[legionare]

Just bought a 180gb western digital drive, plus a firewire/usb2 enclosure. BUT, after hooking it up via firewire, my Pismo only lets me format it to 127.2gb. I'm aware of the ata66/100 limitation of 137gb.

1) Did I really lose nearly 10gb to the 1000->1024 conversion?

2) Can anyone recommenda a cheaper alternative or source for ata6 firewire enclosure capable of seeing more than 137gb? I know this one already but it's kinda expensive:

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_It...em=OWCMEFWATA6

After acquiring the said ata6 firewire enclosure above, I would be able to reformat my 127.2gb drive to its full 180gb (or whatever capacity after the 1024bits=1byte conversion), right?

3) According to this doc:
http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/jumpers.asp,
I need two "jumper shunts" to achieve the Single (neutral position), right? The drive came with only one jumper shunt, inserted vertically in pins 1 & 2, on the far right. That seems to be the "Cable Select" position. But since the 4-hole jumper cable is too short, I moved the shunt to pins 5 & 6 [vertically] and left the 4-hole jumper unplugged. This is the Dual (Master) config, right? Is there any harm in leaving the jumper hanging? Would any of these jumper settings have made it possible to see the full 180gb instead of just 137/127gb?

Thanks.

[TimmyDee51]

The new case should let you see all 180 GB (or however many after formatting). Firewire is not limited by the same ATA restrictions, but obviously the case is.

I did some math and found out that your drive should have 133 GB visible after formatting, so the 127 must be the limitation of the case.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally posted by legionare:
Just bought a 180gb western digital drive, plus a firewire/usb2 enclosure. BUT, after hooking it up via firewire, my Pismo only lets me format it to 127.2gb. I'm aware of the ata66/100 limitation of 137gb.

1) Did I really lose nearly 10gb to the 1000->1024 conversion?

Quite possible. My 61Gb hard drive on my new PowerBook only has 55.88Gb actual disk space using 1kB = 1024B. I got this information from the Apple System Profiler. Try run the System Profiler and check the sizes with both calculation.

[dreilly1]

Originally posted by veryniceguy2002:


Quite possible. My 61Gb hard drive on my new PowerBook only has 55.88Gb actual disk space using 1kB = 1024B. I got this information from the Apple System Profiler. Try run the System Profiler and check the sizes with both calculation.

That 1000 to 1024 translation may only work in OS 10.2 . I don't think I ever saw it in 10.1 or earlier.

[legionare]

I can confirm Disk Utility in OS X sees the drive as 137xxxxxxxx bits or 128Gbytes. So yeah, I did lose 9+ gigabytes to the 1000=>1024 conversion. Ouch!

I suspect my current FW/USB2 enclosure (FW chipset is Oxford 911) may only need a firmware flash upgrade to recognize >137GB. Here's a 200gb FW drive on ebay:

http://cgi.ebay.com/ws/eBayISAPI.dll...em=2082704466,

which looks exactly like mine except mine has an extra USB2 (type 2) port on the back.

Also, while I've ordered OWC's ATA6 FW enclosure, I wonder if it's truly ATA6-compliant. I mean they make a big deal about the case's ability to use Maxtor 250GB and IBM/Western Digital 180GB/200GB drives, but make no mention about whether the case works with the even bigger Maxtor 320GB or IBM/WD's upcoming drives.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally posted by legionare:
I can confirm Disk Utility in OS X sees the drive as 137xxxxxxxx bits or 128Gbytes. So yeah, I did lose 9+ gigabytes to the 1000=>1024 conversion. Ouch!

Most people thought 1kB=1024B only mean that there is only 2.4% difference... wrong!

The Apple way to stating hard drive capacity also means 1Mb=1000kB (in fact it should be 1024kB or 1048576B), almost a 5% difference. Any capacity mentioned in Gb range would have an about 7.4% difference in true capacity. Eventually when one day Apple start marketing hard disk in Tetrabyte range it would have close to 10% difference from the true capacity!!!!

