733 QS G4 'sees' only 128gb of 250gb HD

[Blue Velvet]

This machine at work is used as a file server but can only access/recognise the first 128gb of the 250gb HD I put in there.

Although it was merely disappointing at first, it's now getting full...

What should I do?
(Can't trash files or the machine...BTW)

Have heard of ATA PCI cards -- do they exist for Mac?
Would one help in these circumstances?
Is it cost effective -- any recommended UK suppliers?

 

[Mechcozmo]

The chipset in that computer cannot see beyond 128GB. Known limitation of "large" drives and older computers.

If you get an ATA PCI card, you will not only have a faster ATA bus, but also the chipset on that should be able to see the entire 250GB. I know that they exist, but I can't tell you offhand where to get them...

And yes, it is much cheaper than having an expensive 250GB hard drive sitting with more than half of it useless!

A word of caution: Before installing the PCI card, back the entire thing up.
See, you more than likely didn't format the rest of the reset of the drive, just 128GB of it. The other 122GB of it are unformatted. You will need to reformat the entire drive. And this is a good excuse to catch up on those backups, right?

 

[Blue Velvet]

Thanks, Mechcozmo.

Fortunately, that drive is backed up every night to an external FW Lacie 320gb D2 so restoring the data shouldn't be a problem.

Now to find one somewhere at a reasonable price...

Later... Anyone had experience with the Sonnet Range of Tempo cards?
http://www.sonnettech.com/product/tempo_ata133.html

Apparently, there are firmware updates that need OS9 in a bootable form on your drive. Hmmm...

 

[Ikstej24]

I just installed a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 and it works great...much faster i might add on my Maxtor 160 gig 8mb cache 7600 rpm...one problem that arises is that apple system profiler under 10.3 does not see your drives but sees the card...this doesn't cause any problems because finder still see the drives as well as all disk utilities

 

[Blue Velvet]

I just installed a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 and it works great...much faster i might add on my Maxtor 160 gig 8mb cache 7600 rpm...one problem that arises is that apple system profiler under 10.3 does not see your drives but sees the card...this doesn't cause any problems because finder still see the drives as well as all disk utilities

Cheers. Very helpful...
Did you have to mess with the firmware or anything else?

 

[Ikstej24]

It was a simple plug and ready to go operation...I did have to do some moving around of my files b/c you have to reformat to get all the space recongized...the drive is recongnized in disk utility for the full amount of space right away but you have to reformat to be able to use it all...i used partitions

 

[evoluzione]

yeah, just stick in an ata/100 or ata/133 card. that G4 comes with an ata/66 bus and therefore can only recognise teh first 128GB of a drive. I've been using pci cards for years to get more capacity out of drives, even used a raid card which i would highly recommend, so much faster and more convenient to use (with two drives that is, stripe them and get one big big fast drive).

you shouldn't have any trouble whatsoever, disk utility will be fine.

 

[Mechcozmo]

yeah, just stick in an ata/100 or ata/133 card. that G4 comes with an ata/66 bus and therefore can only recognise teh first 128GB of a drive.

It isn't just the bus speed. It is the actual chipset used to access the drive. And go ATA/133 because that is the fastest speed possible. Better to spend a few bucks extra to get the better card. It doesn't need a lot of connections on it, just a basic card.

That card that you picked out will work fine, Blue Velvet. And your Mac supports OS 9 startup I recall, so it is just a matter of installing OS 9, running the update, and then doing a clean install of OS X over OS 9.

 

[Blue Velvet]

Thanks, guys.

Also (doubly-fortunately) the boot drive is not this drive. It's another internal 40gb 'System & Apps' drive with OS 10.3 & Retrospect for network backup & a couple of other utilities. There's nothing in the admin home folder at all.

I'll clone this drive, put OS 9 on it, do the firmware thang, and reclone it from the clone... cool.

 

[Mechcozmo]

I'll clone this drive, put OS 9 on it, do the firmware thang, and reclone it from the clone... cool.

And then need to reformat your 250GB drive... and then copy everything from your backup to it...
That is !