Format/Partition Drive larger than 128GB

Hello All,
I have gotten a Western Digital Caviar SE 320GB drive that I would like to use in my Mac G4 AGP running 10.4.8.
Does anyone know a tool that will allow me to format the drive to its full capacity?
I realize there is a bootROM issue here. I searched for a bootrom update of some kind, but did not see one.
Any help appreciated.
Thanks

Look at these links.
What Macs natively support large IDE drives? (over 128GB formatted)
How Big a Hard Drive Can I Put in My iMac, eMac, or Power Mac?
Using 128 GB or Larger ATA Hard Drives
The Power Mac Storage FAQ
You can check if your Mac requires a firmware (Boot ROM version) update. Mac OS X: Available firmware updates
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86117 If an update is required, the update must be installed (using OS 9) BEFORE you install OS X.
 Cheers, Tom

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Can I use a usb external hard drive larger than 2TB? I have tried to use a 3TB but it shows up as 800GB.

Can I use a usb external hard drive larger than 2TB? I have tried to use a 3TB but it shows up as 800GB. Even tred to reformat in disk utility but only shows as 800 gb as well. It is a Seagate 3TB harddrive and enclosure. Nothing on the Seagate site about it other than it says Mac os through 10.6 is supported for larger than 2TB (might be old).

You might have better luck in the Snow Leopard community. I'll ask the hosts to relocate your post.
10.6 Snow Leopard

I recently bought a used PowerBook G4. Which drive, larger than 80GB, will it accept?

According to the seller, its 1.33GHz logic board died recently and was replaced with a faster 1.5GHz board. Along the way, its 60GB hard drive was replaced with a 40GB drive, which has Leopard 10.5.8. Its model number is A1095.
This "new" PowerBook was meant to replace an older, slower one with an 80GB drive. While this "new" machine has certain defects, some of which can be corrected relatively easily, I would definitely like to upgrade its hard drive to something larger than 80GB; what larger size drive would be supported by this architecture?
Another question I have is the maximum RAM to which I can upgrade. The lower slot is dead, with the upper one occupied by a 1GB DDR SDRAM memory module. Assuming there is no way to "restore" this lower slot to operational status, how big a memory module could I use in the remaining slot, to help improve performance?
Thank you for your time.
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Allan, thank you for your response.
Permit me to share some background, which I couldn't do because of a character limit in the details section of the question.
As much as I would love to buy Apple's latest MacBook Pro with all the bells and whistles, I cannot do so at this time, as I do not have the wherewithal. Thus, I'm stuck buying used machines that still work.
That being said, my question regarding larger hard drives was to permit me to use this newer machine to replace the one I currently use, which plods along at 667 MHz with an 80GB hard drive. However, the biggest stumbling block is the hard drive, which has HALF the capacity of my current machine. Therefore, I want to replace it with a larger-capacity drive, so I don't get the ""Your startup disk is almost full" message, which I've encountered too often. The larger replacement drive doesn't have to be faster than the 80GB drive in the other machine, just roomier.
This "new" PowerBook - on which I'm writing this reply - is meant to replace the current machine. I don't do graphics-intensive work on it, or gaming, so it doesn't need to go to Warp 8. All i want is for it to function as it should, for my online activities and spreadsheet and word processing activities.

Hard drive larger than 2 tb partition problem

Hard drive partition problem

More information would be helpful. What is the problem?
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Panther on a hard drive larger than 7 GB

First of all the machine specs are iMac 233 Bondi Blue/96 MB of RAM/80 GB HDD.
I read somewhere that in order to install OS X on this machine I would need to format the OS X partition to 7 GB or less. I did that and installed OS X. I am wondering if now I can boot into the CD and delete the extra partition and resize the OS X partition to use all 80 GB? Or am I stuck saving stuff to the extra 73 GB partition? Thanks in advance.

I am wondering if now I can boot into the CD and delete the extra partition and resize the OS X partition to use all 80 GB?
Not without erasing that partition or using third-party software. The computer might not start up correctly if the OS files aren't located within the first 8GB of the drive anyway.
am I stuck saving stuff to the extra 73 GB partition?
Yes.
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Copy of drive larger than original

I'm replacing a 750GB HDD with a 960GB SDD. Using the finder, I copied 713GB of data from the old drive to the new, empty drive. Strangely, the data is using 897GB of space on the new drive. Thinking that it may have been a finder-copy issue with a large chunk of data, I erased the new drive and used third-party software to mirror the data to the new drive. The result was the same. Disk Utility finds no trouble with either drive. Is there an explanation for this?

