[Waragainstsleep]

You put a drive which is too large in a B&W, lets say its (exactly) 160GB, with 10 items containing 30GB of data on it. If you mount the drive, then double click its icon in the finder, a window opens displaying the (30GB) contents of the drive. At the bottom of this window, on the brushed metal frame, it will say:
"10 items, x.yz GB available"

My question is this: Does it say "130GB available" (160 - 30), or "98GB available" (128 - 30)?

[reader50]

I think it would report 130 minus a bit for directory space. This is a dangerous condition, the OS will accept the volume info reporting a larger drive, but your hardware is unable to write to the entire drive.

If any part of the drive's data is stored past the 128 GB mark, the B&W will screw up while trying to read that block. If it tries to write past the 128 GB mark, a block will likely get written to (desired location minus 128 GB).

[Waragainstsleep]

You're quite right. I asked because I was aware of the limit, but on connecting a 200GB drive to my B&W to get some data from it, It showed 150GB available. I thought for a second it was because I was using Tiger. But Panther does it too. So like I say, you're right.

[tooki]

Well, it depends on whether the drive was formatted on the B&W or on a newer Mac. If it's formatted on the old Mac, you will see 128GB on the desktop, minus whatever's occupied. If you format it on a new Mac, it might show up as the full size, but any attempt to access the region beyond 128GB will result in an error and/or data loss.

tooki