400g hard drive, only 128gig showing

Simon,

There is a problem with the OS seeing such a large drive. You may have to partition this drive to use the entire thing. Just go to the Disk Utility and select the partition tab and this should take care of your problem.

I hope that this helped.

blake

This is weird. OS X (Tiger, 10.4.2 through 10.4.3 so far) has had no problem recognizing my 250 GB drive and it's 230+ GB formatted capacity. Even if the system couldn't see 400 GB, wouldn't it at least show over 230 GB ?

Simon, I guess your drive is FireWire (or is it USB 2.0) ? What is the filesystem (HFS+, HFS, UFS) ?

Ok, got a question. I've got a 40 Gig in my Mini, and want to upgrade it to a larger drive. My install disks are 10.4.0. What is the largest drive I can put it that will be recognized by the system and software? I mean, could I put in a 250 gig drive? Or will I be limited to 128 Gigs as the original person has found?

Timothy N. Couch

If you read my post carefully , you will know that my 250 GB drive works just fine. Actually, I said 10.4.2 through 10.4.3, but I forgot that during the installation process, I actually installed 10.4, so it will work with a "basic" Tiger too.

Don't know what's wrong with the original poster's drive or Mini, but theoretically OS X should recognize all drive sizes, way over 1 TB (= 1024 GB - after all, Xserves run OS X too) ...

I had a similar problem when I tried formatting a new Samsung 160GB drive in an old Maxtor enclosure that used to have a 250GB drive in it.

When I formatted it on my Mac it would only report it as 128GB.

I found out the drives MAX LBA ADDRESS had been set to that of a 160GB drive by the enclosure. Had to use my PC to fix it as the only tool I could find that would sort my drive was dos based. (my drives max native lba address also got messed up by the samsungs own tool, can't remember the name of the tool I found but it took me ages to find one that would work.)

As you are probably figuring out the the later posts your external enclosures chipset firmware is not supporting that drives size parameters. It is recommended that you upgrade the firmware from either Prolific or Oxford depending on whose chipset is on the pc board in the enclosure.
You don't really have an option to play with the drive geometry on the enclosure like you can in a PC BIOS.

When you buy external enclosures at the store, the more reputable companies usually put a sticker on the box saying what the hdd size limitations of the rev firmware loaded on the controller board is.

Jan J.

Can one update the firmware on their enclosure if they are booted off it?

I use a Firewire enclosure for my 160GB HD, which is reported as 142GB (which is correct actually, through the decimal to binary conversion), and I just want to update the Oxford chip on it just for the heck of keeping it up to date.

Every enclosure firmware update I have done to date has required a PC and plugging the enclosure in via USB to update. Although I have booted off them on Macs over FireWire, I have not booted of one from a Mac and upgraded the firmware due to no Mac software to do the updating.

Jan J.

I have similar problem. I use a Lacie d2 250G, firewire400, it works fine first. However, oneday after I use the diskwarrier to optimized it. It only reports 128G!

I checked and compared several disks and enclosures. only to find that the problem is the Lacie D2 enclosure's problem. If I take the disk to other enclosure, it is reported as 250G again. So far has not find solution yet.

ok, there are a number of things here....

drive capacity limitations are a function of the following:

1) internal IDE bus
2) old firewire chips used on bridgeboards

if the enclosure has a recent chip on it (Oxford or Initio), then there is no capacity limitations

if the enclosures is using an older firewire chip on it, then it will only be able to read 128G

any Oxford or Initio chip made after Nov 2002 is ATA6 compliant and can read any size IDE/ATA hard drive

this is not a problem with the OS as the drive is in an external firewire enclosure

your mini is capable of using any capacity hard drive internally

updating firmware will not impact the ability to read larger drives

it is a function of the firewire chip used on the bridgeboard in the enclosure

if the chip was made prior to Nov 2002, it is not ATA6/LBA 48 bit compliant so you can only read 128G - if it was made after Nov 2002, the it will and using newer firmware will help performance

you want to stay with Oxford or Intio chip for the Mac OS - Prolific, Genesys and other chips are problematic

bigeric, since your enclosure shipped with a 250 GB drive, and that it was recognized as such, the problem isn't with the chipset. I have no other suggestion than updating the Firmware. Here is the link : LaCie Update Tool v1.3.3 for Mac OS X

From LaCie.com :

LaCie Update Tool v1.3.3 is now Mac OS X Tiger (10.4) compatible and adds the latest firmware support for d2 and Design by F.A. Porsche drives with FireWire 400 and 800 and/or USB 2.0 interface.

Careful with that Jeff,

Can you backup the Prolific statement with posts on the Apple Forums?

I run nothing but Prolific external FireWire enclosures, all daisy-chained and have had zero problems, no corrupted data, no kernel panics, the boot off the external HDD enclosures just fine. Most every bug that could potentially effect the Mac user was patched in early 2004 in the Prolific firmware. The last patch at the end of 2004 didn't add anything of value to Mac users but is what I have loaded on all my enclosures.

I can tell you without a doubt that the 3rd party (and retail from big name companies - hitherto unmentioned not to cause undo prejudice) are notorious at shipping units with firmware revisions 1 1/2 to 2 years out of date!

I can also attest that going 3rd party off the shelf and flashing the latest firmware yourself will always result in a more rapid way to the latest firmware that waiting for the name brand units manufacturer to re-release the fixes in their own utility flasher. Mac users always feel safer though buying something from a big name brand even though you see them in the reports on the forum with the problem posts.

Every post I have been helping since I have been on these forums have been helping people with Oxford chipsets with daisy chain issues, corrupted data mid-transfer, corrupted partitions and lost data, and boot issues.

Apples own support website only lists the Oxford chipset as being problematic and causing data loss.

Yet like clockwork I keep seeing the same posts over and over again as if its a group think issue, stay with Oxford, keep away from Prolific.

just my own observations

Jan J.