Dilema: Mounting a 9GB SCSI Drive under System 7.6

[AppleMacintosh]

Interesting problem. I have a Quadra 800, which is a super nice machine. I also bought two external hard drives. Unfortunately, neither of the external drives is mountable on the Quadra. The first external drive is an Apple External Hard Drive, 9GB. It won't open under System 7.5.1. So I tried System 7.6, which should have support for drives over 4 GB. No success. Then I tried the LaCie External Hard drive. It *mounts* under 7.6 but I just get a Readme file that says the drive is formatted under Extended HFS or something like that. It then informs me that I need System 8.1. The problem is I don't have System 8.1. And I don't think I can get 8.1 onto the Q800 without a good size external hard drive!

I don't mind reformatting the drives to HFS in partitions of 2GB or less, but I need to find out what goodies are on the drive before I format it. Could be some stuff I want to keep. Any suggestions on how to mount these drives under 7.6, or how to get 8.1 onto the Q800? Anyone have an 8.1 install CD?

 

[Unknown_K]

I think you need 7.6.1 to read and write HFS+ partitions, you cannot boot from them untill OS 8.x.

http://download.info.apple.com/Apple_Support_Area/Apple_Software_Updates/English-North_American/Macintosh/System/Mac_OS_7.6.1_Update/Mac_OS_7.6.1_Update-NetInst.sea.bin

 

[envirogeek]

If the 9GB drive is a single partition, I'm not sure you'll be able to read it on the 800 even with 8.1.

http://support.apple.com/kb/TA27115?viewlocale=en_US

Have you got access to a PCI Mac, Windows or Linux box with appropriate SCSI card and cables for these drives available to borrow long enough to have a look?

Linux distros should have hfsplus included, and with Windows you could try HFS Explorer just to see if there is anything on the drives worth worrying about.

 

[CJ_Miller]

Did you try formatting them in HFS standard? So far as I know this should work. Also you might be able to boot the machine with a Gparted distro to run diagnostics on the drive and format it. Gparted is a great tool for stubborn drives.