USB Hard Drive Size Limit

Is there a TB size limit for external HDDs connected via USB on a mac?
I have both a 3 TB and 4TB external 3.5" drive that will not mount via USB. They are currently connecting via a hdd dock (with USB 3, FW, and ESATA ports) to a 2009 Mac Pro running latest version of Yosemite. They will however mount via esata, the internal sata drive bay and FireWire. Also, it seems that smaller sized HDDs ~1TB and under will mount (I haven't tried 2TB since I don't have one available, but I suspect it will work).
Note that this is not exclusive to the 2009 Mac Pro as I have tried it on the newest Mac Pro Cylinder and got the same results via USB 3. I found this was an issue in Mavericks too and tried Snow Leopard on an old iMac with the same result.
When I inspect the disk in disk utility via USB disk utility reads that the HDD is MBR when I know that it is GPT (GUID) and all the other connections read this correctly.
Any insight into this?
Thanks.

One of the drives is (connected via USB3... )
Drives are drives, and SATA. Know what you meant.
Some people have taken their internal drives, put in a USB device, formats properly, then return to use internally where the full capacity is seen and not an issue.
Why is DU treating internal drives on the SATA controller used an issue? really strange - and bad. But then Apple Pro RAID controller also limited drives to 2.2TB and would format as 800GB otherwise if they were larger.
Still points to the drive case.
And in using 3rd party PCIe USB3 controller, that could play a role as well.

Similar Messages

Is there a hard drive size limit for G5 imacs?

I recently added a 1.5 TB firewire drive to my father's iMac. Since then the system has been hanging frequently and I have not been able to restart the machine remotely using either Timbuktu or ssh sudo reboot.
Is this drive too big for leopard to handle on the G5?
Message was edited by: Chester Wood

Is there a hard drive size limit for G5 imacs?
No.

Is there a hard drive size limit that can be hooked to the airport extreme

I am trying to connect a 2TB HDD to my Airport Extreme but it doesn't see it. It is a Mac formatted drive I have been using as my backup drive but want to put it on the Airport Extreme to share some other stuff that's on it. When I hook in a 500GB drive it works just fine.
There are no windows machines (god forbid) that will share it, all Mac.
Thanks!

Is there a hard drive size limit for G5 imacs?
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Internal hard drive size limit on Mac Mini?

am thinking about getting an intel mac mini as a music (iTunes) server.
I see that Apple offers them with internal drives of either 80 or 120 GB.
Since I intend to use it with a large library, I wanted to ask if there is a maximum capacity for the internal drive. Assuming that I can replace the internal drive (I would be surprised if I couldn't), I was hoping to be able to use a 500 GB, 750 GB or even a 1 TB hard drive inside.
I was under the impression that since the Mini uses SATA drives, I can put one in of any size. Tell me if I'm wrong.
also: I would imagine that replacing the hard drive on a mini is more involved than doing it on a standard desktop, but I'm sure that there are helpful instructions (with copious illustrations) as to how to do it.
(I can always go with external drives - although, unfortunately, I believe my choices are limited to FW and USB; it would be nice if the Mini could use eSATA and PCI slots.)
thanks for your input.
w

I can't imagine how one would hack a mini in such a fashion - but I don't know anything about their architecture.
I have done something like that on a linux pc machine - it's fairly simple to attach an external eSATA drive to an internal SATA port, you just need a special cable to do that & power it externally. But I wouldn't imagine that the mac mini has SATA ports that are both accessible and available...
where might I find a step-by-step guide to replacing the internal drive?
thanks
W

K7T266 Pro2-RU Hard drive size limit

What is the maximum size hard drive that the BIOS can handle for the K7T266 Pro2-RU board? The official web site and BIOS updates are sort of vague... I know that the regular limit is 137 GB, and Windows XP Service Pack 1 has some kind of workaround. Will there be problems with installing big hard drives on this board? I'm not planning on using the RAID controller...
Thanks

well that works for drives over 32gb and under 137gb on boards whos bios cannot see drives over 32 gb
but ive never seen it proved to work with drives over 137 gb in a board cannot cope thith drives that big
bios indicates the raid has 48 bit lba support so usde your big drives on that
https://forum-en.msi.com/index.php?threadid=292&sid=

Replacement G4 hard drive size limit?

