I noticed in the BTO section for the new powermacs, you can select 4 180gb drives. Does this mean that the ata 66 bus supports large capacity drives? I thought only the ATA 100 bus did. This is cool, cause you can buy them from places other than Apple for significantly less, and up to 250GB. Im stoked. Those WD2000 with 8mb cache look sweeter than ever if I wouldnt have to buy an ATA 133 card and route the cables over the heatsink...
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MDD towers and larger than 120gb hard drives?
- Thread starter WannabeSQ
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I always thought that the only difference is the data transfer speed.
That's because I've never heard of the max drive capacity limit. I remember that there was a limit in older Windows OS, but it was about the OS's disk format issue. Never heard of any limits in Mac OS since OS 6.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
That's because I've never heard of the max drive capacity limit. I remember that there was a limit in older Windows OS, but it was about the OS's disk format issue. Never heard of any limits in Mac OS since OS 6.
Please correct me if I'm wrong.
I think the issue is the bit addressing, and anything less than ata 133 was not able to address more than 137gb of data. Im not sure what magic apple did to the ata 100, and possibly the ata 66 as well, but its welcome. If not, a lot of people will be pissed when they order 4 180gb drives and find out 2 wont work unless they buy an ATA card.
WannabeSQ, you are right. ATA100 has 137GB limitation. But according to some info I found on the web just now, there seems to be some workaround for this. Maybe that's what Apple did.
Re: MDD towers and larger than 120gb hard drives?
ok boys let me clarify something for you. Everysingle MDD Power Mac can handle whatever jumbo drive your heart diseres. There has been much talk about the 137GB barrier or 48bit addressing. and 120GB being the largest that you could fit inside the new Power Macs.
First of, the reason why the original DDR Power Macs only offered 4 120GB drives for 480GB total inside is becuase Apple currently uses IBM hard drives. At the time IBMs hard drives top out at 120GB.
Recently they released a 180GB drive. And now apple offers up to 4 180GB drives inside. So apple obviously can break the 137GB barrier and each ata controller can handle jumbo drives. I have the original 1.25 DP G4 and I poped in a 200GB Westen Digital 8MB buffer drive into one of my ATA-66 controllers. and i have 186Gb from it.
So go out there and buy you large drives, they will all work with your new Power Macs. Ohh and don't buy the WD 200Gb Drivezilla right now, WD is coming out with a 250GB 7200 RPM drive in a month or so. So if you can hold out for a little longer you'll get the fastest drive out on the market.
Tyler
ok boys let me clarify something for you. Everysingle MDD Power Mac can handle whatever jumbo drive your heart diseres. There has been much talk about the 137GB barrier or 48bit addressing. and 120GB being the largest that you could fit inside the new Power Macs.
First of, the reason why the original DDR Power Macs only offered 4 120GB drives for 480GB total inside is becuase Apple currently uses IBM hard drives. At the time IBMs hard drives top out at 120GB.
Recently they released a 180GB drive. And now apple offers up to 4 180GB drives inside. So apple obviously can break the 137GB barrier and each ata controller can handle jumbo drives. I have the original 1.25 DP G4 and I poped in a 200GB Westen Digital 8MB buffer drive into one of my ATA-66 controllers. and i have 186Gb from it.
So go out there and buy you large drives, they will all work with your new Power Macs. Ohh and don't buy the WD 200Gb Drivezilla right now, WD is coming out with a 250GB 7200 RPM drive in a month or so. So if you can hold out for a little longer you'll get the fastest drive out on the market.
Tyler
Tyler,
What sector size did you end up with for the big drive?
It's doubtful it would have a 4kb sector size, since it's should have bumped up against the maximum number of sectors the current file system can handle, and boosted the sector size to compensate - but it's been a long time since we made the switch to HFS+ and I can't remember the limits the file system had.
But the drives are big enough that it's past time for a new file system again...
What sector size did you end up with for the big drive?
It's doubtful it would have a 4kb sector size, since it's should have bumped up against the maximum number of sectors the current file system can handle, and boosted the sector size to compensate - but it's been a long time since we made the switch to HFS+ and I can't remember the limits the file system had.
