La Cie La Cinema write limit

[mutantteenager]

Hi there

I have a Lacie La Cinema Rugged 320GB which I've been using with my iMac G5 1.8GHz. For some unknown reason, it will only write up to 127GB and then go no further.

I thought this was a 'big disk support' issue which used to plague my old G4 tower. But that was resolved towards the end of the product line, and shouldn't really be a problem on a G5.

Since I first bought the drive as a workaround, I've had to rip on my mac and then transfer it onto another drive, and then use a Windows XP machine to copy onto the La Cinema, which works, but is way to long a process and slow.

Any ideas how to get this running exclusively on my mac?

Thanks in advance

 

[Makosuke]

Sounds like maybe there's something wrong with the disk format. Since you're using it with XP as well, I assume it's formatted as FAT (usually the factory default) and maybe you never reformatted it after buying it. FAT (and the MacOS) shouldn't have problem with large disks, but perhaps something went wrong along the line somewhere.

Unfortunately, according to the tech specs of the current model, the Rugged version doesn't support HFS+, only FAT or NTFS (too bad--some of the other models do support HFS+, which if you only want to use it with the Mac would by far be the best option).

Therefore, the first thing to try is to reformat it as FAT32, and see if that fixes the issue (you'll need to wipe it, of course). I'm not familiar with the LaCinema drives, so I'm not sure if you can just use Disk Utility or if you need to use some special utility to format it, but if you can use Disk Utility that would be the way to go.

If that doesn't fix it, not sure what could be wrong, although you could try installing one of the 3rd party NTFS read/write support options (some are free), formatting it as NTFS, and seeing if that works.

 

[mutantteenager]

Thanks Makosuke for your advice. I tried a format after painfully copying 200GB+ onto another drive. Formatted using Disk Utility, FAT 32. Still fails at 128GB.

I think this drive should be marketed as PC only. Lacie support are completely useless when I queried them originally. Going to sell it on, I really can't be bothered anymore.