Hard Drive Interface

I'm looking to purchase an internal hard drive that I will put in a case to make an external drive for my system. Based on the specs of my powermac is there a specific type of hard drive I will need to buy for it to be compatible? Should I get SATA or ATA? Any other issues that I may run into while looking for hard drives? And any suggestions on what drives you would recommend, thanks.

Do you know of any good pci-controllers that have
support for multiple external harddrives? Any
personal suggestions? and what kind of interface
would the multiple ports on the controller use?
Dear Chris,
Since you have a dual core PowerMac G5 you need a SATA PCIe host adapter. If you want to support more than two hard drives externally I would go with the Sonnet E4P. You can read more about it here:
http://www.amug.org/amug-web/html/amug/reviews/articles/sonnet/e4p/
The E4P will support up to four individual hard drive connections or it can support SATA PM enclosures that support up to 5 hard drives per enclosure. Up to four 5-bay enclosures can be connected to a single E4P. It's a very nice card but expensive at $299.
The other SATA 2 port external host adapter I would recommend for the Dual Core PowerMac G5 user is the FirmTek SeriTeK/2SE2-E
http://firmtek.com/seritek/seritek-2se2-e/
This new PCIe card is only $99.95 and provides two external ports. FirmTek does not advertise that the 2SE2-E is SATA PM compatible as the SiI-3132 chipset has a bug that limits this card to a maximum of 110MB/sec. when a single port is used with a 5 bay SATA PM enclosure, but it does work with SATA PM too.
This card is the best little two port available for the PCIe Mac user. It uses FirmTek's great firmware instead of the Sil-3132 1.04 Mac driver. In addition, the 2SE2-E will be bootable with a firmware update. The FirmTek SeriTek/2SE2-E is a great value option that can provide a very fast dual drive striped RAID set or individual SATA connections for PCIe Mac users.
Michael

Similar Messages

VME PCI-6200 hard drive interface cable identification

Hopefully someone on this forum still uses the VME PCI-6200. I'm looking for a replacement hard drive interface cable, 50-pin female-female, connecting a 2.5" PATA hard drive to the PCI-6200 board. Does anyone know the cable standard or where a replacement can be gotten? I'm enclosing pictures and the board spec for identification purposes. Thanks!
Attachments:
www.artisantg.com_info_SBS_VME_6200_Datasheet.pdf ‏56 KB
IMG_0638.JPG ‏915 KB
IMG_0642.JPG ‏1034 KB

jambraun,
According to this website I found http://www.pc-pitstop.com/scsi_adapters/
It is an IDC 50 connector.
I briefly tried to find a retailer that sold them, but had no luck.
Best of luck!
Peter C.
Applications Engineer
National Instruments

Macbook Pro 6,2 hard drive interface

Far as I know that newer macbook pro have hard drive interface 1.5gb/s and older Macbook pro model have 3gb/s interface. I was wondering if I can change the hard drive interface into 3gb/s? I finish order new hard drive Western Digital 500gb 7200rpm with 16mb cache and there is a link if you want more information about this drive.
http://www.newegg.com/Product/Product.aspx?Item=N82E16822136692&Tpk=N82E16822136 692
thanks!

oh really!? That a relief haha. Im not a big fan of Hitachi drive and Im a big fan of Western Digital when it come to performance and reliability . I notice the performace was stuggle when Im using Window 7 for my bootcamp. This new hard drive willing to improve the performace!

Best Portable External Hard Drive Interface?

I have a MacBook Pro (just got it this year) and I need a portable external hard drive. I also want to use it on my PC. Which interface would you suggest? I am not sure which connections my PC has but I know it has USB 3.0. Is there an interface on my MacBook that's faster than USB 3.0? If so, I might forget about connecting it to my PC, assuming it's significantly faster.

Likely a combination Firewire 800/400 USB 3 drive.
Mac's don't have USB 3 yet, only USB 2,1, so you can use the Firewire 800 with your Mac and the USB3 with the PC. The USB 3 is backwards with 2,1 on the Mac too, in case you forget the 800 cable.
See the formatting guide here
https://discussions.apple.com/docs/DOC-3044
There is also Thunderbolt on the Mac's, it's REALLY fast, but you need a internal and external SSD to get anything out of it, your hard drives would be the bottleneck and you would be paying a lot of money for speed you can't use. In the future when the price comes down and SSD's are cheap and of large capacity it would be a nice interface to use.

