[TimmyDee51]

I'm selling my old iMac 333 to my friend and we swapped out the old WD 40 GB drive from her computer and put it in my iMac and reformatted it (zeroed all data). The reformatting went fine and this computer has handled big drives before (I had a 30 GB Maxtor in it before I decided to sell). I repartitioned the drive to 7 GB and 30 GB and ran the installer on the first 7 GB partition. The installer ran fine but I get the flashing system folder/question mark when I reboot. When I boot to an OS 9 CD, all of the files are present on the partition.

I've tried zapping the PRAM and I'm going to hit the CUDA switch tomorrow morning, but I'm not sure if that'll work. Do I have some cable select/master/slave issue going on here? Any other suggestions?

[vmarks]

What OS has been used on this 333? Have all the firmware updates been applied?

[TimmyDee51]

Everything from 8.6 to 10.2 (I mean everything). I have applied all firmware updates, too. I heard it could be something funky with cable select on WD hard drives. Is this true?

[TimmyDee51]

The jumper settings were it. I looked at xlr8yourmac.com and sure enough, Mike came through. I needed the jumpers set for single drive. Problem solved.

[escher]

On a related note: I'm about to drop a 40GB IBM Travelstar in my Rev.A Bondi. But I would rather not partition the drive. Is there really no way to avoid partitioning the drive? If partitioning the drive is My only option, how do I go about it? How do you tell which 8GB is the "first" 8GB?

Escher

[vmarks]

partitioning is the only option, and when you go to partition it, the first one created will be at the front of the drive. It should be shown as the top of the large gray rectangle that represents your HD.

[escher]

Originally posted by vmarks:
partitioning is the only option, and when you go to partition it, the first one created will be at the front of the drive. It should be shown as the top of the large gray rectangle that represents your HD.

Thanks for the explanation, Victor. I look forward to bumping up my iMac's HDD.

Escher

[Mr.Clicky]

Originally posted by TimmyDee51:
The jumper settings were it. I looked at xlr8yourmac.com and sure enough, Mike came through. I needed the jumpers set for single drive. Problem solved.

Hi TimmyDee51, I'm havin the exact same problem with my 333/WD 40gb drive and all. I was just about going mad (see http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=141537) until I saw your post and now there's light at the end of the hard drive. My question though is just what are the 'jumper setting' and how do you reset/change it??

Any empirical advice greatly appreciated!

Mr.Clicky

[vmarks]

Pick your drive from here:

http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/jumpers.asp

Then, set your drive to the "single" setting, as depicted in the picture you arrive at from that link.

Good luck!

[Kenneth]

Jan 21 edition of MacFixit.com has something to talk about the 8GB rule.

Working around the Mac OS X 8 GB installation limit
As noted by Knowledge Base article #106235, on certain computers, Mac OS X cannot install on a volume that is not completely contained within the first 8 GB of an ATA hard disk.

MacFixIt reader Matt Carrell offers an interesting work around (which does not use partitioning) for the issue that involves temporarily removing the internal drive and connecting it via USB, and possibly other I/O methods.

"Apparently if the boot drive partition is not currently internal, it doesn't check the boot partition size before installing. And after installation of Jaguar, he simply disconnected the drive from the USB housing and hooked it up as the iMac's only internal drive.

"How well does it work? (My friend has) been using it for several days he claims without trouble, even running Safari and other Jaguar-only apps on a 120 GB drive partitioned into (4) 40GB partitions."

Making an internal ATA drive external can be accomplished by removing the drive and fitting it with a USB-compatible enclosure, such as those offered by CoolDrives and other manufacturers.

If you have any insight on this issue, please drop us a line at [email protected].

I'm also running on the iMac 333 with a 120GB HD on 10.2.3, since I don't have any USB enclosure, so I can't test it. Meanwhile, I did run into trouble for doing a clean install of 10.2, I re-partitioned the drive a couple of times to get things done.

[Mr.Clicky]

Originally posted by vmarks:
Pick your drive from here:

http://support.wdc.com/techinfo/general/jumpers.asp

Then, set your drive to the "single" setting, as depicted in the picture you arrive at from that link.

Good luck!

Thanks to smic, TimmyDee51, vmarks and everyone else - the jumper settings were the key!! (f#*%! I'd tried everything else). The very intelligent Certified Apple Technician had oh-so-carefully set the jumper shunt to Dual (slave) - and me with a one drive machine - who'd have thought? Well at least now I can take the beast apart and put it back together again (probably blindfolded ) I'm back online, gigged up, RAMmed to the hilt and loving it.

Mr.Clicky is clicky again

[PHoynak]

Do I have to do anything special to format and install OS X on a firewire drive? My old iMac has a 60 gb drive in it and I want to "get around" the 8gb rule. Will the OS X installer let you install on a firewire drive?

[the_glassman]

Originally posted by PHoynak:
Do I have to do anything special to format and install OS X on a firewire drive? My old iMac has a 60 gb drive in it and I want to "get around" the 8gb rule. Will the OS X installer let you install on a firewire drive?

You can install OS X on a firewire drive, you can even use an external firewire drive to startup your system, while holding down T when the system starts up.

[Frumpy]

So just to make sure, if i have an old iMac Rev B, and i've installed a WD 60gig, and when installing OS X it tells me that it needs to be in the first 8gb....i just need to go back to OS 9 and set up the drive with a 8gb partition in the beginning?