[danvendel]

Need to get a new boot disk for my old clunker, a blue/white G3 tower. It has a 12Gb which is about to go to the hard disk heaven any minute. But of course I'd like the replacement to be a slarge as possible.
I have seen various claims that it could be up to 30Gb. Can someone be so kind a tell what's the real dwal is, and also if you can verify this with some link or so.
Thanks a million in advance!
Dan

[d00d]

Blue and whites can handle up to 128GB. Any drive beyond that requires 48-bit addressing, which the B&W G3's lack. I'm not sure I have any kind of official link, but I'm 100% certain of it. One can even get around that limit with a PCI ATA card that supports big drives (every ATA/133 card does).

[danvendel]

Hullo d00d,
Thanks for reply!
Yes, I have a 70Gb slave, so that's no problems. The issue is that the BOOT disk can't be more than XXGb, or it will refuse to start. (You bet I found that out the hard way when I tried to use the 70Gb disk to boot from. Sheees..it took me a week of fiddling before someone told me about the BOOT disk limitation).

[d00d]

Are you sure? I've never read about any boot disk size limit on B&W G3's. I believe some members here are using really large disks on theirs.

[danvendel]

I'm not sure about anything when it comes to computers.... :-)
But that's my take and experience. Perhaps there are some workarounds I'm not aware of and that are used by others. If so, I'd die to hear about them.
Cheers,
Dan

[Grant_G]

Certain Macs cannot handle a boot PARTITION (not drive) larger than 8 GB, and it must be the first partition on the drive. I do not believe that applies to the B&W, but not sure. Otherwise, the 128GB restriction you and d00d have discussed is the only limitation. [Edit: just chanced on another thread the d00d's involved with and this subject is central to it. The 8 GB limitation occurs on old beige G3s, not on the B&W models, so you're okay up to 128 GB].
G

[danvendel]

This is weird...maybe I dreamed this up...?
Anyway, I'll simply try and see what happens instead of speculating.
Cheers, and thanks for holding my hand. ;-)
Dan

[Grant_G]

You're welcome, but no. I don't think you dreamed it up. I think you heard about the 8GB problem -- and assumed it referred to drive size rather a specific partition's size -- with older Macs and wanted to know if that problem has been licked. It has.
G

[d00d]

Well, I also just read that drives that are larger than a certain size may suffer from data corruption on Revision 1 B&W G3's (using the built-in ATA).

[doggdamac]

Well, I can assure everyone that the problem does NOT exist with rev 2 B&W's, since I am typing this on mine, that has 4 HD's installed, 1-80GB (main boot drive, X.4 & 9), 2-20GB and 1- 6 GB. All are bootable whether connected to the mobo or to my Tempo card /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/smile.gif I had my friend's 200GB drive in there for a short while and it worked just as well......

[braindoc]

It is absolutely true that rev. 1 B&W built-in IDE have a very hard time supporting a master & slave combo. It does fine with 1 HD up to 128MB as posted above. I have a 120MB in my Rev. 1. I opted against getting a IDE PCI card and got exterrnal firewire instead.
Take a look at the appropriate section for B&W at xlr8yourmac. Everything from rev. 1 or 2 determination to users' experience with varying workaround/solutions.

[d00d]

120MB drive? Geez, even my old Quadra 660av came with a 250 MB hard drive. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/tongue.gif

[braindoc]

See now that's what happens when I post during noqmol hors. GB, I meant GB. /forums/ubbthreads/images/graemlins/blush.gif
Thanks d00d