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Seritek 1s2 maximum drive size

uller6

uller6

macrumors 65816
Original poster
May 14, 2010
1,125
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I've got a Seritek 1s2 2x SATA 1.5 PCI card in my MDD G4. Currently I have a 1T drive on each bus, but I'm looking to upgrade. Since the price of 3T drives has come down quite a bit, I'm wondering if I can run these in my MDD. Has anyone tried to run a drive larger than 2T on one of these cards?
 
I have the 1S2 also. I doubt it has a limit, as the only storage controller limits ive seen were old IDE limits to 128GB. I dont think you will have any issue other then maybe setting jumpers to support the SATA1 speeds on the drive itself, as it wont run at SATA3 speed.
 
I'm wondering because a lot of enclosures seem to specify "2T limit." I'm not sure if this is some kind of physical limit in as to how much the controller can address, or if drives bigger than this weren't available when the controller came to market.
 
Yeah, I'd go ahead and at least try it, at the worst you can just return the drive. I've never seen anyone here on the forums with a problem like this, and I've been here a while.
 
uller6 said:
I've got a Seritek 1s2 2x SATA 1.5 PCI card in my MDD G4. Currently I have a 1T drive on each bus, but I'm looking to upgrade. Since the price of 3T drives has come down quite a bit, I'm wondering if I can run these in my MDD. Has anyone tried to run a drive larger than 2T on one of these cards?
Click to expand...

You are going to run into problems with 3TB drives if you use APM because the maximum partition size is 2TB. That is, you can't use a 3TB for a boot drive on a PowerPC Mac. It's a limit of the address space for that partition scheme. Not a bad run for a scheme that was devised circa 1983.

If it's just storage, partition it as a GPT drive and go on your merry way.
 
Thanks for the tip SuperJudge - I didn't realize the partition limit for APM. Since these are data drives I think I'll just go ahead and pull the trigger. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works.
 
uller6 said:
Thanks for the tip SuperJudge - I didn't realize the partition limit for APM. Since these are data drives I think I'll just go ahead and pull the trigger. Keeping my fingers crossed that everything works.
Click to expand...

Yeah, if they're data drives, then go for it. Partition them up as GPT and you should be good to go. Best of luck!
 
Update - No Go

So I finally decided to pull the trigger on that 3 Tb drive. Unfortunately, even formatted as a GPT drive the SeriTek only reads the drive as 800 Mb. When I plug the drive in to my external enclosure it reads correctly as 3 Tb.

I guess it will have to stay external.
 
uller6 said:
So I finally decided to pull the trigger on that 3 Tb drive. Unfortunately, even formatted as a GPT drive the SeriTek only reads the drive as 800 Mb. When I plug the drive in to my external enclosure it reads correctly as 3 Tb.

I guess it will have to stay external.
Click to expand...

What kind of drive is it? Does it have jumpers to enable SATA 150mbs only operation?
 
It's a controller thing IMO. IIRC 1s2 uses Sil3112 and this one has troubles with 3TB drives even on a PC.
 
666sheep said:
It's a controller thing IMO. IIRC 1s2 uses Sil3112 and this one has troubles with 3TB drives even on a PC.
Click to expand...

Would it work with an adapter on the ATA100 bus? I'm using a 2TB with an adapter and I honestly don't see much difference in performance between the MDD's ATA100 and a Firmtek 1S2. I've seen claims of people using 3TB drives with an adapter in an MDD, but I don't recall mention of the specific chipset used in the adapter.

Edit (found link): http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21535

Re: MDD FW800 G4 max hard drive capacity?

Postby waynestewart » 13 Jul 2013, 05:26
This made me curious and I had 1tb and 3tb Seagate drives siting on the table
Using an IDE to SATA adapter I connected them to a MDDs ide bus.
They both showed up on the desktop. I could read and write to them.
This was a FW800 MDD running 10.5.8
Click to expand...
 
I didn't try personally with 3TB, so I can't tell with 100% certainty. I've used Marvell 88A8040 based adapters in my Macs on ATA 100 bus and there was no performance hit, at least noticeable one.
 
@ uller6:

from my experience with a 3TB Toshiba, even, if you use GUID and only use it as a data drive, you will have to stay at 10.5! 10.4 will cause troubles.

