large capacity IDE drive question
okay, i just bought a western digital eide ata/100 drive, 160 gb for my dual 1.25 ghz g4 (mirrored drive door). unfortunately, the mac has not arrived yet, but i was just opening the drive and reading the instructions and read where they say that (paraphrased here):
"cable select is not supported by apple computers. please reset the jumpers on the drive for slave setup, and then partition as necessary."
um, last i checked, the mirrored-drive door g4's were in fact cable select, NOT master/slave anymore. also, later in the instructions, they say that...
"drives larger that 137 gb will require western digital's ata100 card (included with the hard drive) in order to operate."
and that
"macs (os 8.6 or higher) will only be able to recognize drives up to 137 gb."
so basically, it sounds like a.) these instructions are out of date or b.) western digital doesn't know what the hell they are talking about. am i right? or am i going to have to return this 160 gb drive for something smaller?
any help would be appreciated.
thanks!
"cable select is not supported by apple computers. please reset the jumpers on the drive for slave setup, and then partition as necessary."
um, last i checked, the mirrored-drive door g4's were in fact cable select, NOT master/slave anymore. also, later in the instructions, they say that...
"drives larger that 137 gb will require western digital's ata100 card (included with the hard drive) in order to operate."
and that
"macs (os 8.6 or higher) will only be able to recognize drives up to 137 gb."
so basically, it sounds like a.) these instructions are out of date or b.) western digital doesn't know what the hell they are talking about. am i right? or am i going to have to return this 160 gb drive for something smaller?
any help would be appreciated.
thanks!
Comments
2) The ata100 card probably doesn't work for Mac.
3) Internal ATA hard drives are limited to 137 GB. If you have a firewire->ATA adapter you can read the other GB's.
Originally posted by Ebby
1) I never used cable select. Never had serious problems.
2) The ata100 card probably doesn't work for Mac.
3) Internal ATA hard drives are limited to 137 GB. If you have a firewire->ATA adapter you can read the other GB's.
went puttering around apple's support pages and discussion forums, and found a few interesting tidbits (i really should check there more often than i do)...
first, the latest mirrored-drive door ata controllers do use cable-select by default. therefore, it should just be a matter of pluggin in the new drive, and fire it up to be ready to format via drive setup. so the western digital instructions are at least a little out of date, which was my suspicion.
with regards to the 137 gb limit, it would appear to be tied to the older ata66 bus in older g4's. the mirrored-drive doors use ata100, and should recognize the entire 160 gb drive i put in there, and allow me to format it with drive setup.
if all else fails, a mac supported pci card (such as the sonnet tempo) should allow for full use of the drive, since it is an ata133 card interface (though a bit of overkill for my use).
basically, i need that computer to show up asap so that i can stick this drive in it, see if it works, and if it doesn't, return it for a refund (and the lovely 15% restocking fee... grrrr...)
went through this with external drives, and the MDD's were the only machines listed at xlr8yourmac.com that worked internally.
So I picked up a new external case using the Oxford 911 chipset that supports ATA133 and can now see all 160GBs (157GB formatted) on my both my 1GHz and 800MHz Ti PowerBooks.