Parition Problem on G3 Installtion
Derick Centeno
aguilarojo at verizon.net
Fri Jan 13 06:12:23 MST 2006
Hi Olaf:
Not everyone is so generous as to share the humorous side of being in a
relationship. I had to read what you wrote several times before I
realized I was reading something which surely would have been included
in an episode of "I Love Lucy" if the show were updated for the modern
era.
You probably already have an idea that Apple's software didn't and
doesn't partition the complete 80G without leaving some of it unused.
Whatever the largest portion is used could be the top end of what a G3
can understand. Without going through a long protracted 20 questions
game, merely request temporary/time-limited root access say for 10
minutes or access which allows you to invoke sudo. This being possible
you should have no trouble with running pdisk under sudo.
Here's how it worked under Panther:
arakus:~ aguilarojo$ sudo pdisk /dev/rdisk0 -dump
/dev/rdisk0 map block size=512
#: type name length
base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Free Extra 262144 @ 64
(128.0M)
3: Apple_HFS Apple_HFS_Untitled_2 147640832 @ 262208
( 70.4G)
4: Apple_HFS eDrive 8398432 @ 147903040 (
4.0G)
5: Apple_Free Extra 16 @
156301472
Device block size=512, Number of Blocks=156301488
DeviceType=0x0, DeviceId=0x0
arakus:~ aguilarojo$
The command in Linux would be similar; there may not be a dump command.
You could always do pdisk -h or man pdisk or info pdisk for help. You
probably already know about pdisk and the above however, this is all
just a prelude to getting the information regarding how the large
(200G) disk is partitioned so that the top limit of G3 firmware can be
verified/discovered in a quick and convenient, ready at hand manner.
If it is such that going through whatever process ... is not worth it,
then consider that the subject could become an essential one as you
continue to use the G3 ... you may need to look this matter up
regarding what that top limit is. This is exactly the kind of
information which gets harder to find as time moves forward and could
be a useful clue regarding when it may be time to move beyond the G3.
Best wishes...
On Jan 13, 2006, at 1:14 AM, Olaf Olson wrote:
> I have a G3 B&W, with two drives. One is 80 Gb and the other is 200Gb.
> The 200 Gb is partitioned into two smaller pieces (It's my wife's
> machine and she won't let me look to see exactly what the sizes are).
> I don't think this is what's causing the problem. Even then, it sounds
> like Stephen is installing on a blank disk. The installer should be
> able to specify how to partition the entire disk and doesn't need
> anything else to decide what to do with it, unless...
>
> Was the drive already partitioned, using the apple utilities? Even if
> you are planning to erase the entire drive, in favor of a complete YDL
> installation and takeover of the drive, the section of the drive
> you're intending to use must be labeled as unused disk space, in order
> for the installer to deal with it. At least, that's what YDL 3.0
> required. I suspect that 4 will do the same. I admit that I haven't
> upgraded, yet.
>
> Olaf
>
> Derick Centeno wrote:
>
>> My memory regarding the G3 is a bit fuzzy but I do recall reading
>> somewhere that the G3 cannot recognize drives large drives ranging
>> beyond 30G. This is a limitation of the firmware and so there will
>> always be misinformation regarding what it sees and understands. The
>> work around is to treat huge drives such as you are working with and
>> paritition them so that they are within a range that G3 systems are
>> familiar with -- the size of the drives which were in existence when
>> the G3 was in it's prime. It may turn out that 30G may be that
>> optimal size, which means that the G3 could be helped to be more
>> efficient by partitioning the 200G drive into chunks 30G wide.
>>
>> A waste of a hard drive certainly, but older systems have an upper
>> bound limit which they are comfortable with.
>>
>> This is something to consider if Collin's solution doesn't pan out or
>> work in solving your difficulty.
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