But the drives are big enough that it's past time for a new file system again...
formatting
Why the heck do you lose so much space on your hard drive when it is formatted?
I have a 5 gig iPod, and when it is formatted, I get 4.6 gigs of space. Thats 400 megabytes!!!!!!(in other words, a lot of songs!!!!!)
Why does formatting take up so much space?
Why the heck do you lose so much space on your hard drive when it is formatted?
I have a 5 gig iPod, and when it is formatted, I get 4.6 gigs of space. Thats 400 megabytes!!!!!!(in other words, a lot of songs!!!!!)
Why does formatting take up so much space?
Tyler,
I probably should have asked...
When you save a small file -- like a text file with one single letter in it -- how big is this file?
On the 200GB drive...
HFS+ has a limit on how many blocks of data it can keep track of, and thus once it's reached the maximum number of chunks it can keep track of -- it needs to grow the size of the chunks.
I probably should have asked...
When you save a small file -- like a text file with one single letter in it -- how big is this file?
On the 200GB drive...
HFS+ has a limit on how many blocks of data it can keep track of, and thus once it's reached the maximum number of chunks it can keep track of -- it needs to grow the size of the chunks.
Re: formatting
It's because of the way the drive is actually sized rather than advertised. The fine print will show you this. It's like (1GB=1000K) for the advertised but it's actually different than that when you format it.
From the iPod site:
(2)_ 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
It seems that with drives getting to be the size that they are (200+GB) pretty soon this statement will have to change for the general public. I mean, sheesh, there is a HUGE difference between 200 and 186 GB.
Regards,
Gus
It's because of the way the drive is actually sized rather than advertised. The fine print will show you this. It's like (1GB=1000K) for the advertised but it's actually different than that when you format it.
From the iPod site:
(2)_ 1GB = 1 billion bytes; actual formatted capacity less.
It seems that with drives getting to be the size that they are (200+GB) pretty soon this statement will have to change for the general public. I mean, sheesh, there is a HUGE difference between 200 and 186 GB.
Regards,
Gus
Originally posted by Sun Baked
Tyler,
I probably should have asked...
When you save a small file -- like a text file with one single letter in it -- how big is this file?
On the 200GB drive...
HFS+ has a limit on how many blocks of data it can keep track of, and thus once it's reached the maximum number of chunks it can keep track of -- it needs to grow the size of the chunks.
ok on my 120GB IBM stock Hard Drive the text file is 4KB (286bytes)
and on the 200GB WD drive its 4KB (288bytes)
Tyler
Originally posted by Sun Baked
Tyler,
I probably should have asked...
When you save a small file -- like a text file with one single letter in it -- how big is this file?
On the 200GB drive...
HFS+ has a limit on how many blocks of data it can keep track of, and thus once it's reached the maximum number of chunks it can keep track of -- it needs to grow the size of the chunks.
I think the limit that you are referring to with HFS+ was nearly illiminated with the move to OSX. I believe the HFS+ file system was modified slightly to work with the unix file system. This I believe is the core reason that OS9.x was needed to run in classic mode.
HFS+ under OS 8.x had a 4.3 billion block limit, but trying to run that many blocks and a 100+ thousand files would slow down the system file access to a crawl under 8.x or 9.x.
And I'm too lazy to look back and see what was said about the transition in OS X.
But it's a little hard to move forward away from HFS+ while machines are still being sold with OS 9 boot capability (and/or a 32-bit processor).
I finally found it block sizes (512b, 1kb, 2kb, 4kb) with 1GB-2TB drives formatted at the block size of 4kb.
We're already bumping into the 4GB memory limit, and the HD limit is just around the corner.
Should be interesting to see if HFS+ is extended or everyone will switch to a 64-bit version.
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Put that down to mixing up the ever swelling block size of HFS with the current HFS+ capabilities.
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Added ...
Looks like all MDD Macs may have been revised to take advantage of the larger drives
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178
Should be interesting to see what happens with the file system... soon.