Maximum drive sizes

Hi Steve;

I have installed many 250, 300, and 400GB drives in different modern Macs, including a G4 iMac and I do not remember having any issues with the '136GB' drive problem on those machines. Note that machines made before early 2002 or thereabouts may have the 48bit addressing issue (limiting them to 128GB after formatting) Newer computers than those will definitely not have problems with larger drives. I have a G4 Cube and it is limited by the 48bit addressing space of the IDE controller.

I have also installed the newer 120GB 2.5" drives in a Mac Mini and a PowerBook and found them to be great drives in spite of the slightly slower spinning speeds of these drives compared to the 7200rpm 100GB drives. I am using a PowerBook with one to write this note. The extra space is very nice!

One vendor for such a drive is CDW:
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs.aspx?EDC=797351

The 100GB drives from Hitachi are much cheaper:
7200rpm
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/specs.aspx?EDC=842431
5400
http://www.cdw.com/shop/products/default.aspx?EDC=777440

and no, I do not work for CDW I just find their selection of drives very extensive.

Warren


 

At 6:33 PM -0800 2005/11/16, sdmeyer wrote:

>A service guy at the local CompUSA warned me that the 200 GB drive I
>found for $70 (after mail-in rebate) might cause problems, that
>internal drives larger than ~136 GB weren't supported. I frankly
>didn't believe him, remembering that had been a problem with older
>hardware than my G4 500 Mhz dual processor (Gigabit Ethernet.) The
>specifications on the hard drive box confirmed, though, that a third
>party PCI ATA card was required for that drive if installed in a Mac.
>I ended up with a 120 Gb Seagate drive for $100, so got the 5 year
>warranty and no mail-in rebate required, but the smaller drive.

        Depends on the IDE/ATA controller. Older ones just use enough
bits to represent 128 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes (about
137,000,000,000 bytes). I don't know whether your controllers have
that limitation. I'm using 3 250gb drives in my 2x1.25GHz PMG4
(MDD/wind tunnel, first model), so at least two of its 3 IDE busses
support large drives.

>What is the story on internal drive capacity? The box did not
>differentiate based on Mac model, but I guess this is for drives
>prior to Serial ATA.

        Current PATA (non-SATA) controllers support large drives,
which is what the 160gb+ drives require to be fully utilized. SATA
drives use different connectors, and all SATA controllers support
160gb+ drives.

        Note that if you put a 160gb drive in a Mac or PC with an old
controller, it does work -- it just shows up as a 137gb (128gb)
drive, so some space is wasted.

>Any recommendations for the PB drive? This is a 15" 1.25 Ghz model.
>I'll probably want to go to a 120 Mb drive from the failing 80 Mb.

        I got a 100gb drive from OWC <http://eshop.macsales.com/>,
and have been happy with them. Unfortunately, I got a 2.5" 100gb
drive in external FW case, and a) they don't make it easy to get the
drive out that case, and b) the PB15" Al requires a full disassembly
to get at the drive. Yuck.


                                                Chris Pepper
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

On Nov 19, 2005, at 11:56 PM, Chris Pepper wrote:

> Depends on the IDE/ATA controller. Older ones just use enough
> bits to represent 128 * 1024 * 1024 * 1024 bytes (about
> 137,000,000,000 bytes). I don't know whether your controllers have
> that limitation. I'm using 3 250gb drives in my 2x1.25GHz PMG4
> (MDD/wind tunnel, first model), so at least two of its 3 IDE busses
> support large drives.

Some controllers have that limitation, but it can be overriden in
software. I don't recall where the dividing line is for Macs, but I
put a 250GB drive into an iMac DV+ (Summer 2000) and needed to
download third-party drivers for it: http://www.speedtools.com/
ATA6.shtml That website goes into considerably more detail, which I
understood at the time I upgraded the iMac, but I couldn't explain it
now.... The iMac has been chugging happily along with a 250GB drive
inside since the upgrade, though.

--
Charlton Wilbur
cwilburchromatico.net

Steve Meyer said:

>What is the story on internal drive capacity?

Older Mac's ROM's only support 32-bit LBA (Logical Block Addressing), and
support of greater than 128 GB for internal hard drives requires 48-bit
LBA and OS X 10.2 or later.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178

Mirrored drive doors G4's and later (and some of the later QuickSilvers
too) can do 48-bit logical block addressing out of the box. Earlier Macs
cannot without modification.

There are three ways you can access the full capacity of an internal
drive over 128GB if your model of Mac doesn't natively support 48-bit
LBA.

1)You can use a third-party (non-Apple) driver
or
2)You can install a PCI card to give you a 48-bit internal IDE bus
or
3)You could put your drive into a FireWire hard drive case kit (assuming
that the kit uses a recent FireWire to IDE bridge chip that supports
48-bit LBA.)