PowerBook 145B - strange hard drive interface?

I opened up a PowerBook 145B from a friend that had died (the PowerBook, not the friend) and pulled out the hard drive to recover the data. I thought I would find some type of regular SCSI interface on the hard drive, but...
I've spent some time Googling and found people who can't figure out how to get data off this drive (IBM Model WDS-2120, 120mb) and no solutions. It says 2.5" SCSI 17mm on the drive, but the interface is something I haven't seen.
Does anyone have ideas on how to get the data off this drive?
Thanks!

Hi,
I don't think a cable exists which would handle the data and power requirements of the WDS-2120 and allow connection to a more standard SCSI interface.
The adapter that I have is part of the external case mentioned above. It has made it possible to supply power to e.g. a WDS-2120 drive, and to connect that drive to the HDI-30 SCSI port of a PowerBook or the DB-25 SCSI port of a desktop Mac. However, as indicated, it may be difficult to buy something like that today.
(It looks like 8 of the pins are for power on the HD.)
If I remember correctly, the ID selector is connected to some of the pins in the separate group of eight. Since the internal hard drive always is ID 0, the selection can even be simplified (meaning that the complete interface may not be needed). So, do not be surprised if you see a connector covering merely the main portion of the interface in some computer models.
For more on pinouts, try a Google search for this or any other (maybe Quantum) 2.5" SCSI hard drive. Also, you may be able to find something of interest in the Apple hardware documentation here.
Jan

Hard drive interface for new dv7t-7000 quad

Hi.
I just want to know the hdd interface for the newer ivy bridge dv7t-7000 quad laptops.
Does anyone know if it is SATA, SATA 2 or SATA 3?
Thanks

I run three firewire audio interfaces daisy chained together, 2 Presonus FP10's and an Alesis Multimix8.
This gives me 24 simultaneous inputs. I normally record 24 bit at 88.2 . My iMac has a FW800 and a FW400 port. What I tried to do was run all the interfaces through the 400 and record to a FW800 external hard drive but I it kept dropping out interfaces, even if I used only one interface. I switched firewire cables on the hard drive to a 800/400 so that the hard drive was now operating as a 400 and I did not have any more interface drop outs.
Even though the iMac has 2 firewire ports, they connect to a single cable to the i/o inside the Mac. If I try recording to an external hard drive, that is 24 tracks going into the Mac, back out to the hard drive, back in to the Mac and then back out to the interfaces and on to the monitor speakers. That is a lot to ask of a firewire connection.
So, I record to the internal drive and use the external for backing up and saving the projects.

Hard drive interface 6 Gb/s

Just posting my experience for others not to get caught in problems as I did recently.
Bought a Western Digital 6 Gb/s one terabyte 64 meg cache 7200 rpm sata hard drive. I installed it in a 2008 Mac Pro to run Snow Leopard. My one thought was it should be automatic,(even though interface is 6 Gb/s) just like all my other sata drive upgrades. The Mac Pro is rated at 3 Gb/s.
Apple manual reads 3 Gb/s for internal hard drives.
Used DU to partition in two. Did a DVD restore to the smaller partition. Booted that restore smaller partition. Installed Snow Leopard to the larger partition. All is well so far, I thought. After install of Snow Leopard, it boots into the set up screens and fails at "Do you already own a Mac?' I tried this two more times and repeated the failure.
Go to WD FAQS and read for the WD1002FAEX (BTW I don't think the brand or model matters when its 6 Gb/s). Word for word: "OPT 1 enabled. Jumpers on pins 5 & 6. 1.5 Gb/s data transfer." I thought that stinks. I'm going to take it back because I'm not settling for the lower rate.
I broke open the Mac Pro again to remove the hard drive. I noticed the printed text ON THE HARD DRIVE reading " set jumper to 5 & 6 to make 3 Gb/s compatible. I did and all works fine even the set up screen. I do wish the manufacturers would get their story straight on their support site.
Lastly, I also hope that many of the people on this forum can be more specific when counter measuring (finding the correct answer to a problem) and stop making an assumption that others know the counter measure.
A community service.