On a better side, Apple are still quoting memory size using 1024B=1kB :-)

[legionare]

I'm happy to report I got the OWC enclosure and it indeed allowed me to format the drive to 167.66GB!

[motti]

Originally posted by legionare:
So yeah, I did lose 9+ gigabytes to the 1000=>1024 conversion. Ouch!

I don't exactly see why people talk about "losing" hd space, I see it the same way as on amplifiers, some state 1000w, but converting it to watt rms, that would be less than 500w.. it is just another number but the same "amount".

[legionare]

Originally posted by motti:
I don't exactly see why people talk about "losing" hd space, I see it the same way as on amplifiers, some state 1000w, but converting it to watt rms, that would be less than 500w.. it is just another number but the same "amount".

But, like veryniceguy2002 has mentioned, RAM sizes still get quoted using the 1024bytes=1kbyte rate. Then why the inconsistency when it comes to measuring/advertising hard drive storage capacity? I really don't mind it, but I'm sure almost everyone felt "cheated" to some extent the first time they realized this little marketing gimmick.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by legionare:
After acquiring the said ata6 firewire enclosure above, I would be able to reformat my 127.2gb drive to its full 180gb (or whatever capacity after the 1024bits=1byte conversion), right?

1 byte is 8 bits. 1024 bits would then be 128 bytes.

[thesearcher]

The HD makers are probably using it as a marketing gimmick, but they are right anyway. As you said, what is irritating about it is that other components use kilo, mega etc. to represent binary form. It is yet another reason to abolish the floppy. ("Disk is full. Please try another disk." )

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally posted by motti:
I don't exactly see why people talk about "losing" hd space, I see it the same way as on amplifiers, some state 1000w, but converting it to watt rms, that would be less than 500w.. it is just another number but the same "amount".

You cannot really quote amplifer power output in RMS... it's because RMS power does depend of the output waveform, therefore quoting RMS for an amplifier in this case would end up being misleading! Therefore normally manufacturer would quote it using the maximum peak power, which is the maximum current output under the rated voltage output.

Sorry, motti, I'm not trying to give you a hard time here, but I just need to put the facts right.

[veryniceguy2002]

Originally posted by legionare:
But, like veryniceguy2002 has mentioned, RAM sizes still get quoted using the 1024bytes=1kbyte rate. Then why the inconsistency when it comes to measuring/advertising hard drive storage capacity? I really don't mind it, but I'm sure almost everyone felt "cheated" to some extent the first time they realized this little marketing gimmick.

Yeap. I would agree with it.

There is a special meaning with 1kb = 1024b in Electrical/Electronic Engineering. 1024 = 2^10, and that means during a circuit design, in order to address 1Kb of memory you will need to have an address bus with 10 bit bus width. Likewise to address 1Mb you will need 20 bit (for 2^20 addresses) and for 1Gb you will need 30 bit address bus (for 2^30 addresses). These are fundamental facts in EE, and I don't understand why Apple redefine these things for pure marketing reasons

[thesearcher]

Apple is just following the industry. ie. 1 kB = 1000 B for HDs (which is correct)
1 kB = 1024 B for ram (seems correct, but actually isn't)
Where the confusion comes from is that some parts of the industry are using metric, and others using metric when they really mean binary. I have little doubt the HD makers are using this to their advantage, but if anyone protests, they can just say they were using the correct terminology all along, which they are.

[motti]

Originally posted by veryniceguy2002:
You cannot really quote amplifer power output in RMS... it's because RMS power does depend of the output waveform, therefore quoting RMS for an amplifier in this case would end up being misleading! Therefore normally manufacturer would quote it using the maximum peak power, which is the maximum current output under the rated voltage output.

Sorry, motti, I'm not trying to give you a hard time here, but I just need to put the facts right.

I think you're right, it would be too easy of a conversion...