Intech's ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver software ($25) allows the use of
extended capacity ATA drives (drives greater than 128 Gigabytes in size)
on older (Pre-Mirrored Door) G4 and some G3 Macintoshes running MacOS X
versions 10.2 and later. Unfortunately, after installing this software,
you will have to partition your drive so that the first partition is NO
MORE THAN 127 GB, otherwise it won't work. (Note that using Disk Utility
to partition your drive erases all of your data.)
http://www.speedtools.com/ATA6.html

Some Mac-compatible UATA/100 PCI cards can support 48-bit LBA, and, to my
knowledge, *all* Mac-compatible UATA/133 PCI cards support this feature
as well. Sonnet's Tempo UATA/100 supports 48-bit LBA.

SIIG has a Mac compatible ATA/133 PCI card available for $68.11 with free
shipping from Buy.com if you want to upgrade to be able to access your
drive's extra capacity.
http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10325653&loc=
(This is the best deal on a Mac-compatible UATA/133 card that I've seen.)

The SIIG card supports 48-bit LBA:
http://www.siig.com/products/ide/features/UltraATA133_100Pro.html





Randy B. Singer
Co-Author of: The Macintosh Bible (4th, 5th and 6th editions)

Routine OS X Maintenance and Generic Troubleshooting
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html

Some Macs are limited to 127 GB drives maximum. (Well, they can USE larger drives, but they can only address the first 127 GB of space.)

SIIG has a Mac compatible ATA/133 PCI card available for $68.11 with free
shipping from Buy.com if you want to upgrade to be able to access your
drive's extra capacity.

http://www.buy.com/retail/product.asp?sku=10325653&loc=

(This is the best deal on a Mac-compatible UATA/133 card that I've seen.)

I have a SIIG ATA/133 card in a G4/500 [upgraded to 1700].  It works fine for larger drives but has a significant shortcoming--it does not support SMART reporting of the drive's health.  The card also shows up in System Profiler as a SCSI card rather than ATA even though it is ATA.  Apparently SIIG just partially reworked their previous SCSI card and marketed it as ATA.  I'd look for a different ATA card if I were doing it again.

John

What about the old trick of subdividing the hard drive into two (or more) separate entities? Your apple disk utilities can do that for you and then you will have two drives appearing on the desktop each with half the capacity or whatever division you want to give. Then the controller can handle each without running into the upper limit of the 100+ Mb!

At 2:45 PM -0800 2005/11/21, wim067 wrote:
>What about the old trick of subdividing the hard drive into two (or
>more) separate entities? Your apple disk utilities can do that for
>you and then you will have two drives appearing on the desktop each
>with half the capacity or whatever division you want to give. Then
>the controller can handle each without running into the upper limit
>of the 100+ Mb!

        No. The controller sees a 127gb drive; it doesn't deal in
partitions. Partitions are carved out of a device by the operating
system, and only come into play after the drive size is determined at
the controller level.


                                                Chris
--
Chris Pepper: <http://www.reppep.com/~pepper/>
Rockefeller University: <http://www.rockefeller.edu/>

I you have access to a newer mac you can partition a large drive to parts lesser than 127Gb each in the newer mac and then put it back in the older mac.

I've done this with an ATA 250Gb: I formatted and partitioned it to two 120GB mounts in a dual-867 G4 and then assembled the drive in some older 800mhz G4 that first accept only the first 127Gb.

I guess the best way is to do the partitioning in a G4/G5 tower where it is easy to put in and out drives.

As far as I understand it is not the physical size of the disk that is the problem but the size of the partition that was limited to 127Gb in old hardware.

(took less than 30 minutes to do this)

/Björn M

Thanks to all who replied in this thread. I certainly appreciate the knowledge base of TidBits readers, and willingness to type it out!

My current status: My saga started on a Friday morning and I had both computers running again that Tuesday morning, with sporadic attention to the task. The drives in both machines have been replaced with new ones, systems installed and updated (to 10.4.3.) The old drives are working in external enclosures I got for them, although the drives absolutely show signs of the errors they report; failing to read some files, 'working hard' on others. The fact that they haven't completely failed has made my life much easier. On the PowerBook I was able to import many of my settings from the original drive during system installation. On the desktop this failed, presumably due to too many errors from the failing hard drive. Nevertheless, rather than relying on back-ups (for which I'm happy to say I was in pretty good shape) I've reloaded most of my stuff from the original drives. I'm mostly dealing with software registration numbers as I run various applications for the first time.

PowerBook drive (15" Aluminum):

I got a Seagate 5400 RPM 100 GB, with the 5 year warrenty for $190 at CompUSA. I got all my stuff at the local CompUSA, wanting to avoid mail order delays, but also happy with the prices and availability. [Though we hope to have an Apple Store in Boulder soon!] Although I really wanted a 120 GB, and a 7200 RPM one at that, the cost per megabyte went WAY up for that. I'll be happy to settle for the 20 GB increase. Installing the drive in the PowerBook was a bigger ordeal than I expected. I think my expectations were based on easy access in my Wallstreet. As noted in this thead, it takes a pretty complete disassembly and good lighting to see the tiny screws. I'm glad I googled a disassembly article or I would have broken hidden clips above the Superdrive.