Hello! First I want to thank all of you for sharing your troubles and fixes. I've had very little trouble with my iBook in the past few years. A refreshing change from all the monkey-motion associated with my other pc clones!
But my hard drive has died. My question is... are there any limits on the size of hard drive? Will the iBook itself recognize a considerably larger drive than it was born with? It had a 30 GB drive and the drives now come 5 times larger or more. If there are limits, what are they?
I've read in other posts about G3 machines not recognizing larger than 8B physical formats. However, a partition of 8GB will be recognized with the remaining physical space in one or more other partitions. Is the same true of the G4?
Feel free to add any other advice or suggestions. Thanks!

khsmward, Welcome to the discussion area!
There isn't really any size limit to the hard drive that you can install.

G4 hard drive size limit

Hi folks – I'm a long time PC user surrounded by Mac users who tell me they are so much better. So I’ve decided to try.
I’ve acquired a PowerMac G4 Model M8570
It needed a replacement hard drive. I have been fortunate to be able to clone its sister machine running OS X 10.4.7 using Carbon Copy Cloner. They both had 60 G drives. The one I put in is 320 G. The OS saw the drive as 120 G..
Is there a way to force it to see the full size of the drive?

Hi-
OK- so you installed the 320gb drive into a Quicksilver (I believe) that doesn't support large drives, and did the formatting, correct? This would explain the 128gb size.
If you need to go the clone route for the OS in the MDD, clone the sister to a smaller drive, install into the MDD (along with the 320gb drive). Boot to the smaller drive, reformat the 320gb drive, and clone again.
Two drives (can support up to 4 in the MDD) should both be jumpered to Cable Select.
For future ID purposes, use these articles:
Power Mac G4: How to Differentiate Between Models
Power Mac G4: How to Differentiate Between Models, Part 2

A20M hard drive size limit

I'm having difficulty upgrading the hard drive in my A20M 2628 from 80GB to 160GB. It has the latest BIOS, but I can't find any reference to Logic Block Addressing, or to hard drive capacity. Is a 160GB hard drive more than the A20M can handle? Can anyone out there tell me the biggest drive the A20M can use?

Welcome to the forum!
I believe that BIOS limit is at 137GB. You can get around this by partitioning the drive on another machine, or with Linux.
Hope this helps.
Cheers,
George
In daily use: R60F, R500F, T61, T410
Collecting dust: T60
Enjoying retirement: A31p, T42p,
Non-ThinkPads: Panasonic CF-31 & CF-52, HP 8760W
Starting Thursday, 08/14/2014 I'll be away from the forums until further notice. Please do NOT send private messages since I won't be able to read them. Thank you.

Maximum hard drive size for 350 MHz slot loading?

Hello,
What is the maximum hard drive size for a 350 MHz slot loading imac?
I am aware of a 128 GB limit on imacs. Does the 128 GB hard drive limit apply to all imac CRTs or just the earlier models?
Here are the specs of my imac:
Blueberry 350 MHz
Slot loading CD-ROM drive,
6 GB hard drive
Is the maximum hard drive size limit of 127GB apply to this particular model?
Thanks

Yes, the last CRT iMac was in 2001. The first machines with built-in greater than 127 GB support were released in June 2002, as this article explains:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=86178
So all CRT iMacs have that limiation.
http://support.apple.com/specs/imac/
The 8 GB limit is explained here:
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106235

