Max Hard Drive Size (PowerPC OS X 10.5)

What is the max hard drive size (for a non boot drive) on a PowerPC running OS X 10.5? I'm getting mixed results when searching online. Is it 2.2TB, or can I get up to 3TB?

I ask because I have two 3TB hard drives set up in RAID 1. It seems to be working and verify disk says that the drives are "OK." However, I want to make sure that this is stable before I start using it heavily.

This is why I ask. A number of years ago, I was able to get a 200GB drive to work on Windows XP (before to SP1), when there was a 137GB limit. However, I learned a big lesson when I came to find that data written past the boundary line would wrap around to the front of the file system and overwrite existing files. I'm sure you can see why I'd prefer to avoid this again.

Sorry, here are the specs.

Mactracker Details

Project Name: Cypher
Introduced: October 2005
Discontinued: August 2006
Model Identifier: PowerMac11,2
Model Number: A1117 (2.0 GHz)
Order Number: M9590LL/A (2.0 GHz), M9591LL/A (2.3 GHz), M9592LL/A (dual 2.5 GHz)
Support Status: Vintage
Weight and Dimensions: 44.5 - 48.8 lbs., 20.1" H x 8.1" W x 18.7" D

Processor: PowerPC 970MP (G5)
Processor Speed: 2.0, 2.3, or dual 2.5 GHz
Number of Cores: 2 per processor
Cache: 64K (instruction), 32K (data) L1, 1MB L2 per core
System Bus: 1.0, 1.15, or dual 1.25 GHz

Intell said:

If you format the drive with GUID, not bootable in a PPC Mac, you can put in any drive size currently on the market.

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Currently, the two 3TB hard drives (RAID 1) are using the Apple Partition Map scheme. I know that this is old school, but can I leave it like this, or does it need to be reformatted with GUID.

666sheep said:

OP, if you don't mind, please post a screenshot of this HDD in DU, especially partition scheme. It's second time on MR when someone did partition over 2.2TB with APM (what seems to be impossible APM specs-wise).

I second Intell's advice: reformat the to GUID if you want to be sure that data written over 2.2TB will be safe.

Click to expand...

Sorry, I already reformatted the drives to GUID. I had a problem with this before, but it worked fine now. The drives were indeed in Apple Partition Map. I'm not sure how the heck it was done, but it was. The weird thing was, when I looked at the individual drives they both had two partitions. One was something like 256MB (I can't remember) and the other was the remaining was the 3TB. Weird.

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Intell said:

I don't know how you were even able to format those drives as APM. Disk Utility won't do it. I strongly advise you to change them to GUID.

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Also, this was done in disk utility. I really wish that I could post a picture, as I agree that this definitely sounds dubious.