Macbook Pro HDD Sizing issues

[ShiftyWesty]

Hi Guys and Girls.

I've recently bought a 320GB Seagate SATA drive (ST320LT023, although strangely can't find it on there site under that) to upgrade the current 80GB drive in my Macbook Pro.

Swapped the drive in and booted off of the OS X install CD, ran the Disk Utility to format HDD but it reports it back as 2.33TB and will not format. Checked it under Windows and it returns it as described, 320GB and the same model number.

I replaced the 80GB original drive and it worked fine so I'm guessing the controller is working, my question is it an old legacy hardware limitation where the drive cannot be larger than 120GB?

 

[awer25]

I know there is that 128GB limitation with FAT, but I don't know about the Mac file system limitations. Do you have another drive you could try?

 

[ShiftyWesty]

Yes, I've put in another 120GB drive (Seagate again) from another laptop and this has detected fine and has now finished installing. The thing I don't get is that the 320GB HDD is working fine as far as Windows (Vista) is concerned.

So it's neither the HDD or the Macbook faulting but beyond some sort of hardware limitation on size I can't point my finger at what can be causing it.

I will be trying to clone the 120 to the 320 and see if I can get it to work that way but I'm not sure if I'm really going to have any further success getting the Disk utilities to detect the correct HDD via USB then by the SATA interface.

 

[GGJstudios]

I know there is that 128GB limitation with FAT, but I don't know about the Mac file system limitations. Do you have another drive you could try?

FAT32 supports a maximum volume of 2TB, not 128GB.

FAT32 (File Allocation Table)

• Read/Write FAT32 from both native Windows and native Mac OS X.
• Maximum file size: 4GB.
• Maximum volume size: 2TB

NTFS (Windows NT File System)

• Read/Write NTFS from native Windows.
• Read only NTFS from native Mac OS X
• To Read/Write/Format NTFS from Mac OS X: Install NTFS-3G for Mac OS X (free)
• Some have reported problems using Tuxera (approx 33USD).
• Native NTFS support can be enabled in Snow Leopard, but is not advisable, due to instability.
• AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support NTFS
• Maximum file size: 16 TB
• Maximum volume size: 256TB

HFS+ (Hierarchical File System, a.k.a. Mac OS Extended)

• Read/Write HFS+ from native Mac OS X
• Required for Time Machine or Carbon Copy Cloner backups of Mac internal hard drive.
• To Read/Write HFS+ from Windows, Install MacDrive
• To Read HFS+ (but not Write) from Windows, Install HFSExplorer
• Maximum file size: 8EiB
• Maximum volume size: 8EiB

exFAT (FAT64)

• Supported in Mac OS X only in 10.6.5 or later.
• Not all Windows versions support exFAT. See disadvantages.
• exFAT (Extended File Allocation Table)
• AirPort Extreme (802.11n) and Time Capsule do not support exFAT
• Maximum file size: 16 EiB
• Maximum volume size: 64 ZiB