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You are here: MacNN Forums > Hardware - Troubleshooting and Discussion > Consumer Hardware & Components > FW HD missing 21 GB?

FW HD missing 21 GB?
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Powerbook
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Join Date: Mar 2001
Location: München, Deutschland
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Nov 2, 2008, 03:03 PM
 
[Moved that over form the other "missing GB"-thread, so answers will not confuse]

I bought a new 160 GB drive that can only be formatted (2.5" Firewire case) to 128 GB. From what I have gathered on the Internet, that's due to the 28 Bit LBA. I'm not sure if this is only a problem of the crappy Genesys Logic chipset (a cheap company which even deleted all reference to it) or of the setup in the drive itself.
Anybody has a Mac based solution to this? Or is this a non-problem with the drive used internally in the Powerbook? So far I have only found MS-DOS based special tools which need an old school PC. :/

Partitioning won't help, the 128 GB are the false drive maximum that is reported.
My 160 GB drive shows only up as 128 GB whereas it should be 149 GB... and that is related to the damn 28 Bit LBA of the controller. Now what to do against it?

[Add:] The new drive is only in the Firewire case to have my old 80GB internal system drive cloned on. Then I plan to switch the two drives. However that's a no-go when I can only format to 128 GB.


Regards
PB.
( Last edited by Powerbook; Nov 2, 2008 at 06:14 PM. )
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mduell
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Nov 2, 2008, 03:38 PM
 
Yes, that's the 28-bit LBA limit, and it's a limitation of the chipset in the enclosure. There's an app called Overdrive for OS X that works with large internal hard drives in older Macs, but I don't know if it would work with your external or what issues it might cause.

I'd suggest a 2.5" USB enclosure (they're what, $7?) for a cheap, easy, and reliable way to go.
     
CharlesS
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Nov 2, 2008, 04:25 PM
 
He's using a PowerBook, so a USB enclosure wouldn't be bootable.

Fortunately, all you have to do is find a FireWire enclosure that doesn't suck, and then you can use larger disk sizes with it.

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Nov 2, 2008, 04:47 PM
 
The escalating "gigabyte tax" shows the ugly head of liberal organizations. You must demand Apple for your gigabytes refunded and to stop the insane progressive system that only encourages people in the low 20,000MB to continue expecting something for nothing.
     
   
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