It is also possible that compressed files on the original were decompressed during the copy to the SSD. That is a total guess.
NOTE: When I switched my Macbook Pro from an HDD to an SSD, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to move all my data. That way I knew I had a bootable SSD that including all my data.
You could also go with SuperDuper (free for a full clone), or Applications -> Utilities -> Disk Utility -> Restore specifying the original HDD as the source, and the SSD as the destination. Carbon Copy Cloner does have a 1 month demo period where "All" its features are enabled, so you can even use CCC.

Format external drive for use with both Leopard & XP, & maybe Win7

I want to repurpose one of my old small Firewire drives to use with both Leopard and XP via Boot Camp on my MacBook. It is is 60GB and is currently formatted with MacOS Extended Journaled, and Apple Partition Map. I don't think I will have any need at the present time to store files of more than 4GB on it (most of the ones I want to store are no more than a few hundred MB each).
Is using FAT32 with Master Boot Record adequate? Up until now I have just used flash drives for external Windows storage, but I would like to consolidate lots of topographic maps files onto this one Firewire drive instead of using multiple flash drives, and use these files with both Leopard and XP. If I want to try Windows 7 in the future via either Boot Camp or virtualization, will there be a problem with FAT32/MBR?

Hi,
using FAT32 as file system and MBR as partition table should work just fine with OSX and all Windows versions up to 7.
And since your files don't come close to 4GB single-file-size, that FAT32 limitation is no hinderance.
Use Disk Utility to do this, since Windows won't format partitions/drives with more than 32GB to FAT32 (built-in limitation).
Nonetheless it can use such partitions (I have a 200GB on my external HD).
Regards
Stefan
Message was edited by: Fortuny

New MacMini.....Any problem with hard drive greater than 500gb?

I'm interested in buying a new MacMini. I could definitely use a hard drive larger than 500gb though. Is there any problem installing a drive larger than 500gb? Since the Mac store only offers 320 and 500gb, I'm wondering if there is some limitation (special size?) or other problem.
I'd rather not have to use an additional external drive.
Thanks in advance.
Fabian

Hi Fabian,
any 2.5" SATA harddisk with a maximum height of 9.5mm fits in the Mac Mini.
OSX doesn't "care" about the amount of GB the harddisk has.
With the above specs 750GB seems to be the largest widely avaiable size but 1TB should be avaiable too.
Have a look at MacSales or NewEgg.
Regards
Stefan

Format & Partition new blankHard Drive

the 30 Gig HD on our G4 Tower is gone, went to Frys today to & got a new 150 Gig which is more than I want.
I would like to erase, fromat and partition it into 2 volumes. When I use the disk 1 on 3.9
start w c key down the only thing that shows up is
743.7 MB Soney CD-R...
Session 1
Mac OSX Install Di...
with no info about the new Maxtor that I installed
prior to pulling the 30 Gig not working HD I Ran Disk Warrior, latest & greatest Tech tool Pro. disk utility from start up and did repair permissions and attempted to do repair disk. I would have thought that running the 1st 3 that everything is hunkey dory but alas no such, the red letters let me know that this drive was unavailable without spending bunches of $$.
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Hi, Norman!
Please take a moment to update your computer info in your profile, which helps Members give better advice.
The first thing that you should insure is that the drive jumper pin(s) are set properly.
If you have a Mac model earlier than the MDD model, set the jumper on the back of the drive for master (some drive brands use "single drive" or "single master" settings). Connect the drive to the end connector of the ribbon cable.
If it's an MDD Mac or later, set the drive jumper for cable Select, connecting it to the end of the ribbon cable. If you're unsure about your Mac model or the drive pin settings, post back.
Boot to the install disk (depress and hold the "c" key at startup). Once booted, open Disk Utility from the Menubar and highlight the drive on the left side of the window. If it's not there after you rechecked your installation, quit the installer and the Mac will attempt to restart. As it does, hold down the CmdOpt+PR keys (PRAM reset) and continue to hold them until the Mac chimes the third time, then release them and immediately depress and hold the "c" key again to reboot to the install disk. Try Disk Utility again. If the drive now appears, highlight it, click on the Erase tab on the right side of the window, and erase/format it using the Mac OS Extended format. I'd recommend checking the box to install the OS 9 drivers, which can come in handy if you ever need to use OS 9 later on, even if you don't intend to do so now. Later on, should you need to do a firmware update or something, you'll be happy you installed them... It doesn't take up any user-usable space on the drive to install them. Also, I'd recommend checking the option to overwrite zeros to the drive, which will map out any bad sectors which might be present, preventing their future use and preventing future data corruption if they are present. This takes some time, but is good insurance. It's not essential, however.
Once you've initialized/formatted the drive, you may only see 128GB if you have an older Mac. This is a built-in limitation on older Macs which only see the first 128GB of a drive unless the drive is connected to a third-party ATA-133 controller card.
Next, click on the Partition tab and size and name the partitions/volumes, keeping the same Mac OS Extended formatting. Once partitioned, proceed with the OS X install.
If you still had problems with seeing the drive while in Disk Utility and didn't get to the Erase step above, then shut down, do a PMU reset, and try booting to the install disk again.
Gary
1GH DP G4 Quicksilver 2002, 400MH B&W rev.2 G3, Mac SE30 Mac OS X (10.4.2) 5G iPod, Epson 2200 & R300 & LW Select 360 Printers, Epson 3200 Scanner

