Seagate HD thread got me thinking...

[DP]

In this old foggy brain I've got I remember buying externals that said they had 200 GB capacity but when I hooked them to my old Pismo I got only 120 GB because of the bus or the CPU or something like that. I never thought about it since but I have an iMac 2.0 Core Duo now and I still have only 120 GB available.
Was I on drugs when I was trying to understand this capacity thing or should I be able to get 200 GB now and how would I tell the external to give it all up to me?

[RAMd®d]

It's the math.

The only way to get 200G would be to get a 250G HD.

[mattkime]

drive size limits don't apply to external enclosures unless the encolsure itself has a limit.

[Lux Interior]

If the enclosure is as old as the Pismo, it probably has the 128 GB limit.

[ka jowct]

I never thought about it since but I have an iMac 2.0 Core Duo now and I still have only 120 GB available.

If you formatted the 200GB drive using an older FW case, you're stuck with the reduced capacity regardless of what machine you connect it to, unless you reformat the drive in a new case. Even then you may not regain the space you lost by formatting it in the old FW case with the 128GB limit.

[OWC Larry]

Anyone who said an EXTERNAL FireWire Drive was only showing as 120GB out of 200GB because of your computer was mistaken.

As noted in the thread already - the limitations have to do with the controller chipset... be it the ATA controller in your pismo (which for an internal drive will limit you to 128GB recognizable) or the chipset/bridge in the FireWire enclosure - ones before 2003 were for the most part limited with the exception of some Maxtor ATA-133 drives that were supported by Oxford with a custom lba firmware support prior to ATA-6....

To the point - FireWire imposes no limitation on your HD capacity supported. You can plug one of our latest 1.0TB externals into your Pismo's FireWire port and it will be fully recognized, fully bootable, etc.

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Bottom line - if the drive is only showing up as 120GB, it's either been partitioned as only 120GB and 80GB free - it's a Maxtor 200GB inside and the firmware wasn't setup for the extended support in an older style case....... or - who ever sold you and assumingly billed you for a 200GB shipped you a 120GB.
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[quote DP]In this old foggy brain I've got I remember buying externals that said they had 200 GB capacity but when I hooked them to my old Pismo I got only 120 GB because of the bus or the CPU or something like that. I never thought about it since but I have an iMac 2.0 Core Duo now and I still have only 120 GB available.
Was I on drugs when I was trying to understand this capacity thing or should I be able to get 200 GB now and how would I tell the external to give it all up to me?

[Buzz]

Larry, as I'm sure you know, there were early FW cases that supported only certain drives, and occasionally some of their derivative drives that used the same controller firmware. Doesn't sound like you sold bunches of them, but I got a couple of them from MacSolutions (R.I.P.) down the street from us here that clearly listed only certain makes and models as being supported, effectively limiting the case to 20, 30, 40, sometimes 80GB drives... I tried swapping different makes/models/capacities, and the cases would not work w/ most of those drives. As you say, it is bridge board related, not FW or computer; but if somebody got ahold of that type of case w/o knowing its limitations, I can understand the resulting confusion when they try to use it.

The funky old cases are now used to support OWC external optical drives to raise them up high enough on the top of towers to clear the handles when the tray opens. If I find the old boxes/manuals w/ the printed limitations, I'll email you a copy for reference. Thankfully the UDA (Universal Drive Adapter) I got from OWC makes swapping drives in and out of unknown cases a thing of the past, though for a while it was necessary to test for possible (hopeful) compatibility.

Buzz
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