Went over 129 GB limit: What to do?

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Level 1

47 points

Went over 129 GB limit: What to do?

Backing up 3 Macs. Got 150 GB onto my Iomega HD (250 GB / USB 2.0 / Firewire).
Then: my Macs won't read the Iomega HD.
Googled and found: Macs won't read HDs larger than 128 GB.
So, how might I go about getting the data off so that I can partition the Iomega HD, then get the data back on?

2 G4 desktops, 1 G4 iBook Mac OS X (10.3.9) Iomega HD, 250 GB, USB 2.0/Firewire

2 G4 desktops, 1 G4 iBook Mac OS X (10.3.9)

Posted on Jun 19, 2006 6:59 AM

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Answer 1

PT

Level 7

20,894 points

Jun 20, 2006 6:28 PM in response to Cat Songs

"Macs won't read HDs larger than 128GB" is not true... in most cases. There were a few earlier Macs that had this issue, such as the original Bondi and 5-flavor iMacs. I suspect other Macs from the same era also suffered from this. But that was later fixed and since then (for many years now) Macs can read much larger drives than 128GB.
If your Mac has that issue, you wouldn't be able to format your drive as anything larger than 128GB as the Mac would only see the first 128GB and report the drive as that size. So if you had a drive that was formatted larger than 128GB, then your Mac doesn't suffer from that limit and your problem is something else.
Also, note that this limitation is only for the ATE bus in those Mac and only effects internal drives. External drives are not effected by this and instead depends on the ATE controller in the external enclosure. Since your enclosure is a 250GB enclosure, ALL USB or FW enabled Macs would be able to see the full 250GB even if they suffer from the 128GB internal limit.
So you have a different problem than you think. Did you try running Disk Utility and seeing if you can fix the external?
Patrick

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Answer 2

Jun 20, 2006 7:53 PM in response to Cat Songs

Look at this link.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178

Cheers, Tom

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Answer 3

Jun 20, 2006 8:14 PM in response to Cat Songs

has the drive ever been read before? i would think there is something wrong with it. can you connect it via usb as well?? do you have another firewire cable you could use? what format is the drive in? does the drive appear at all? [ 8 ) ]

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Answer 4

Kurt Lang

Level 9

69,252 points

Jun 21, 2006 7:52 AM in response to Cat Songs

Hi Cat Songs,

As PT mentioned, your Mac has nothing to do with how much of the disk can be accessed on an external drive. It has to do with the controller in the external enclosure. There's two possibilities here.

1) You have an old enclosure that can't read drives above 128 GB.

2) (More likely) The drive needs to have to jumper removed. Many IDE drives come with a jumper that limits the drive to 128 GB. It's there for compatibility of older computers (mainly PCs) so that can use the drive. Remove the appropriate jumper to access all of the drive's volume. You may need to repartition and erase the drive. Make sure to back up all of your data first.

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