[action]

hi folks,

i purchased a 4 bay firewire enclosure for my g4 933 quicksilver.

i purchased 160 gig maxtor drives but it only reads a 128 gigs.

the drive is in the enclosure and the disk utility reads the full 160 but when i try to initialize the drive it only reads at 128.

i know you need a pci card if you are doing it internal but don't know why it's doing it on a firewire.

any help will be appreciated.

thank you!!!

chung

[Powaqqatsi]

Your firewire enclosure does not support HDs of more than 128GB, it's as simple as that. The enclosure suffers the same problem as the older internal ATA system. Sorry but is seems that you need to buy another case.

[The Placid Casual]

I think it is an ATA limitation... there is a top limit in how much of a drive is will recognise...

I heard this may work: If you have access to another machine, you may be able to partition the drive into two smaller 80 Gig chunks, and get the full 160Gig quota...

I'm sure someone will be able to advise you of the best course of action...

Peace,

Marc

[jtc]

Originally posted by The Placid Casual:
I heard this may work: If you have access to another machine, you may be able to partition the drive into two smaller 80 Gig chunks, and get the full 160Gig quota...

This won't work.

The ATA controller in the FW enclosure uses 28 bit addressing, and can only access the first 137 GB of the drive (ends up being 128 GB when formatted) no matter how many partitions the drive has.

You can get an ATA133 PCI card (which uses 48 bit addressing - up to 144,000,000 GB) and use the drive internally, or get a FW drive that specifically says it supports large (up to 250 GB) drives.

[action]

thanks everyone for your help.

can i replace the bridge boards instead of the whole case.

is their such an option?

thanks again!!!

chung