Go to WD FAQs and read for the WD1002FAEX (BTW I don't think the brand or model matters when its 6 Gb/s). Word for word: "OPT 1 enabled. Jumpers on pins 5 & 6. 1.5 Gb/s data transfer." I thought that stinks. I'm going to take it back because I'm not settling for the lower rate.
I broke open the Mac Pro again to remove the hard drive. I noticed the printed text ON THE HARD DRIVE reading " set jumper to 5 & 6 to make 3 Gb/s compatible. I did and all works fine even the set up screen. I do wish the manufacturers would get their story straight on their support site.
It may be that the way to make it compatible with a 3 Gb/s computer is to set it to 1.5 Gb/s. 1.5 Gb/s drives are compatible with 3 Gb/s computers, but of course run at 1.5 Gb/s maximum. So the WD FAQs and drive label can be consistent.

Using an external firewire hard drive + interface at the same time?

Hi Guys,
It seems that the issues I am having with BFD2 not streaming properly might be to do with the slow USB transfer rate. (Thanks to everyone who has helped with this issue!)
So... I am thinking of getting an external firewire hard drive for my iMac.
Thing is, my audio interface also uses firewire (Mackie Onyx 1220)... can they share using a hub? Will one slow the other down? What if I also run another hard drive on firewire for my audio, will two FW drives and the audio interface all be able to share the one firewire port using a hub?
At the moment, all my drives have their own direct USB port, is going to shared firewire a step forward or a step backwards?
Cheers and thanks,
Mike

Gorwel Owen1 wrote:
On my G4 (roughly 30 % the power of your MBP)
Is this with an external drive and interface?
No Interface (yes, I use built in audio), but that shouldn't make a difference in CPU use.
I have four Internal drives. But that shouldn't make a difference either
That is very dependent on what you put on these tracks
I was thinking mainly about recording i.e. 8 simultaneous tracks whilst playing back up to about 16. I generally avoid plug-ins until mixing anyway. Sounds like I should be OK.
Absolutely.
but when logic overloads (when the CPU can't process audio in realtime anymore) Logic simply stops playback.
When I tried using a drive and interface on the same bus a few years ago I experienced minor glitching rather than stopping. Perhaps Logic has been improved in this respect.
P.S. How do you 'quote'in the forum?
Just above the field where you type replies in, there are 5 symbols - they are buttons.
The first three work on selected text (making it Bold, Italic and Underlined). The abc-tick is spell-checking and the " sign means Quote. When you click it, the message you reply to is inserted wherever your cursor is.
The preview tab lets you see how the message will look, giving an opportunity to edit. You cannot edit in preview mode though, just look. Only in Compose can you edit.

On my Macbook pro 15 2011, System Profiler is suggesting that it uses SATA III for the hard drive and SATA II for the Optical Drive. Is that true?

On my Macbook pro 15, 2011, System Profiler is suggesting that it uses SATA III for the hard drive and SATA II for the Optical Drive. Is that true?

That is correct. The tech specs indicate:
Hard Drive Interface
6.0 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)
Optical Drive Interface
3.0 or 6.0 Gbps Serial ATA (SATA)

I have all of my data from my old macbook pro in an external hard drive. Basically it's my old Macbook hard drive with external casing. It was working fine before when retrieving files using my new macbook air, now I can't access any files?

I can't access any of my files, photos, anything form my external hard drive... It worked before now when I plug it in the light comes on, but it doesn't even show up as an external drive, so I can't access anything, I'm worried I have lost everything...

