SATA or IDE Hard Disk with Mac OS 9.1 ??

Hi, Tony -

OS 9 has a volume limit of about 190GB - it won't recognize volumes larger than that. Note that it is a volume limit, not a drive limit; a volume = an unpartitioned drive, or a partition of a partitioned drive.

Tony,

It depends on the addressing used by the card you have bought. If it's not 48bit you may not be able to use more than 120Gb.

Someone else may know if you will have issues with the OS needing to be completely within the first 8Gb of the disk, similar to the restriction on the original iMacs.

Simon,

From reading Tony's post it sounds like he is using this drive with OS 9. From reading the discussions I think the 8 GB first partition is just an OS X issue when using a drive running off the logic board controller. If I recall correctly from discussions here, this isn't an issue with a big drive off an ATA controller card, and not an issue at all with OS 9.

Cheers,

Brian

Hi -

The 8GB limit applies to all OS's, not just OSX, on those models subject to it -
Article #25249 - Gray or White Screen After Hard Drive Upgrade

However, I don't know if it applies to drives attached to an added PCI card.

Thanks Don and Limnos,

I've learnt something new today !!

Interesting reference Don. I've upgraded two beige G3 desktops from their original drives to 120 GB drives without an issue. Mind you, on the first I copied over all files including OS 9 so the OS probably ended up in the first 8 GB naturally. On the second drives I have OS X on the first 8 GB partition and OS 9 in the second partition, and I almost always boot into OS 9, so again, this doesn't seem to have to reside on the first 8 GB. As the article seems to indicate, this does not seem to have to be an issue but could be one, if you encounter it.

Cheers,

Brian

Hi, Brian -

Yes, it seems to be a "may happen" issue with OS 9.

None of the stand-alone OS 9 installers will check as to whether a machine is subject to the 8GB restriction, nor if the target volume is within that - hence it will install regardless of the potential for booting problems.

There have been some folk who had a successful initial install of OS 9 on an unpartitioned large drive on such a machine, but when they updated the OS to a later version of OS 9, they got the no-boot problem - perhaps an essential part of the OS ended up outside the 8GB space.

Since the only solution when the problem does occur is to reformat and partition the drive, thus erasing it, it probably makes sense to do that initially.

The issue with OSX is a bit different - the installer for OSX will detect when it is installing on a machine subject to the 8GB restriction, and whether a volume is contained within the first 8GB; if it is not, the installer will not permit the installation to occur on that volume.