Internal drive for the desktop:

I installed the Seagate 120 GB drive I mentioned in the first message. It don't have the higher capacity or lowest cost per megabyte that I wanted, but in the face of uncertainty at the time I'm happy with how it worked out.

Regarding the supported drive capacity in my G4 Dual Processor 'Gigabit Ethernet' unit, the consensus is that this appears to be the last model that did NOT support larger internal hard drives. My best solution for installing one was apparently software. Other World Computing was mentioned in the thread, and I just found this site listed in their discussion of hard drive upgrades:

<http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Intech%20USA/SPEEDHCCD/>

Quote from site: +++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++ Intech SpeedTools ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver: The Intech ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver software was created to allow the use of extended capacity ATA drives (drives greater than 128 Gigabytes in size) on older (Pre-Mirrored Door) G4 and G3 Macintoshes running MacOS X versions 10.2 and later. Without this software installed, any extended capacity drive which is connected to the native ATA bus on older Macintosh models will be limited to only 128 Gigabytes. Later model G4's and all G5's do not suffer from this limitation.

+++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++++

In retrospect I may have bought a larger (and less expensive) drive used in conjunction with this software. I say "may have" since this computer will soon get handed down and the 120 will have sufficient capacity while I'll avoid any support complication the software would have created. (Anyone got a line on a good deal for a dual 2.7 G5?!)

Thanks again for the excellent and thoughtful responses!

Steve Meyer

bjorn430 wrote:
> As far as I understand it is not the physical size of the disk that is
> the problem but the size of the partition that was limited to 127Gb in
> old hardware.

Nah, it's the size of the disk. The old ATA protocol simply had no way
to tell the disk to access the sectors past that 127GB limit. The reason
your partitioning trick helps is that it provides a fully functional
filesystem where the system never needs to access beyond that 127GB limit.

--Chris

--On November 28, 2005 10:36:51 AM -0800 sdmeyer <sdmeyermac.com> wrote:

> PowerBook drive (15" Aluminum):
>
> I got a Seagate 5400 RPM 100 GB, with the 5 year warrenty for $190 at
> CompUSA. I got all my stuff at the local CompUSA, wanting to avoid
> mail order delays, but also happy with the prices and availability.

I picked up one of these for my Mac mini at Best Buy this weekend. CompuUSA
only had a 4200 RPM drive and Micro Center only had 80 GB at 5400 RPM.

> [Though we hope to have an Apple Store in Boulder soon!] Although I
> really wanted a 120 GB, and a 7200 RPM one at that, the cost per
> megabyte went WAY up for that. I'll be happy to settle for the 20 GB
> increase.

Be sure to check the power requirements of the drive and what the PowerBook
can supply. 7200 RPM drives can take more power. I've heard of some Windows
laptops tat can't supply the necessary power for 7200 RPM.

Kevin

Intech's ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver software ($25) allows the use of extended capacity ATA drives (drives greater than 128 Gigabytes in size) on older (Pre-Mirrored Door) G4 and some G3 Macintoshes running MacOS X versions 10.2 and later. Unfortunately, after installing this software, you will have to partition your drive so that the first partition is NO MORE THAN 127 GB, otherwise it won't work.

To clarify, if you use Hi-Cap software you do not have to create a < 127GB partition. I've installed drives > 200GB on some old Macs using this software and they work perfectly.

However, the partition is recommended in cases such as when you start up the Mac with an external disk and wish to repair the internal one. If the partition were > 127GB, then the portion above the 127GB mark would not be accessible to the repair software.

bjorn430 wrote:
> As far as I understand it is not the physical size of the disk that is
> the problem but the size of the partition that was limited to 127Gb in
> old hardware.

Keep in mind that, while a lot of Macs will handle 127 GB partitions,
some Mac OS X-capable machines, like my first-generation beige G3,
require that Mac OS X be installed in the first 8 GB, and the only
safe way to ensure that (especially if you update the OS) is to create
the first partition on the disk as less than 8 GB. So, if you have a
250 GB disk, you'd need 8 GB (or, preferably, 7.9 GB), then two 121 GB
partitions or whatever:

<http://www.penmachine.com/2002/12/working-around-macgb-limit.html>

The technical reasons for the 8 GB requirement (which is not present
in Mac OS 9) are interesting:

<http://www.macintouch.com/mosxreader10.2pt33.html>

--
Derek K. Miller - dkmillerpobox.com
Writer, Editor, Web Guy, Drummer, Dad - Vancouver, Canada
Penmachine Media Company | http://www.penmachine.com
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