I have a Maxtor One Touch 200 GB drive case that I am trying to swap a 500 GB Western Digital drive into. The drive is currently being only recognized as 128 GB on the Mac. It was only recognized as 68 gigs in Win98, but I only did that test to satisfy my curiosity. The apparent reason that the drive is not being recognized at its full capacity is the "chipset, " but if the original Maxtor drive was 200 GB, doesn't that suggest that the "chipset" does recognize larger drives? Also, why doesn't the WD drive register at the 200GB size if the Maxtor would?

As a side note, any recommendations regarding the Acomdata external enclosure?

Thanks for the help.

Regards,

Mark Harrison

Mark,
What computer do you have. I know my G4 only recognizes 128gb regardless of how big the drive is.
...JER

Hi Jer,

I have an iBook G3 900mhz. It recognized the Maxtor 200GB drive as a 200 GB drive when it was working. It also recognizes a LaCie D2 Quadra as a 500GB drive, but that drive is flaking out. Could be the drive, but I suspect the power supply. I needed to get the 500GB WD drive working in the Maxtor case so I had adequate space to backup/clone the LaCie drive before sending it in for warranty service. Thus my dilemma.

I grabbed an Acomdata case at Fry's, but haven't tried it yet. I'm curious to know how I saw 200GB with the Maxtor originally if now it wants to limit me to 128GB. The iBook not only sees all 500GB on the LaCie drive, I have been able to boot from it in 10.3.9 and 10.4.11 on different partitions.

Thanks for your interest.

Regards,

Mark Harrison

You may find Overdrive helpful.

Good luck.

Just to be sure everyone is on the same page, it is the chipset in the external enclosure that determines whether or not large drive size is supported and that is completely independent of whether or not large internal drives are supported.

That does not explain why the 500GB WD drive is recognized as 128GB on a Mac and 68GB in Windows 98. I can only speculate it is because of improper/incompatible jumper settings (I am assuming an ATA drive) or because of the proprietary chipset in the Maxtor enclosure only working properly with a Maxtor drive.

I have not heard or seen any negative comments about the Acomdata enclosure. Personally I have had excellent results with Other World Computing's Mercury Elite and Mercury Classic enclosures.

I threw in that may in my Overdrive post precisely because I had no idea whether or not it's applicable to the situation under discussion.

Is it?

Thanks.

While it may work with internal drives I doubt Overdrive would have any effect on external drives because the USB and Firewire protocols have no provisions for handling that kind of data. But I have no way of verifying that as I no longer have any external enclosures that do not support the large disk model.

Thanks for the perspective.

Hi guys,

Thanks for keeping this thread alive. I was intrigued by the post mentioning Overdrive, but the site where it was supposed to be is "404". Anyone have a way to get it to me?

I did drop the WD drive into the Acomdata enclosure because it touts 48-bit logical block addressing on the box. But the drive still is only recognized as 128 GB in that case as well. It has an Initio chip INIC-1530SL on board. I was expecting to find an Oxford chip, maybe? The Maxtor box has an Oxford OXFW911-TQ-A on board.

I still do not see the 500GB drive I was hoping for to backup the LaCie Drive to, but I tried the lacie anyway and noticed the power supply emitting a low whistle. First time I heard a power supply. And apparently not enough power to spin up the drive, although it also clicked, which I didn't remember hearing before.

I've been using firewire and that was my intention all along, but is there anything to be gained by connecting via USB to get the 500 gigs recognized? I've borrowed a win/vista laptop to try but haven't had the chance just yet.

I neglected to mention that the drive is set to cable select, as it arrived from the manufacturer. This is as the Maxtor drive was set. Although AcomData stated to set it as master, I made no change and didn't see a difference. Will also give the master setting a try, but was concerned about having two external drives on the same firewire bus. Does firewire make this a moot point?

Thanks again,

Mark Harrison

> I was intrigued by the post mentioning Overdrive, but the site where it was supposed to be is "404".

Hmmm... Looks like Overdrive is a dead issue...can't connect to developer's site or d/l.

Also, the link to Hi-Capacity Driver posted in Overdrive's "Feedback" is useless, because of:


Oh. well... Good try, anyhow.

Set the drive to Master rather than cable select and see if that does not solve the issue. Not all controllers will work with cable select.

USB would not make any difference in your situation.

Whistling power supply not good