[robbyx]

Hello everyone,

I have an old G4 tower (dual 533 w/ 1.125 GB RAM) that I'd like to turn into a home server. I have a lot of media files I want to store, so I need a BIG hard drive (or two or three...). I know that the G4's built-in IDE controller won't recognize drives larger than 120 GB.

However, today I was at CompUSA and the Apple rep talked me out of buying a 400 GB Seagate IDE drive. He said that even with a new PCI-based controller, the Mac cannot see any drives larger than 250 GB. Is this true???

Thanks!

-Rob

[SMacTech]

I don't know about your G4, but mine sure as heck sees more than 132GB. Check your system profiler and under the ATA section, you need ATA-6 to break this barrier.

AFAIK, you can add a PCI ATA-6 controller and overcome this built-in limitation of EARLY G4s.

[reader50]

Originally posted by robbyx:
...
He said that even with a new PCI-based controller, the Mac cannot see any drives larger than 250 GB. Is this true???
...

This is false. You do need to check the specs on the PCI controller. Older ones may be limited to 128 GB (137 GB decimal). Most today have 48-bit LBA, which means unlimited size support for all practical purposes. The actual limit is 2^57 bytes, or 128 petabytes, which you won't be reaching anytime soon.

If you get the Intech ATA6 driver ($25) for earlier G4s, you can recognize larger drives using the onboard controllers. There are some limitations, so read the readme before trying this solution.

If you buy your larger HD from Other World Computing, you can get an OEM copy of the Intech driver for $15. OWC seems to indicate that you also get a copy of the Intech Speedtools for OS9, which might be very useful. You'd need those to make the larger drives workable from OS9 also. Their ATA6 driver alone works with just OSX. Classic is covered by OSX, you'd need the OS9 Speedtools only for booting into 9 natively from big disks on the onboard controllers.

A PCI controller card should work with OS9 and OSX without any special limitations.

[MORT A POTTY]

no, they can see drives larger than 250GB, that guy is a tool.

I'd suggest an SATA 150 PCI card though.

[robbyx]

He said that the OS does not recognize drives larger than 250. He wasn't talking about the controller card, just that OS X won't really play nice with drives larger than 250.

Before I take the plunge ;-), are some of you actually using drives larger than 250? I was thinking about picking up two new Seagate 400 GB IDE drives. I'll check into the recommended driver and check my G4's IDE version too.

Thanks!

-Rob

[Scotttheking]

Those 400GB seagate drives are nice. And here's a pair for a good price.
You just need an ATA133 card to go with one.

[MORT A POTTY]

Originally posted by Scotttheking:
Those 400GB seagate drives are nice. And here's a pair for a good price.
You just need an ATA133 card to go with one.

as long as you're buying a new IDE controller, it would make more sense to buy an SATA 150 controller instead of an ATA/133 controller. smaller cables is a BIG plus. That, and faster transfer rates and such.

[Scotttheking]

Originally posted by MORT A POTTY:
as long as you're buying a new IDE controller, it would make more sense to buy an SATA 150 controller instead of an ATA/133 controller. smaller cables is a BIG plus. That, and faster transfer rates and such.

SATA cabling is nice, but not a huge deal, and it does cost more.
The transfer rates don't mean much, because drives can't push that much data other than from cache.