I tested a 2,5TB WD as well, although WD says it is ok, with GUID under 10.4, as long as you use 10.5 to format it. Well, it works, internally, but never use that in an external enclosure under 10.4.

Also, I had 4x 1TB in a Inxtron Hydra as JBOD, 10.4 recognized only 2TB externally, while it will see multiple 1-Bay enclosures with 2TB dirves in it.
 
Cox, is that with your G4 and the Sonnet SATA card that you mentioned in the other thread? Is it the Sonnet version of the same card that we're talking about here or a different card?
 
Yes.

It is the purple 32bit Sonnet Card with 2 SATA-Ports. It is recognized as SeriTek/1S2 v. 5.3.1b1, 11/02/07. Type: ATA.

The same happens, when those drives are connected to my Macally Card (32bit, 2 ports) and a "PC" 64bit, 4port PCI-X Card with SIL3124.

The Macally is seen as:
XRack SUA-100 Rev.1.1, Type: SCSI
(it is the only card of the three that shows me SMART readings, but it also does not see every Drive. If I want to know the SMART of other drives, I connect the SATA-drives via SATA-IDE adapter to the Macally Card, which has additional ATA-133 (plus 2x SATA), and then I can read SMART.)

The SIL3124 is seen as:
pci1095,7124. Type: RAID-Controller

(RAID is not jumpered at the moment.)


PS: the problem in my other Thread has "improved" even more, since this morning. I backed up the files and now, when I try to partition it in any way under 10.5 it says "operation time out".) After several attempts I now let the Mac sit for a (longer) while and when the Toshiba partitions show up in Finder, I open Disc utility. Now partitioning works. I let it as one 3TB partition and will use it only under 10.5 and see, if it lasts.
 
Last edited:
uller6 said:
So I finally decided to pull the trigger on that 3 Tb drive. Unfortunately, even formatted as a GPT drive the SeriTek only reads the drive as 800 Mb. When I plug the drive in to my external enclosure it reads correctly as 3 Tb.

I guess it will have to stay external.
Click to expand...

So, you had the same as me. Something like 800GB will be shown with 3TB drives, with my 2,5TB I had 280GB shown. But the funny thing is you have it vice versa.
I can see the 3TB internally, but get 800GB in an external enclosure.


I said WD says it is no problem. Here is Hitachi saying the same, even mentioning the 700+GB appearance:
http://www.hgst.com/support/faqs (look third line and expand).

Hm, curious why that does not function. Maybe they forget the Advanced format part, that is mentioned at macstrategy as an issue that might cause problems.


Here is the WD stuff, in variations:
1. http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...rive-on-windows-(8,-7,-vista,-xp)-and-mac-osx
2. http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...-tb-do-not-work-on-existing-operating-systems
3. http://www.wdc.com/global/products/features/?id=6&language=1
4. http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers...-external-drive-on-a-computer-running-mac-osx


EDIT: uller6, what firmware does your card have and what OS do you use? Also, I did not use any jumpers.
 
Last edited:
Swampus said:
(...) I'm using a 2TB with an adapter and I honestly don't see much difference in performance between the MDD's ATA100 and a Firmtek 1S2. I've seen claims of people using 3TB drives with an adapter in an MDD, but I don't recall mention of the specific chipset used in the adapter.

Edit (found link): http://68kmla.org/forums/viewtopic.php?f=13&t=21535
Click to expand...

666sheep said:
I didn't try personally with 3TB, so I can't tell with 100% certainty. I've used Marvell 88A8040 based adapters in my Macs on ATA 100 bus and there was no performance hit, at least noticeable one.
Click to expand...

I started a thread about benchmarks and real life speeds of SATA-PCI cards in Macs. At the time, 666sheep, you questioned, why I even bring it up, because people would use benchmarks, to have the same basis on which they compare.

The fact that both of you (well ok, you use an adapter) did not see any performance hit justifies my question in retrospective. The link Swampus posted has benchmarks and again you see drives that all claim to get between 85-102MB/s.

Until today I found one member here that had the same 40MB/s as I had via the Sonnet 1S2. I have a 64bit PCI-X "PC"-card now and it gives me 60MB/s. It MUST be the 32bit of the Sonnet/Seritek (and Macally Card) in real life scenarios. I understand your point that you can't compare on the basis of different files used for the copying.
 
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