Largest hard drive?

[Gil]

Just wondering what the largest hard drive you could put in an early Power Mac/Performa system would be. Just got my 6200 today (thanks again to Unknown_K) and I would like to record large amounts of TV on it.

 

[Unknown_K]

At 320x240 that HD (upgraded from the original size I think) should hold quite a bit of video as is.

 

[Gil]

Great! Speaking of pixels, I need to find a better video-out solution. I stuck the Video Out board commonly found on the 5500/6500 machines in there, but at 640x480, it chops off the Menu bar and the control strip at the bottom. :-/

 

[joshc]

Ah the 6200, a system I used for many years until getting my iMac Dalmatian in the Summer of 2001.

 

[LCGuy]

Unlike older PCs, Macs aren't limited in drive size by BIOS limitations or anything like that...theoretically, you should be able to use any drive size up to and including 120GB. I've got a 40GB in my LC630 (which uses the exact same ATA controller as your 6200), and it works fine.

 

[Gil]

Any way to pop in a 1 TB beast into there?

 

[Unknown_K]

Even if a 1TB fit it would take 1 lightyear to format.

 

[equill]

As LCGuy has already pointed out, the sizes of HDDs in older Macs are software-limited, by the System. By the time of OS 9 the theoretical limit was 2TB, but the ability to address the possible number of blocks did not always keep pace with the appetite until 48-bit LBA (logical block-addressing) arrived in the ROM-in-RAM v10.2.1 of OS 9.2.2 for the G4/MDDs. Then the foot was on the other boot, because there were not yet drives as big as there was room to address. So the short answer is, no in your Mac, but yes in an external FireWire drive attached to your Mac. FireWire doesn't believe in restrictions. (It's a free soul.) All you need to do is get your FireWire connection, but it will, of course, be FireWire 400. However, that is no slouch at transfer, and with the right Oxford chip, will also be bootable if there is a (bootable) System installed on the external drive.

1TB will be a lot to back-up, and necessitate another external FireWire drive. One of the external drives will need two FireWire ports for the daisy-chaining, or the FireWire card in the Mac will need to have two ports. Time taken by disk housekeeping operations will bemore than tiresome, as UnknownK suggests.

de

 

[Unknown_K]

6200 isn't a PCI mac.

 

[equill]

6200 isn't a PCI mac.

Well, thar y'are. The '2' should probably have suggested that to me, but I have no personal acquaintance with the 6200. End of a nice dream, then.

de