Disk Utility: total drive capacity is incorrect

I think you will need a new PCI card to help the older Mac see/process all of the new hard drive -- the older Macs could only see up to 128GB.

I have a G4 and installed a Sonnet PCI ATA133 card to read all of a 160 GB drive. Best wishes for the new year.

Ali

geiger9:

Welcome to Apple Discussions.

As noted by the previous poster, the BootROM on older Macs only saw the first 128 GB of the HDD. You can use a utility like Intech SpeedTools ATA Hi-Capacity Driver to utilize more of the total capacity of the HDD. You will note that your boot drive will still be limited, but you will have the option of using most of the capacity of your drive.

Good luck.

😉 cornelius

I've seen the right answer posted. Your motherboard can only see 128GB. Even if you partition the drive, it will still not recognize the whole available disk space. Been there, done that. In my case, I put in 160GB IDE drive. A bit was wasted, but you get a bit more than if you put in a 120GB or 80GB. There is a software solution available, and I think I remember seeing it available at Other World Computer. They're kind of Mac fans and have a lot of Mac stuff there. Prices are not too bad, either. The software solution uses some kind of gimmick to help the board see the whole drive. I'm not a fan of this type of solution, but it probably works O.K.. The other solution is to get a SATA card, such as a Seritek 1s2. Plug it into an available PCI slot, and you can install a SATA I or SATA II drive. It will be supported to at least 1GB, or even more, and this card support the drive as a boot drive. Be careful, there are some SATA cards out there that DO NOT support boot. Make sure the card you use does, if you choose this route. Also, the card MUST be Mac specific, a PC card will not work. The Seritek card is about $65.00, well worth it if you plan to keep and pile stuff into the machine. Sonnet also has a card that works well for this.

Even if you partition the drive, it will still not recognize the whole available disk space.

That is not correct. See my post immediately before yours and check out Speed Tools.

Even if you partition the drive, it will still not recognize the whole available disk space.

That is not correct. See my post immediately before yours and check out Speed Tools.

I think the poster meant that simply partitioning a bigger drive into multiple partitions smaller than 128 GB won't get around the limit. My understanding from having seen this topic many time is it's a limit on recognizing drives, not individual volumes. If you have a 320 GB drive and partition it into three volumes less than 128 GB each this will not work. The problem is the total drive size.

You will note that your boot drive will still be limited, but you will have the option of using most of the capacity of your drive.

From "limited" I don't think this is a capacity limitation in case somebody takes it that way. I think the main issue with ST is if you use it and then need to get access to the drive when you can't load ST along with the system you then have problems. This might happen if you need to boot from your installer disc or from a third party utility that has a boot system, or from another hard drive that doesn't have ST on it (easily remedied by making sure you put ST on any drive from which you may wish to boot).

Limnos:

This issue with earlier hardware is a BootROM limitation, in which the BootROM sees only 128 GB of the drive. Partitioning the drive so that the first partition is 127 GB and the rest partioned as empty space is one option. You can then use as much of the HDD as the BootROM will see. Without partitioning you may end up with stuff on parts of the drive not recognized by the BootROM, thus the need for partitioning.

The poster's statement was not qualified in any way, and is therefore incorrect as stated. Neither you nor I are privy to what the poster meant unless the poster clarifies the statement. My intention, to clarify my statement, is to point out that the remainder of the drive, after partitioning, is not lost space and can be fully utilized with the help of of SpeedTools. Without Speed Tools I don't think the rest of the drive is recognized at all as it would on an external firewire or USB drive.

😉 cornelius