Huge mistake was only having ONE copy of your data OFF computer,
most people do it, and its just horrible and the typical reason for serious data loss.
Likely you have a very common failure (extremely common actually) called SATA bridge card failure, which would be "good" news,
read about same here:
Your dead external hard drive is likely fine! Great hope for your 'faulty' external HD
Never again let yourself have LESS than 2 copies of your important data off-computer, ever
1. verify the external HD doesnt show up on another Mac
if same, you have about a 8 in 10 chance its SATA card failure.......... easy to fix.
The great news at the end of the tunnel of an apparently failed or failing external hard drive.
When checked on another computer, and with no need for spending money on data extraction expertise or software, the very likely case is that your external USB or thunderbolt HD is in fact fine, and merely the card interface, or SATA bridge card has failed or is failing. Keeping a HD dock around handy, or cheaper still a $20 hard drive enclosure or a SATA to USB connector can be a real life saver in getting your drive back to use, when the drive itself is fine, and merely its interface card has gone bad.
The SATA bridge card inside a USB external HD has a very high failure rate in general
Typical SATA bridge cards as seen inside a 3.5" external HD with power input (#1), and 2.5" SATA cards (#3, #4, #5)
What are the realistic odds your HD is perfectly fine?
There are no hard facts whatsoever, especially since so many people discard their assumed “dead/faulty” hard drives, but a good educated conclusion from years of examining and seeing this issue is that for hard drives made since 2010, and not dropped or generally abused, is that a minimum of 50% conservatively are perfectly fine! I personally estimate however that it likely approaches 60%+.
Considering how many external hard drives ‘fail’ (rather the SATA bridge more than half the time) each day, that is a very high number of perfectly fine HD that are tossed!
This is especially common with 3.5” desktop HD that are connected 24/7 with power and see a lot of data transfer. People wrongly conclude that “X” mfg. just made a defective drive, when in fact their 3.5” drives inside the plastic enclosure is 100% fine. I have personally seen well over 200 of these dead SATA cards and additionally seen 3 fail within a one hour span of doing a large data copies.
One of the very reason pros use bare HD as inserted into HD docks is not just the saving of space and the need for endless USB cables, but the elimination of the need for this high failure-rate part.
While the shapes and sizes vary somewhat on SATA bridge cards, they all serve the same purpose and have likewise failure rates
What exactly is the SATA bridge card in your external HD?
In the middle to late of 2009, most all external hard drives both in 2.5” and 3.5” reached the shelves in SATA III. These small SATA cards or "bridges" are used to translate between the hard drives’ interfaces and the enclosures' external ports (USB, Thunderbolt, Firewire). Additionally these small bridges not only transfer power but also of course the data. Unfortunately these SATA bridge cards have a very high failure rate as they are burdened with shuffle power and data.
Literally these little unreliable and fragile cards are the power conduits and the nervous system for all external HD data transfer.
SATA card as found inside a typical USB external hard drive
The assumption that the hard drive is bad when its not!
Countless 1000s of good external hard drives are thrown away each year because the owner thought the HD was bad when it fact it was the SATA bridge card which had failed. This card is removed in a matter of mere second once an external USB HD is cracked open from its plastic casing to reveal the bare HD and the attached SATA card which attaches between the HD and the USB cable.
To complicate this problem, even many computer professionals do not know that there is a very easy solution to the “failing or dead HD” issue since the hard drive itself is very likely just fine. Its astonishing that so many highly educated computer repair persons are unaware of this high-failure part, but this is mostly due to the fact that they do not juggle 100s of hard drives and know that of the iceberg that is a “external hard drive failure”, the mostly unseen majority are not a HD failure at all, but a bridge card failure.
To add to this great misunderstanding is the fact that people assume that "likewise symptoms seen on an external HD are the same as seen on an internal HD, therefore also the external HD must be bad". This is a compositional fallacy of logic. Since internal HD do not have a SATA bridge interface, to conclude similar symptoms "indicate the same failure" is misplaced and incorrect.
This is all not to say that HD do not fail, they do indeed, and I have seen many 100s of dead and failing hard drives. Hard drives even under ideal conditions have a life expectancy of around 4-8 years due to ferromagnetic depolarization from entropy. But of the mountain of symptoms that are seen as “hard drive failures” in comments, posts, and hearsay, half or more of these are not a HD failure at all.
Once your rescued hard drive is removed from the bad SATA card
You have several options, but the purchase of a $20 HD enclosure is one option, another is having a HD dock, however this eliminates the former portability in a 2.5" small HD.
Remember that 3.5” HD require power, which means you need either a HD dock, or a powered SATA card kit as seen at top left in the picture below. 2.5” HD get power from the USB port itself.
Just remember that the serious downside to the low cost external HD enclosures is THEY TOO contain these SATA cards, and what is worse the cheap ones will fail, often, much quicker than the original factory one did! In which case it is recommended you buy a quality HD USB enclosure
Rescue tools to use with your extracted HD for data recovery

Lacie external hard drive won't mount, seems dead. Caused by 10.5.6 update?