Format external drive partition under 10.2.8

Hello. I have been trying to setup a WD My Book 500gb with 2 partitions to be used as on offsite backup unit for our business computers. We have one Mac (this G5), and 4 Windows stations (3 XP/ 1 98SE). I am trying to setup this unit with one partition using NTFS and the other with Mac HFS or HFS+ file systems. I have found a utility that allows me to format the partition that I intend to use with the Mac as a FAT32 partition. I then tried bringing the WD MyBook to the G5 and reformatting that partition as HFS. When I run Disk Utility, I click on the partition showing as Fat32 under disk2 and then click on the Erase tab, select Mac OS X Extended file system, no OS9 drivers, have tried various names (Mac BU, My Mac BU, My MacBook, etc), then click Erase, Confirm Erase. The progress bar comes up for a moment or so, says that it is erasing the volume, then exits out as if done. Unfortunately, it never mounts the drive and the volume no longer shows up in Disk Utility (only shows the Drive without any recognized partitions) until I close and restart Disk Utility. When I restart Disk Utility, the volume I am trying to format once again shows up under the drive, tho now with no name. Under Identification, it says Mount Point: Not Mounted/ Format: MS-DOS/ Capacity: 116.44gb. After doing some browsing around onthe internet trying to troubleshoot this on my own, I found some reference to Disk Utility logs (supposedly avail in upper right corner, tho didn't find there). I searched in the Library/Logs/Crash Reporter and found 'Disk Utility.crash.log' which says:
Date/Time: 2008-09-17 21:25:42 -0400
OS Version: 10.2.8 (Build 6S90)
Host: Joanns-Computer.local.
Command: Disk Utility
PID: 540
Exception: EXCBADACCESS (0x0001)
Codes: KERNPROTECTIONFAILURE (0x0002) at 0x01215088
Any suggestions on how I might get this partition formatted for a Mac file system? I would use Fat32, but I plan to use RSyncX to backup this G5 and would like to make the backup bootable in case of critical failure. And since I am using this drive as a backup storage device rather than file sharing system, I have no need to access files on either partition from the opposite operating system.
Thanks in advance for any help that can be rendered. Also, if more info or more of the log file is needed to diagnose, please let me know.
PS: Sorry if this is in wrong forum. Wasn't sure if this falls under Setup, Customizing or something else.

You can either format the drive entirely FAT32 that can be used on both Windows and Mac or you can format the drive entirely for the Mac, but you cannot have one partition of each on the same drive (not with Jaguar. You would need Leopard to accomplish that and an Intel Mac.)
There is this article/hint explaining a method for doing so, but I do not know if it is doable with Jaguar. Maybe Panther since the hint appeared about the time Panther was released.