AirPort Extreme and shared USB Hard Drive

I received an AirPort Extreme for Christmas with the intent of using it to share a network Hard Drive and Printer between the multiple machines on our home network. I've finally gotten it set up with Bonjour on the PC's, and the AirPort Utility on all machines. It's connected via ethernet cable to a Dell PC, and wirelessly to an iMac, a Dell Laptop, my iPhone and a PS3. Internet functionality is great for all devices.
My next step was to connect a Seagate 750GB External USB Hard Drive to the APE. This drive was previously connected to the Dell PC, and was formatted as NTFS. I went through the hassle of converting it to FAT32, I connected it to the router, and both Dell's and the iMac can see the drive. I haven't checked if the PS3 can see it yet, but since I haven't found Bonjour for the PS3, I'm not holding my breath. The iPhone - well, mine isn't jailbroken at the moment.
A few quick hints I learned from doing a lot of web surfing and trial-and-error. These could save people a LOT of time...
+ Don't format a external drive as either an Apple Drive (HFS+) or as a Windows Drive (NTFS) if you plan on using data off it on both a Mac and a PC. Windows won't read HFS+ without a converter, APE won't accept NTFS. It needs to be FAT32 as this is nearly universal.
+ Windows will only format a maximum of 32GB as FAT32. It's a stupid limit, and you have to jump hoops to get it to do a larger drive size.
+ Use the Disk Utility on the Mac to erase the drive and reformat it as an MS-DOS partition. It will work up to a drive of about 2TB according to what I've read. On the Mac, MS-DOS partition = FAT32, and it formatted my 750GB drive as a single 750GB partition.
Now, I've begun the task of copying all our media to the drive. Copied a few pictures, no problem. Copied a few MP3's, no problem. Where the problems start is in trying to copy movies to the drive. We have ripped most of our DVD's to DivX / H.264, to keep the kids from destroying the DVD's (trust me, DVD's scratch EASY in the hands of a 5-year old). So I have about 50 movies to transfer, each around 1GB in size.
Each time I try to transfer a movie to the drive, I get an error "*Error Copying File or Folder*" which displays the message "*Cannot copy BlahBlahBlah: The specified network name is no longer available.*" This also results in the HDD becoming unavailable to the other machines on the network. I've had to un-plug and then re-plug the APE a few times to get the HDD to work again. Sometimes, the copy actually does work, even though I get this message. I know the easy work-around is to connect the HDD directly to the PC with the files on it and transfer them that way, but I shouldn't have to do that - it should just work.
I'm wondering if anyone else has any kind of a similar experience? It appears that I can stream music and video from the drive easily enough, it's the writing to the drive that seems to be the issue. Thanks in advance...
Best Regards,
Jeff

I would think you would have better luck formatting it as HFS+ (Macintosh Extended File System). You'll still be able to see it from your non-Mac PCs.
http://discussions.apple.com/message.jspa?messageID=6370006#6370006

Transfer imovie files to usb hard drive

I want to get a usb hard drive to free up operating space on mac hard drive
I want to save a movie file which is about 26gb to the separate hard drive . I have been reading that it is not possible to save files bigger than 8gb unless the hard drive is formated to ntsc rather than fat32.
Any clues. before I buy something that is of limited use.

1. If t is a USB drive then you will not be able to play or edit the project without copying it back to your hard disk. iMovie can only be 'fed' via firewire.
2. FAT32 has 4gb (or is it even a 2GB?) limit in file size.
3. NTSC is a television system used in the US, the other being PAL used in Europe.
SO: Your external hard disk should be formatted as Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and should be connected via firewire.