Hi all, a couple days after I updated Leopard to 10.5.6, my Lacie external drive no longer worked with TimeMachine. So I repaired permissions and ran Repair Disk from my original 10.3 Panther disk. Not sure if that was the cause, but afterward when the drive is connected by FireWire, it makes exciting new loud buzzing and grinding noises, and then I get an alert that reads "The disk you inserted was not readable by this computer." Apple Disk Utility shows it as a Maxtor Calypso drive now with a capacity of 2TB, even though it's a 160GB (a FireWire only, Porsche model). I don't want to erase the disk and reformat it because I want the data.
Lacie customer support says the drive has suffered a "controller failure." Says Lacie, "The controller on the hard drive mechanism can not obtain the volume information on the hard drive and can not gain access. It is reading the control board information. You should be able to install a new hard drive mechanism in the enclosure and be ready to go again." Lacie CS continued to say DiskWarrior etc will not help.
Now I know that theoretically software updates shouldn't damage hardware, but I believe installing Leopard in the first place caused my lower RAM slot to fail. (That happened immediately after the upgrade.)
-So, does anyone think the 10.5.6 update could have caused this problem? Any fix ideas?
-If not, should I open the drive up and attempt to repair/replace this controller mechanism? If so, can anyone direct me to tutorials or instructions on how I could do that?
-Or, should I try putting it in the freezer overnight, as some online forums recommend as a last resort fix attempt for dead HDs?
I want the data, but not enough to pay for an expensive data recovery service.
Thank you very, very much.
scott

First off, software can not cause hardware to fail.
Lower RAM slot failure is a common issue not because of software issues, but rather because memory is unaware of bus slewing issues with energy saver power requirements. Secondly, the lower RAM slot of these machines was extremely hard to properly align the RAM right in the slot, making it easy to misplace the RAM during the installation process, thus short or damage teh slot. See my FAQ on bad RAM*:
http://www.macmaps.com/badram.html
You should be able to open the drive, and insert it inside another inexpensive hard drive case that is known to be compatible such as those by http://www.macsales.com/
Unfortunately, recently LaCie has had some hard drive interface converters which have not caught up with spec changes in the operating system, meaning their external drives sometimes need a firmware update. The only company that has been able to consistently avoid firmware updates is http://www.macsales.com/ This problem has plagued Firewire hard drives since the release of 10.3, and possibly earlier at as mentioned on my FAQ*:
http://www.macmaps.com/firewirebug2.html
If inserting the drive in another case does not solve issues, Prosoft Data Rescue, Subrosasoft Filesalvage, or Boomerang's Boomerang and a second drive at least as large as the one to be recovered can sometimes extract information from a flakey hard drive. In event that doesn't work, then data recovery specialist is the only option.
In the future always backup your data and never let there be less than two copies of your data at anytime*:
http://www.macmaps.com/backup.html
- * Links to my pages may give me compensation.

What if computer run into "Bootmgr is missing" or "Hard Drive Failure"

Most of us have the experience of computer run into error,such as bootmgr is missing. The most common reasons for BOOTMGR errors include corrupt and misconfigured files, hard drive and operating system upgrade issues, corrupt hard drive sectors, an outdated BIOS, and damaged or loose hard drive interface cables. Hard drive failure is another frequent error,it is arouse by physical damage or logical error. Once this problem occurs to you, any data stores in it would be in danger. If you want to Fix Bootmgr Error by yourself. These following steps may be available for you to deal with the problem. Step one. Burn a rescue boot disc or USB drive. You need to download Fix Genius and install it into a computer ,then insert the CD/USB and run the program to burn it . Step two. boot your computer from CD/USB Enter into the BIOS and change the Boot Device Priority ,then save the changes and exit. Step three.Fix "Bootmgr is missing" or "Hard Drive Failure" Insert the CD/USB then you will enter into the WinPE system, and click the Fix Genius icon there on the desktop. After run up the program, config the parameter according to your problem. This rescuing process would last within minutes. It is the best one I can find among the solutions. As the time past, it is a time information refresh very quickly, Maybe there is a better one for you to fix bootmgr is corrupted and Hard drive failure if you have time to search online. please let me know if you find it, I will be glad with you.

There are some caveats to be aware of when replacing the hard drive! While in theory any SATA drive is compatible, I have experienced problems with a Seagate Momentus 5400.6 500GB and a Western Digital Scorpio Blue 640GB recently.
With my WD drive I have had to adjust the power management settings (using a command line tool called "hdapm") to prevent it from spinning up and down every 20 to 30 seconds, and which was also leading to momentary freeze ups. While this may kill my battery a bit quicker, I'm hoping the drive will at least live an average lifetime. (Batteries may be more expensive, but they're a lot quicker to replace than a hard drive).
My Seagate drive has exhibited far less frequent problems but the occasional noises it made have never sounded healthy and after 6 months is now being replaced under warranty. There were also a number of days where I would get excessive beachballing for no reason I could identify, and that I concluded must be hard disk related. I couldn't find anything here or elsewhere on the internet to indicate what the cause of that might be.
So my limited experience of hard disk replacement hasn't been a great success and I'm beginning to wonder if getting an official replacement from Apple might be a safer option in the long run, despite it being more expensive. I read somewhere that the hard disks supplied by Apple have custom firmware that works better with Apple's own power management strategies.

