Confused about XPostFacto and the 8GB Limit - Please help

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Level 2

275 points

Confused about XPostFacto and the 8GB Limit - Please help

Hi all,

I've been running XPostFacto 4.0 on my Apple G3 Desktop (Rev C, 640MB Ram, 533 Mhz G4 OWC CPU upgrade) for sometime and is running great.

But I have a question about the 8GB rule.

This computer only runs off of a Seritek SATA card. There is a 35 GB Raptor drive on it, the first 7.81 GB is the 10.3.9 drive, and rest is for applications and files.

I added a 160 GB Hitachi drive to the SATA card that I moved from my G4 MDD computer. It already has 3 partitions: 30 GB for 10.3.9, 10GB for OS9, and 115 GB for audio production files.

If I wanted to boot off the Hitachi drive, would I have to re-format and create a 8 GB partition?

As is, if I try to boot off the drive I just added, XPostFacto tries to synchronize the files, then it invariably crashes.

I tried reading the manual again, but I get confused about the Mac OS X Installer and the 8GB rule, and so on.

Thanks!

Powerbook Alum 15 G4, MDD Dual 867 Mhz, Beige Minitower G3, Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Dec 18, 2005 8:58 PM

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Answer 1

PeteB

Level 1

94 points

Dec 19, 2005 6:03 AM in response to Gene Park

Gene:

I believe you can disregard the 8Gb rule. It applies to the on board ata bus and not to PCI card/HD options.

Give Tiger a try too, it is more stable and sophisticated than Panther. Apple continues to improve OSX with every new cat.

Pete

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Answer 2

Dec 19, 2005 6:10 AM in response to Gene Park

Hi Gene,

Did this new drive already have Panther installed on it from another Mac? If so, there could be two issues with:

1) The installed version may be specific to the Mac it was originally installed on. I see the drive came from a G4, and your Beige info indicates yours is still G3 (no processor upgrade?). This might cause a problem,

2) XPF 4 does not behave well with Panther, even though you've had success with it on your first drive. XPF 4 could be balking.

Good luck, and keep us posted,

Tina

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Answer 3

Gene Park Author

Level 2

275 points

Dec 19, 2005 9:47 AM in response to Tina Garfield

thanks for the responses.

i'll try the last 3.?? version of xpostfacto and see what happens.

the Beige G3 has an OWC G4 533 Mhz card installed (plus 32 MB ATI PCI card and Rev C Rom)

so even with the first (main) SATA drive, the 8 GB rule doesn't apply?

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Answer 4

Dec 19, 2005 3:28 PM in response to Gene Park

8 GB rule is only supposed to apply to drives connected to the Built-In ATA bus, and the author of XPostFacto thinks he has eliminated it altogether in XPostFacto 4.

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Answer 5

Gene Park Author

Level 2

275 points

Dec 22, 2005 5:25 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

ok, perhaps it's something that has to do with the transferred hard drive and the files it was using with the MDD, which is not working in harmony with the Beige.

i guess i'll try re-installing on the transferred drive.

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Answer 6

Dec 22, 2005 5:39 PM in response to Gene Park

If using Panther, I have had good luck using XPostFacto 3.1 and the following procedure when things get wonky:

Run XPostFacto 3.1 and ask it to UN-install XPostFacto.
Ask it to boot from the OS X 10.3.x drive you prefer.

At this point, it will politely tell you there are a few (dozen) things that will need some updating. Tell it to go ahead.

Often, I find that it will slowly but deliberately boot into Mac OS X on the specified drive.

This is no guarantee, as you may still be missing some things [based on your installing on a later Mac] even after XPostFacto does its magic.

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Answer 7

Gene Park Author

Level 2

275 points

Dec 26, 2005 8:24 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

i wound up erasing the partition on the transferred drive and carboncopycloning the beige's OS X drive to it...and now the transferred drive is booting ok!

now, i'm thinking of copying the whole raptor drive over and re-partitioning the raptor drive (strangely, the raptor appears with about 9 partitions on Disk Utility, though the only two that i created are clickable...wonder if the OS sees this drive as something like scsi).

this is a little asides the point, but on my MDD, the 7200 hitachi seemed to test as "faster" than the 10000rpm raptor in most categories. would the 7200 drive infact be better for OS style-tasks?

Powerbook Alum 15 G4, MDD Dual 867 Mhz, Beige Minitower G3 Mac OS X (10.3.9)

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Answer 8

Bill W

Level 5

4,755 points

Dec 27, 2005 12:01 PM in response to Gene Park

strangely,
the raptor appears with about 9 partitions on Disk
Utility, though the only two that i created are
clickable...wonder if the OS sees this drive as
something like scsi).

The system likely does see the drive as a SCSI drive; this is typical for add-on PCI ATA interface cards.

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