger drives. Also, some more modern FireWire drive enclosures have bridge chipsets that will allow them to address the larger 250GB drives
 
bobw said:
The ATA/66 and 100 interfaces in all production Macs can only address <137GB. To use the full 250GB capacity, you would have to have the drive on an ATA/133 controller card offering firmware support for these larger drives. Also, some more modern FireWire drive enclosures have bridge chipsets that will allow them to address the larger 250GB drives
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I believe that all MDD G4s will work with larger HDs, otherwise you could not order a G4 from the online Apple store with 4 160GB HDs...
 
bobw said:
Yes, they will, but I don't think they'll see 250GB.
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According to Apple, both the MDD and the X-Serve should provide support for larger hard drives (<137 GB) What have you seen that would prevent a 250 GB use in a MDD?
48-bit LBA would allow up to 144 ExaByte drives (if they would exist yet)
Even with the PC-modified form of 32-bit block addressing, 2 TeraBytes could be used.
(the poster's system won't do it of course, without that ata-6 controller card)
 
I beleive the last series of G4 towers an ata-100 or 133 controller, for primary hdd, and an ata-66 controller, for the extra drives.
 
Pengu said:
I beleive the last series of G4 towers an ata-100 or 133 controller, for primary hdd, and an ata-66 controller, for the extra drives.
Click to expand...

Yes, the MDD has both as internal controllers, and both will take the larger drives, but the original poster has an older G4, doesn't apply here.
 
I know that. He has an ata-66 controller no doubt. The point I was making, is:
order a G4 from the online Apple store with 4 160GB HDs
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This requires TWO IDE channels, with two drives on each.i beleive the secondary channel, is only ATA-66, and would not support anything over 127 (137??) gb.
 
In the end?

I have a Dual 1.25 FW800 too... and it looks like Apple allows us to buy 4x160GB... right now I have 2x80GB, but I'm planning to buy 1x160GB soon... and i should work on both channels right? The ATA-66 should not be a problem. But I have an ATA-100 free place too.

On PCs Win2000 is able to see over 120GB only with Service Pack 3, while Win XP needs Service Pack 1.
 
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