Large disk access with OS9??

wicky

wicky

play thing
A simple question... I think:

I want to setup a Retrospect backup system in the place that I work. They've got an old iMac running 9.1, and I'd like to plugin a couple of 250gb ext. firwire drives, but I don't want to order them and then find that they won't work without a system upgrade.

Does anybody know if there are any issue with this?

Cheers
 
Exactly how old is the old iMac? What color is it? Does it have a slot loading CD drive or a tray? How much memory is installed. Using OS 9, the more memory the better.

Check to make sure there are firewire ports on the iMac, as not all came with them.

In general, I have not heard of any problems, but that's me.
 
Thanks for replying. Sorry, I should have given more info.

I have no idea how old it is, it's a 400mhz (graphite/ dark grey), with very little memory, 128mb. The machine is currently backing up (using Retrospect onto a 75gb drive, and then mirroring this on a 160gb drive using Back Toolkit.

The problem is: a/ the capacity is too small for the data it is being asked to backup; b/ the 160gb drive is only ever half used, because it's a mirror for a 75gb drive.

I would like to get a couple of 250's, have a backup system with enough space to do its job properly, and free up the existing external drives for other stuff.

The machine is just for backup (not a server), and is already doing the job even with such little memory. So, I need to know if the OS has any limitations in accessing drives of a larger capacity, before I order them?

Ta
 
Should work just fine. HFS+ was introduced with 8.6 (well prior to 9.1 ;) ), which allowed the computer to make good use of large drives. Actually, even older systems could use large drives, just not very efficently for technical reasons I won't go into here unless specifically asked to :)
 
macavenger said:
Should work just fine. HFS+ was introduced with 8.6 (well prior to 9.1 ;) ),...
Click to expand...

Actually, HFS+ was introduced with Mac OS 8.1. On 68K machines, you could format a drive using HFS+, but the system drive had to be regular HFS (PPC machines could run HFS+ on the system drive). Mac OS 8.5 and up were exclusively PPC and had support for USB and Firewire.
 
Large disk access, or 48-bit LBA (which allows the use of drives larger than 137.4 GB), is only supported on the MDD G4 computers and newer -- however, that's only a limitation on the internal ATA bus and does not affect FireWire or USB devices. As long as the FireWire drive supports 48-bit LBA, which it should if it ships with a 250GB drive inside it, then your computer will have no trouble using all 250GB, even if it's an old 8600 with a FireWire PCI card.
 
Ok. What does MDD mean? ... As a similar (but different) issue, I have a G4 (533, blue, digital audio edition) that I would like to add a large internal drive to. Would I be able to add an internal drive of similar capacity to this?

Cheers
 
MDD is Mirrored Drive Door, released last year. Apart from using an ATA-6 compliant firewire enclosure, the only way I know of to support a drive larger than 137GB is by adding an ATA-6 (also called ATA-133) PCI card and running the drives off it. You could also get Serial ATA (SATA) drives and a card, but that jacks the price up considerably.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top