can I get the full 160gb

P

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Im trying to install a Seagate 160gb Internal Drive in my G4 Dual 450, when I come to format Disc Util will only allow me to format 128....is this a hardware limitation or can I get past the problem..???
 
It's a hardware limitation problem. The mirrored drive door Macintoshes and Mac desktops released after that were the first Macs to be able to use hard drives larger than 128GB. If you want to be able to use the entire drive with that Macintosh, you'll need a PCI ATA card that supports 48-bit LBA addressing, like this one from Sonnet:

http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html
 
ElDiabloConCaca said:
It's a hardware limitation problem. The mirrored drive door Macintoshes and Mac desktops released after that were the first Macs to be able to use hard drives larger than 128GB. If you want to be able to use the entire drive with that Macintosh, you'll need a PCI ATA card that supports 48-bit LBA addressing, like this one from Sonnet:

http://sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html
Click to expand...

Can't he just partition the drive into smaller peices to get the full use? I had to do this with my friends hard drive and windows XP not being able to see a drive bigger than 130 GB (not sure if that is the correct #) but it was a 250 GB HD and i split it into two 100 gb partitions and one 50 gb partition.
 
bobw said:
You have to be able to see the full 160GB in order to partition.
Click to expand...

Odd. The PC mentioned above was easily partitioned when i used the Maxtor boot disk, even though simply plugging it in and not setting it up made it look like one 130 gb drive. Maybe a similiar solution for Mac?
 
Hmm... I don't mean to doubt you, but I don't think your Windows XP partitioning experience and the Mac partitioning experience are products of the same 128 GB limitation.

If you put a 160GB HD into a computer without 48-bit LBA, regardless of whether it's a PC or a Mac, RISC or CISC, PowerPC or Intel, you're just not going to be able to see the full 160GB whether you partition or not. The computer will only "see" 128GB of the drive, and if you create a 120GB partition, then you'll only be able to create another partition 8GB in size. The computer can only "see" the first 128GB of that drive, and partitioning the drive won't work around that. I think your Windows XP partitioning experience isn't due to the lack of 48-bit LBA addressing on that machine -- it's something else. 48-bit LBA addressing isn't Macintosh-specific, it's hard drive controller chip specific, and the chip either has it or it doesn't. Since the chips used in Macintoshes are the same as the ones used in PCs, it goes to say that it's not the platform that's limiting the size.

No matter how many or how big you make the partitions, the computer will only "see" 128GB of that drive.
 
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