[ginop1]

I got a Maxtor FireWire drive Tuesday. Let me tell you the steps that I took.

Having been told that the Mac OS 9.2 should recognize FireWire drives automatically, I tried initializing the drive with the Drive Setup software from Mac OS 9.2. The "initialize" button was greyed out. I therefore installed the Maxtor drivers. When I double-clicked on the Maxtor FireWire Utility I got the following message:

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No supported device found! Please install the "Maxtor FireWire Support" or "FireSCSI"driver(s) using the Maxtor installer and restart.
-----------------------------------------------------------------------

I did have the Maxtor FireWire Support drive installed. I tried again, however, I got the same message as above. I had to switch to Mac OS X to do something. Apple's Drive Utility ran automatically and gave me the option to initialize the drive with partitioning if I wanted (Another reason to love Mac OS X). When I initialized the drive I made sure that the "Install Mac OS 9" drivers was enabled. The drive showed up and worked perfectly in Mac OS X. I then switched back to Mac OS 9.2 and the Maxtor did not show up. I tried it with and without the Maxtor FireWire driver. Any idea on how I can get the drive to show up in Mac OS 9.2?

By the way, the Maxtor, which is supposed to be 160GBs, was really 152.4GBs. Any idea on how to reclaim the other 7.6GBs? Could it be because the drive is originally formatted for PCs?

[zigzag]

I don't know, but it might have something to do with the fact that most systems are only configured to deal with a maximum of 120 GB (I don't know all the technical mumbo-jumbo - something to do with the IDE/ATA interface). Of course, I guess this wouldn't explain why it works in OS X but not OS 9. Just trying to come up with ideas.

I also saw a warning a couple of weeks ago at the FireWire Depot site about incompatibility of the Maxtor 160 GB, said they were working on a fix. Don't know if this problem was with the drive alone or the FW version, and don't know if the warning is still there.

I have also seen mention of an incompatibility between Maxtors and CD burner extensions. Check the comments at www.barefeats.com

I know that Maxtor has a fairly large Mac troubleshooting database at their website, you might check there.

Don't know what to tell you about the missing 7.6 GB, other than the fact that the actual usable space on most drives is lower than the advertised space.

[bradoesch]

Even thought they advertised the drive as 120 GB, in reality it's much less (as you've discovered already) Here's why:

Maxtor (and other manufacturers) claim that a megabyte (MB) is 1000 kilobytes (KB). In reality, 1 MB is 1024 KB (everything is base 2 in the binary system). After their lousy calculations, you'll find you loose a lot of space on your drive. Also, formatting the drive takes some space as well.

My "10 GB" hard drive that came in my iMac only had 9.5 GB of usable space. My 40 GB FireWire drive only has 38 GB of usable space. So you can see the higher you go, the more space you loose.

Brad

[warnergt]

I have the exact same problem with a 120 Gig
Maxtor drive installed internally.
I just got it this weekend. It works fine
with OS X but OS 9 does not recognize it.
Also, OS 9 doesn't want to shut down
with this drive installed.

[warnergt]

Ooops. My problem was not the same.
I discovered that when you initialize a
drive with OS X, it provides an option to
install OS 9 drivers. I didn't select
that option and OS 9 couldn't see the
drive.

I find it odd that HFS+ for OS X is not
the same as HFS+ for OS 9.

[bradoesch]

Originally posted by warnergt:
Ooops. My problem was not the same.
I discovered that when you initialize a
drive with OS X, it provides an option to
install OS 9 drivers. I didn't select
that option and OS 9 couldn't see the
drive.

I find it odd that HFS+ for OS X is not
the same as HFS+ for OS 9.

The filesystem is the same whether it be X or 9, but it's the drivers that differ. That's how I see it anyway.