Reformatting HD to larger capacity?

709709
Posted:
in Genius Bar edited January 2014
I had 2 160GB hard drives attached to a Sonnet ATA card in my Quicksilver. Due to some voodoo between the Sonnet card and the QS, the drives only formatted to 128GB each. I lived with that for a bit, but now I've replaced them with 2 120GB drives and all seems to be well.



Now I'd like to reformat the original drives back to their 160GB capacity, but I can't seem to get them to realize that their actually bigger than what the were original formatted at.



I've tried writing zeros, 8-way, UNIX file format and even resorted to force-quitting Disk Utility in the middle of the format hoping it would lose the directories.



Anybody know what's going on?





I'm using a LaCie external FW case for reformatting if that matters.



Thanks for any insight. I'm stumped.

Comments

  • Reply 1 of 8
    thuh freakthuh freak Posts: 2,664member
    first thing i'm thinking is the difference between the term GB and GB (same spelling, different meanings). in science, G (giga) tends to mean 1 billion, but in computers it often means 1024x1024x1024. hard drive manufacturers tend to report using the proper scientific notation (GB=1 billion bytes), while the operating system, and almost all programs report sizes using the incorrect terminology. the difference in your drives is probably not lost space, but a different way of reporting that space.
  • Reply 2 of 8
    karl kuehnkarl kuehn Posts: 756member
    It looks like your external cases uses an older bridge chip that does not understand ATA-133 (or the extensions to 66/100 that some have done), and thus only can address 128GB of HD space. You will need to make sure that the buss you are putting the drives understands larger address, and then it will format just fine. Any ATA-133 bus will work, abut none of Apple's ATA-100 busses had the extension, so they will only understand 128GBs...



    This is documented well all over the web....
  • Reply 3 of 8
    709709 Posts: 2,016member
    Nah. I know about the GB vs GB thing, but I think 32GB is a bit much to lose out of a 160GB drive. 'Get Info' tells me that there is 30+ GB 'used', but nothing's on the drive.



    I'm starting to think that this LaCie case has the same wacky ATA bridge that the Sonnet card has. Ugh.





    [edit:] Yup, thanks Karl. I'm off to get a new FW case.
  • Reply 4 of 8
    gardenofearthlydelightsgardenofearthlydelights Posts: 963member
    This isn't helpful for the situation above, but interesting none the less. An Inquirer article gives steps on how to reclaim hard drive space. I don't know how valid this info is, but if you have a PC and Norton Ghost, feel free to try it out.



    L'INQ



    Here's a snippet from the article:

    Quote:

    Interesting results to date:

    Western Digital 200GB SATA

    Yield after recovery: 510GB of space



    IBM Deskstar 80GB EIDE

    Yield after recovery: 150GB of space



    Maxtor 40GB EIDE

    Yield after recovery: 80GB



    Seagate 20GB EIDE

    Yield after recovery: 30GB



    Unknown laptop 80GB HDD

    Yield: 120GB



  • Reply 5 of 8
    kickahakickaha Posts: 8,760member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by GardenOfEarthlyDelights

    This isn't helpful for the situation above, but interesting none the less. An Inquirer article gives steps on how to reclaim hard drive space. I don't know how valid this info is, but if you have a PC and Norton Ghost, feel free to try it out.



    L'INQ



    Here's a snippet from the article:



    DO NOT DO THIS!!



    I REPEAT:



    DO NOT DO THIS!!



    This is nothing more than creating *overlapping partitions*. It is *wrong*, and it *WILL* screw up your data!



    TANSTAAFL
  • Reply 6 of 8
    lucaluca Posts: 3,833member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Karl Kuehn

    It looks like your external cases uses an older bridge chip that does not understand ATA-133 (or the extensions to 66/100 that some have done), and thus only can address 128GB of HD space. You will need to make sure that the buss you are putting the drives understands larger address, and then it will format just fine. Any ATA-133 bus will work, abut none of Apple's ATA-100 busses had the extension, so they will only understand 128GBs...



    This is documented well all over the web....



    Not true. In reality, all of Apple's ATA buses prior to the Quicksilver 2002 were limited to 128 GB (well, 137 GB according to hard drive makers, and 128 GB according to the computer). The B&W G3 used ATA/33, the Sawtooth and later PowerMac G4s used ATA/66, and the MDD used both an ATA/66 and an ATA/100 bus. So, the ATA/66 bus in the Quicksilver 2002, and the ATA/66 bus present in all MDD PowerMacs can recognize larger hard drives. Whether a bus is ATA/66 or ATA/100 doesn't really have anything to do with how much space it can address. All it does is tell how fast it is. ATA/66 = 66 MBytes/sec, ATA/100 = 100 MBytes/sec, etc.
  • Reply 7 of 8
    ghost_user_nameghost_user_name Posts: 22,667member
    Quote:

    Originally posted by Kickaha

    DO NOT DO THIS!!



    I REPEAT:



    DO NOT DO THIS!!



    This is nothing more than creating *overlapping partitions*. It is *wrong*, and it *WILL* screw up your data!



    TANSTAAFL



    Yeah, I totally reiterate what Kickaha said. Also, drives do have extra, hidden space. But that space is reserved to transparently move data over when bad blocks are detected. If you try and reclaim that space, you're backstabbing the redundancy built into your drives.
  • Reply 8 of 8
    alcimedesalcimedes Posts: 5,486member
    yeah, you're just running into the fact that your hardware can't recognize drives larger than 128GB.



    get a new controller card and they'll be fine.
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