Unable to format/partition hard drive

So I've recently decided my previous three partitions, including a partition with windows on, are not needed so backed up the files and am trying to simply format the whole hard disk. It lets me format two of the old partitions, but not the one with windows OS on it (erase is greyed out).
In terminal I tried
diskutil reformat /dev/disk2
but get
disk2 does not appear to have a valid file system format
Usage: diskutil reformat MountPoint|DiskIdentifier|DeviceNode
Completely erase an existing volume with the same name and format as the
original. Ownership of the affected disk is required.
You cannot erase the boot volume, nor can you reformat any device which
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Hi there LazyGenious,
At this point you may need to boot into the Recovery HD to repartition and reformat your HDD, then reinstall OS X.
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Partition a disk - Disk Utility Help
Partition a disk
Select the disk in the sidebar, then click Partition.
If you’re partitioning an external disk, make sure it’s connected to your computer.
Click the Partition Layout pop-up menu, then choose the number of partitions.
You can enter a size for each partition or drag the divider between the partitions to change their sizes. If a partition’s name has an asterisk beside it, it’s being shown larger than its actual size so the name can be displayed clearly.
Click each partition, then enter a name for it.
For each partition, click the Format pop-up menu, choose a format, then enter a size.
Mac OS Extended (Journaled): Uses journaling to protect the hierarchical file system integrity.
Mac OS Extended (Case-sensitive, Journaled): Uses journaling and is case sensitive to folder names. For example, folders named “Homework” and “hoMeWOrk” are two different folders.
MS-DOS (FAT): Use for Windows disks that are 32 GB or less.
ExFAT: Use for Windows disks that are over 32 GB.
Free Space: Use to extend the free space for the disk.
Click Options, then choose one of the following:
GUID Partition Table: Choose this partition scheme if you’ll be using this disk only with Mac computers.
Apple Partition Map: This partition scheme should only be used if you’re working with Mac computers using Mac OS X version 10.4 or earlier.
Master Boot Record: Also known as “fdisk,” choose this partition scheme if you’ll be using the disk as a secondary disk for the Windows operating system you installed using Boot Camp, or for an external disk you’ll be using on a Windows computer.
Click Apply.
Once this is process is complete, quit Disk Utility and reinstall OS X using the steps outlined in the article below, starting from step 2.
OS X Mavericks: Erase and reinstall OS X
-Griff W.

MS Project - Printing to dimensions larger than max print driver settings

I have a large (2000+) task Gantt chart but no wide-format printer.
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Two questions:
First: How do I get the bars to show in a PDF print?
Second: How do I set the print area larger than my max paper size of 17x11?
Thanks.

Thank you very much for your response, Guillaume.
The issue is that I only have standard sized printers available to me. The drivers of these control and restrict the 'print' size of the PDF file. I had already selected the columns, etc., but could not get the right-hand part of the document
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Additionally, no matter what else I did (and I suspect it had to do with the program attempting to print the Gantt bars) I ended up with multiple prints of the document within my finished PDF. Meaning I had to use the Professional version of Adobe
to go back and delete the 50+ pages I didn't need before I could distribute what was useful to everyone else on the team.
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How do i get files larger than 2 gigs on a usb drive and still be able to use on a mac and pc?

how do i get files larger than 2 gigs on a usb drive and still be able to use on a mac and pc?

You can format the drive using ExFAT or you can format the drive NTFS then use third-party software on the Mac to enable writing to it: NTFS 11.2.443.
Disk Utility 12.x- Format a disk for Windows computers

Can i format the drive to ntfs - cant save large files

i bought the TimeCapsole Extreeme AC but i cant save large files - can i format the drives to NTFS??
is there any other soultion to this?
Tx

The thing is that in windows its a map drive that i can see the files but cant save large files(more then 4GB)
Ok.. I am rather shocked but of course the problem is entirely windows.. The drive is formatted HFS+ and a 3TB drive has no file size limitation other than the drive size.
Windows for some stupid reason when it maps drives has decided it must be FAT32 and applied that.
Get rid of the drive mapping.. !!
Try accessing it via network.. ie
\\TCIPaddress and see if you can get around the 4GB file size barrier. If not I will take another look at the problem.. although I have to say windows is windows..
It should see the TC as a NT Server and have no file size limitation at all.

My Macbook pro was stolen 09/12, the police just returned it to me. I want to remove all the data and start over. Format the drive's etc. I have windows 7 on 1 partion and mountain lion OSX on the apple partition. How is the best way to do this?

My Macbook pro was stolen 09/12, the police just returned it to me. I want to remove all the data and start over. Format the drive's etc. I have windows 7 on 1 partion and mountain lion OSX on the apple partition. How is the best way to do this?

Have a look here...
what-to-do-when-your-hard-drive-is-full.html

Format/Partition Drive larger than 128GB

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