Hard Drive Specs

Trying to buy the right hard drive.
Currently running OS X 10.2.8 on a 733 G4 M8359LL/A
The best i can remember the HD is a 60GB...
if it is a 60GB the specs say Hard Drive Interface 60GB Ultra ATA/66 (7200 rpm). I would like to know for sure.
The specs also say i have room for up to 3 internal ATA Hard Drives.
Final goal is to keep what i have on the present drive
Mac OS 9.2.2 with OS X 10.2.8
the second drive to have OS X 10.4 Tiger
Any input is appreciated

Hi,
Welcome to the Apple Discussion Forum!
It looks like you have a Quicksilver Mac. You can add another ATA 66/100/133, 7200RPM Hard Drive. It can be located on top of the existing HDD or next to it on the other HDD bay. There are 12v Power wires and IDE cables already in place in the chassis. Basically, put the HDD in place, plug in the power and ribbon IDE cable and the HDD is installed. It will need to be formatted (initialized) and then you can put an OS on it. After that, you select which HDD is the Boot disk in the 'Startup Disk' pref's Pane.
Here is the Apple help web URL, PDF's and movies:
http://www.apple.com/support/diy/
BTW, your model Mac only can use a HDD that is 127GB or less. If you install anything larger, only 127GB will be seen. To install a larger HDD you will need a PCI Controller card.

IBook G3 (dual usb) hard drive specs?

Is there anyone who can tell me the full specs on the hdd's that come with these computers? I've searched everywhere, and can't seem to find any information on it.
Most importantly, I'd like to know what kind of connectivity it uses. I know that Macintosh computers during this period of time pretty much had all there own proprietary hardware, but I'd like to see if I can't buy an external enclosure that I could hook this hdd into. My dad's lappy had the infamous logic board problem, and I'd like to be able to back up all the data he had on his G3 iBook, because some of it pertained to an important event with his business that he kinda needs his documents for.
If it helps, it's an A1005, according to the case.

FireSBurnsmuP wrote:
Most importantly, I'd like to know what kind of connectivity it uses. I know that Macintosh computers during this period of time pretty much had all there own proprietary hardware, but I'd like to see if I can't buy an external enclosure that I could hook this hdd into.
Actually Macintosh computer hardware of that time was no more or less proprietary than common PC notebook machines. Many replaceable parts were far from proprietary. They were using industry standard IDE hard drives and industry standard DDR memory modules. Of course the batteries were proprietary, but that's common for every single notebook computer manufacturer I've every heard of. Apple had gone to USB earlier than most PC makers and most common USB devices work well on a Mac. The processors and chipsets weren't the same ones that PC makers were using, but most of the common parts were no different.
As was said earlier, a common enclosure should be able to do the trick. I personally don't like the term "enclosure" because it doesn't adequately describe what it does. I sometimes call them "interface bridges" for the part that serves as a communications bridge between the hard drive interface and the USB or FireWire interface.

What is the maximum hard drive replacement I can use on my PowerBook g4 867 ghz?

What is the maximum hard drive replacement I can use on my PowerBook g4 867 ghz?

Sorry we are late. This forum is getting less traffic as people upgrade and responses sometime take longer. Everyone here volunteers their time, and I for one was unavailable much of yesterday.
The limiting factor on max drive size is that your PowerBook uses the older PATA drive interface, and the largest PATA 2.5-inch drives available today are about 320 GB.
What I'm reserching is the ATA bus controller in your PowerBook. Some older Macs cannot recognize more than 128GB of PATA hard drive space. However, this archived discussion from 2008:
https://discussions.apple.com/thread/1413918?start=0&tstart=0
suggests that people are running PowerBooks older than yours and not suffering the 128GB limit.
At this point, I need help with what appears to be a descrepancy between the text of your post and the PowerBook in your profile. A "PowerBook6,2" model identifier returns to the "PowerBook G4 (12-inch DVI)" marketing name with a 1.0Ghz processor; the 12-inch PBG4 with a 867mHz processor shows a model identifier of PowerBook6.1. They show the same hard drive interface but the later on appears to be a sure bet for large hard drive support,

Hard Drive Interface

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