160gb drive in a Pismo?

[beachycove]

I just received a 160GB PATA 2.5" drive from China, via eBay. It was intended for a Pismo running under  Mac OS 9.2, which is limited to a 128GB drive. I had thus ordered a 120GB, but received the larger drive. Yes, I have complained, and got no resolution. i will make a modest complaint, but that is not going to solve my little problem.

So, leaving eBay out of the matter, what are my options? The drive is still in the sealed bag, so I haven't attempted to install the thing, but I get confusing messages from searching about what to do if I do plug it in: neither https://lowendmac.com/2005/how-big-hard-drive-imac-emac-power-mac-powerbook-ibook/ nor https://support.apple.com/en-ca/HT2544 are a lot of use in my situation.

So I will ask you people: Can I simply partition the thing into a 128GB drive and go ahead, or is there some limit in the Pismo's hardware (and software under OS9) that makes using a drive >128GB in a machine like a Pismo (under OS9)  a bad, bad idea?

 

[AlpineRaven]

Partition it is the way to go - same as my Pismo - it has 480gb and Ive split it into 6 partitions.

Cheers

AP

 

[Cory5412]

Hmm, that's interesting. And that works?

My thought was that the failure mode of "not having LBA48" was that the system would just only see the first 128-ish gigs of the disk. Did you have to use an additional driver or utility to get your Pismo to see the addtional space.

The other possibility here is that Pismo *does* have LBA48 and LEM is wrong about whether or not the pismo has it. I don't know if Apple actually makes it clear in any of their own documentation which machines do/don't have it onboard.

 

[AlpineRaven]

Yes I have confirmed that it does work by partitioning it.

To come to think about it since you said it above - I realised what I did, I put that HDD in external case and partitioned it via MacOSX.4 Tiger and partition it and install Mac OS 9 drivers while formatting it. That is how I did it. I do recall having issues internally and it might've been that above.
Cheers

AP

 

[SDug]

I have a multi-partitioned 160GB PATA drive in my Pismo and it only sees the first 128GB. If you want to see more, you need to install the HiCap ATA drivers but you should not extend any bootable volumes past 128GB regardless. The extra few GBs are only good for data storage.