USB Hard Drives Keep Disconnecting or Not Responding

Hi,
This is a long post - but one that I hope someone can offer advice on.
The Hardware
Mac Pro running OSX 10.8 (but this has happened on all versions of the OS i.e. 10.6/.7 etc)
3 x Internal SATA Hard Drives - All working perfectly.
External Drives:
2 x Western Digital My Book 1TB USB Hard Drives
1 x Seagate 750GB Hard Drive with USB2 connectivity
2 x IcyBox Dual Bay USB2 hard Drive enclosures using JMicron Chipsets - these enclosures have 2 x 1TB Western Digital Green in each (totaling 4 TB across the 2 enclosures).
D-Link 7 Port USB2 Hub
The Problem
- USB Hard Drives connected to the Mac are ejected from the system without notice and at random times AND/OR
- The external hard drive remains mounted, but when trying to write to the drive/partitions, Finder throws an error message up saying the operation cannot be completed - error code -50.
- Time Machine: TM will back up successfully several times, before eventually throwing an error up that it cannot create the folders required on the drive.
- The only way to be able to use the drives again is either remount the drive, or in some case, it is required to completely power the drive down and then reconnect.
Re-creating the problem
I have honestly not found a sure-fire way of replicating the problem. It seems completely random. It happens when I am actually sat at the computer, but it also happens when I am away from the computer.
In the past - my Time Machine hard drive has been one of the Western Digital MyBook drives. I also used the second MyBook for SuperDuper backups (extra redundancy). The 4TB drives in the IcyBox enclosures have been used to backup my ripped movie collection.
Recently however - I decided to have 2 of the 1TB drives in the IcyBox enclosures to be TM and SuperDuper backups. I have however reverted TM back to one of the Western Digital drives, purely for testing purposes. SuperDuper is backing up to one of the 1TB drives in the IcyBox.
I am trying various things to see if I can find the issue, but it is such a random event that it is taking ages to even come close to find a problem. Sometimes the drives will stay active for a few days, sometimes only a few hours, even minutes.
Theories
I have several theories as to why my USB drives continually disconnect.
1. The D-Link USB Hub.
Could connecting the drives through the hub be causing the problem? I don't really see how, unless it is a documented case that D-Link USB hubs do not play nice with OSX? To try and rule this out I have connected the current Time Machine back up drive (Western Digital MyBook) directly to the USB port on the back of the computer. The SuperDuper (IcyBox enclosure) drive is currently connected through the D-Link hub. I have removed all the other drives from the enclosures - so at present I have only 2 external drives connected (1 x 1TB Western Digital MyBook, 1 x 1TB Western Digital Green inside one of the IcyBox dual-bay enclosures - connected through D-Link Hub).
2. JMicron Chipset
I have done a bit of research on the internet and there are a few indications that perhaps JMicron SATA-to-USB controller chipsets found in a lot of external hard drive enclosures (including the dual bay IcyBox external enclosures that I have) do not play nice with OSX. If the JMicron chipsets in the 2 IcyBox enclosures is a problem - would that cause issues with other USB devices on the USB bus off the Mac? (i.e. can the JMicron chipset in the enclosures cause devices such as the WD MyBook drives which I assume use a non-JMicron chipset, to experience similar failures?)
3. Green Hard Drives
As I have said, I have 4 Western Digital Green 1TB hard drives inside the IcyBox Dual Bay Enclosures. Could the fact that these drives are 'Green' be causing a problem? They do go to sleep after x number of minutes, but they do wake up when required. But could on the occasion when I have problems, could this be caused by the 'Green' feature interrupting OSX in waking the drives? Coupled with JMicron chipset, could this be compounding the issue?
Possible Solutions
I am prepared to spend money on replacement drives and/or enclosures etc - but I would hate to spend x amount of money and have the same problem. So I am hoping to get some advice on what drives/enclosures are more than likely to work flawlessly with OSX.
Thanks for reading!

FYI - re: the SuperDuper drive that is in one of the IcyBox enclosures.
I just opened this drive up in Finder. I heard the drive wake up, but when I came to copy a file over (tried various file sizes) - I got the error -50 message.
Here is the info from Console.
31/07/2012 23:35:52.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:52.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.000 kernel[0]: disk4s2: 0xe000c2e4 (UNDEFINED).
31/07/2012 23:35:53.320 fseventsd[55]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/Data 1/.fseventsd/0000000002478a7f (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/Data 1/.fseventsd
31/07/2012 23:35:53.320 fseventsd[55]: disk logger: failed to open output file /Volumes/Data 1/.fseventsd/0000000002478a7f (No such file or directory). mount point /Volumes/Data 1/.fseventsd
Also, while the drive was inaccessible, I tried 'Verify Disk' in Disk Utility - here are the results
Verifying volume “SuperDuper”
Checking file systemPerforming live verification.
Checking Journaled HFS Plus volume.
Checking extents overflow file.
Checking catalog file.
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking catalog hierarchy.
Checking extended attributes file.
Invalid leaf record count
(It should be 2 instead of 1)
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
The volume SuperDuper was found corrupt and needs to be repaired.
Error: This disk needs to be repaired. Click Repair Disk.
Please also note that the all my external hard drives have recently been reformated using GUID part. map and HFS Journaled.

