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Is there a 128gb limit on hard drives in iBook G3's?

California

California

macrumors 68040
Original poster
Aug 21, 2004
3,885
90
A friend of mine has a rare thing... a 14" iBook (mid 2002) 700mhz G3 that had a failed hard drive since he bought it. It was stored away for nearly five years until I came along. Apple apparently did not realize all it was, was a bad 30gb hard drive OEM. So the screen is perfect, and so is the case -- like opening something from a time machine.

Anyway, I replaced it last year with a 80 gig toshiba for him and now he wants to "max it out" with the 250 gb Western Digital ATA IDE laptop drive.

Then I remembered there might be some 128gig limit on the internal hard drive on the mid 2002 iBooks?

Could not find anything anywhere. Anyone know?
 
alphaod

alphaod

macrumors Core
Feb 9, 2008
22,183
1,245
NYC
Not that I can recall. I replaced the drive on a friend's computer and it was fine.
 
NewMacbookPlz

NewMacbookPlz

macrumors 68040
Sep 28, 2008
3,266
0
California said:
A friend of mine has a rare thing... a 14" iBook (mid 2002) 700mhz G3 that had a failed hard drive since he bought it. It was stored away for nearly five years until I came along. Apple apparently did not realize all it was, was a bad 30gb hard drive OEM. So the screen is perfect, and so is the case -- like opening something from a time machine.

Anyway, I replaced it last year with a 80 gig toshiba for him and now he wants to "max it out" with the 250 gb Western Digital ATA IDE laptop drive.

Then I remembered there might be some 128gig limit on the internal hard drive on the mid 2002 iBooks?

Could not find anything anywhere. Anyone know?
Click to expand...

I think what you're thinking of was the theoretical upper limit that PC BIOS systems had with hard drives. That was overcome with a simple software trick, hence our drives being above 128GB now.
 
TDM21

TDM21

macrumors 6502a
Jul 7, 2004
789
0
Its a valid concern. PowerMacs before the 2002 Quicksilver edition did not support 48-bit LBA in the IDE controller. That limited the system to only being able to detect 138GB. One would hope that Apple also added 48-bit LBA support to the iBook during 2002.

I say go and try installing the 250GB drive. If it doesn't work then send it back and get a 120GB drive instead.
 
sickmacdoc

sickmacdoc

macrumors 68020
Jun 14, 2008
2,035
1
New Hampshire
Not a definitive answer, but I believe it is subject to the 128Gb limit. While almost impossible to find a clear answer (and I have been trying), I found that the OWC applicable drives for all models of G3 iBooks are either 80Gb or 120Gb, while applicable drives for all iBook models that use G4 processors are shown as up to 250Gb. That is not proof, but pretty convincing evidence as the OWC listings are usually right up to speed.
 
Korovka

Korovka

macrumors member
Feb 6, 2009
32
0
California said:
Then I remembered there might be some 128gig limit on the internal hard drive on the mid 2002 iBooks?

Could not find anything anywhere. Anyone know?
Click to expand...

I read somewhere that there is a limit, but don't remember exactly, how much. I believe the max HDD size that you can buy is 120 GB (but it is not 100% truth). I bought Seagate 120 GB ATA HDD for my iBook G3 800Mhz 12", and it works fine. It's hard to find ATA drives nowadays.
 
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