TM on 2 differnt usb hard drives

I thought I had come up with a great back up plan:
1) I have one usb hard drive at work where I run TM every hour.
2) Once a week take my computer home, connect it to another usb hard drive and change TM preferences to run on that disk.
3) When I get back to work, I change my TM preferences back to the original usb hard drive.
4) Expected result: I then have to separate usb hard drives with back ups of my computer, one which have been run every hour and one at home which have been run every week.
Now I realized that every time I change the TM preferences to run on another usb disk TM will start from scratch and do a completely new TM back up. This means that I can not restore any old files with TM.
Have I misunderstood something? What should I change to get the expected result as described above?
thanks!

daloco77 wrote:
Now I realized that every time I change the TM preferences to run on another usb disk TM will start from scratch and do a completely new TM back up. This means that I can not restore any old files with TM.
First, it should do a new, full backup only if you've gone several days (at least 10) without a backup to that disk (apparently, you can go longer if there weren't a lot of changes); done a full restore (maybe); or renamed your internal HD.
Second, TM will not delete the last backup to make room for a new one. It will fail for lack of space, instead. So you should be able to restore old files as long as those backups remain. That's why your TM disk should be at least twice the size of the data it's backing-up (and preferably 3 times).
But remember, if you created a file after the last backup to one disk, and deleted it before switching back, your only backups of that file are on the other disk.

Maximum hard drive size for upgrading a dv6375ea?

Hello to all,
My hard drive began to make noises and since it is past warranty, I will upgrade it. When I had bought the laptop I had chatted with a HP personnel on these support pages, and he/she had told me that the maximum size that the bios allowed was 120 gb. That is the original hard drive size!
Has anyone upgraded their hard drive or does anybody know of a technical value that I should try?
Thanks for your time,

You can install as large a drive as you can find as long as it is SATA and 2.5" wide and 9.5 mm thick. SATA drives have no BIOS size limit. However, some have occasionally reported issues with 500 gig drives and 7200 rpm drives. I can therefore tell you with 100% certainty you can install a 320 gig 5400 rpm drive in your laptop. My favorite website for laptop hard drives is newegg.com. Don't buy from HP parts; it will cost way too much. You should be able to find the drive I mention for around $80 and laptop drives are also sold at Best Buy, Frys and similar stores.

O.S. / Hard Drive Size for NIO Server/Client's load testing...

Hi All
I am currently load testing a NIO Server/Client's to see what would be the maximum number of connections that could reached, using the following PC: P4, 3GHz, 1GB RAM, Windows XP, SP2, 110 GB Hard Drive.
However, I would like to test the Server/Client performance on different OS's:
Which would be the best possible option from the following:
1. Partition my current drive, (using e.g. Partition Magic), to e.g.
- Win XP: 90 GB
- Win Server 2000: 10 GB
- Linux: 5 GB
- Shared/Data: 5 GB
2. Install a separate Hard drive with the different hard drives
3. Use a disk caddie, to swap in/out test hard drives.
4. Any thing else?
- Would the Operating System's hard drive size affect the Server/Client's performance, e.g. affecting the number of connections, number of File Handles, the virtual memory, etc.?
Many Thanks,
Matt

You can use a partition on the same HDD or use a second HDD, disk caddie well if its a direct IDE or SCSI. If its usb no it will be too slow, may be if you have a fire-wire but I still don't recommend it.
Be careful if you don't have any experience installing Linux you may do multiple partitions on you disk without knowing, because Linux ext partitions are not visible to windows.
Recommended disk size for fedora is 10 GB. This is the amount of data that will be created on you HDD when you do a full installation.

USB Hard Drive Size Limit

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