CD-ROM Drivers
From: Guy Hemmings <guy@macs2u.freeserve.co.uk>Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc,comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Driver for non Apple CDROM drive
Date: Fri, 18 May 2001 22:39:04 +0100
Message-id: <B72B5508.5802%guy@macs2u.freeserve.co.uk>
in article 9e4304$497$1@yggdrasil.utfors.se, Mats Åström at Mats.Astrom@neurofys._tabort_uu.se wrote on 18/05/01 10:17 pm:
> I've tried to use an old Compaq (Matsushita) CR 503-B SCSI CDROM drive with
> my old Power Macintosh 6100/60 running MacOS 8, no luck so far. Have tried
> to modify the Apple CD-ROM 5.4.2 driver according to
> http://www.resexcellence.com/12-21-98.shtml and also to
> http://www.heise.de/ct/english/98/26/188/ but no success so far. Does
> anybody know any other modification or an available driver to get a non
> Apple CDROM drive to work with my Powermac?
>
> Regards,
> Mats.
Yes. You want CD Sunrise
http://hyperarchive.lcs.mit.edu/HyperArchive/Archive/cfg/cd-sunrise-22c.hqx
This will drive any SCSI CD on the Mac
*
From: peterh5322@aol.com (Peter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Date: 19 May 2001 05:03:16 GMT
Subject: Re: Driver for non Apple CDROM drive
Message-id: <20010519010316.08086.00000460@ng-cr1.aol.com>
The INIT "CD-ROM Hack", from Apple's A/UX installation floppy, will mount any SCSI CD-ROM from any manufacturer.
*
From: michael@cam.org (Michael Thibault)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc,comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Driver for non Apple CDROM drive
Message-id: <michael-2005010511020001@192.168.0.37>
Date: Sun, 20 May 2001 05:09:44 -0400
In article <3B059D4C.BB81E47@cableone.net>, jklinnert@cableone.net wrote:
>I've heard the CD Driver that comes with 7.6.1 will work with non-Apple
>CD Roms.
7.6; that version is 5.3.1, I think. The update to 7.6.1, which installs 5.3.2-ish, should only be made once you've squirreled away a copy of 5.3.1.
*
From: Barry@netbox.com (Barry Twycross)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc,comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Toshiba CD-ROM booting on a Quadra 605
Message-id: <Barry-ya02408000R0506012136330001@news.sonic.net>
Date: Wed, 06 Jun 2001 04:36:32 GMT
In article <9fd3dr$7o9$1@finch.mathcs.emory.edu>, Charles Stephens <charles_stephens@hotmail.com> wrote:
> I have a Quadra 605 and I am trying to boot MacOS 8 or 7.5 on a Toshiba
> XM5401 CD-ROM drive, I get a Sad Mac. :(
>
> I have tried various termination and cabling permutations without success.
> Any help would be appriciated.
It can work, I've done it. Can you get the CD to mount when the system is already running? You should concentrate on getting that working first before booting.
Cabling and termination can be a nightmare. Using the best quality cables and an active terminator is a good idea. Try it with nothing else on the bus, make sure that the SCCI ID is set to anything but 0 or 7 (some systems had trouble with 5, but I don't think this is one of them), 3 is a good ID to use, Apple did.
If you can get it to work normally, you can usually boot by:
Wait til the screen turns grey
Hold down cmd-shift-option-delete (and possibly the C key as well)
>I have an old LC 475 which is the same animal as the Q605. No, you
>cannot boot from an external CD-ROM other than an "Apple" CD-ROM.
Mine booted just fine from a Toshiba CD drive.
>It won't work with CD-ROM Toolkit either.
And CD-ROM ToolKit works on it.
-- Barry Barry@netbox.com <http://www.netbox.com/barry>
------
HD on 9600
From: peterh5322@aol.com (Peter)Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Date: 27 May 2001 06:45:38 GMT
Subject: Re: HD on 9600
Message-id: <20010527024538.28824.00003213@ng-fc1.aol.com>
> This distinction is important when adding PCI
> cards, or some NuBus cards on those NuBus
> machines which had dual SCSI buses.
could you elaborate please?
>>
Add-on NuBus or PCI cards use certain hooks in the MacOS to logically add SCSI buses to the system. The simulated SCSI buses themselves are on the PCI (or NuBus) cards.
There are limitations on this ... six total SCSI buses (real plus simulated), I think.
Therefore, you could add four UATA/66 cards to, say, a 9500 or 9600, and have the combination of Bus 0 and Bus 1 on the mobo, plus Buses 2 through 5 on the cards.
Using this technique, and using 80 GB drives, you could have 1,280 GB of storage on your 9500 or 9600.
A PCI UATA card has one bus number and four ID numbers (0 and 1, representing UATA bus 0 master and slave, respectively, and 2 and 3, representing UATA bus 1 master and slave, respectively)
*
From: peterh5322@aol.com (Peter)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Date: 27 May 2001 01:34:38 GMT
Subject: Re: HD on 9600
Message-id: <20010526213438.28817.00002965@ng-fc1.aol.com>
>> I have a 9600/300. I installed a new HD in my machine and I noticed that near the scsi connector (j29), on the motherboard, there is another connector of the same size named j28. I do not speak about the external scsi connector called j27.
does anyone knows if this connector j28 is also a scsi connector, and what are its caracteristics.
>>
Mobos of this general class have two basic SCSI buses:
1) SCSI Bus 0, which is internal *only*, and which is 10 MB/sec, and
2) SCSI Bus 1, which is internal and/or external, and which is 5 MB/sec.
The 5 MB/sec connector was there for connection to early internal peripherals, which needed special accommodation.
Most internal devices provided by Apple could work satisfactorily on the 10 MB/sec SCSI bus, so most if not all machines were shipped with the internal SCSI cable plugged into this bus.
By design, the 25-pin D-Sub SCSI connector is always associated with SCSI Bus 1.
On MacOSes earlier than about 7.5.3, the two SCSI buses were functionally merged into one SCSI bus 0.
On all later releases, these two separate SCSI buses are not merged, but retain their separate identity: Bus 0 and Bus 1.
This distinction is important when adding PCI cards, or some NuBus cards on those NuBus machines which had dual SCSI buses.
The 9500 and 9500 have two seprate bus controllers, in addition to having two separate SCSI buses.
The 7500 series has the two separate SCSI buses, but only has one bus controller.
CD Burning
From: ptimlin@yahoo.com (Patrick Timlin)Newsgroups: alt.comp.periphs.cdr.mac,comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc,uk.comp.sys.mac
Subject: Re: CDR on iMac
Date: 5 Jun 2001 08:33:34 -0700
Message-id: <c6ad2bc.0106050733.74ae2fae@posting.google.com>
Jon Bradbury <jon.bradbury@dontspamme.haha> wrote ...
> I'm running a Lacie CDrw no probs over USB and that running on max speed. OK
> it aint the fastest thing on the planet but it does the job [and later added he has only been doing data discs]
Jon,
You can do 4x burns of data. The issue is with audio. Trying to get a 4x USB burn on a Mac is rather iffy. Most of the time 2x is the best you can hopefor, despite being able to burn data at 4x no problem.
I was able to do one audio CD at 4x, but I think this was because it was a compilation of a punk band I like, so all the songs were roughly 2 minutes long. I think the drive was able to get each song on the disc before underrunning the buffer. Audio burns with other other bands with more standard 3 or 4+ minute songs bomb out with underrun errors, so I stick with 2x for most of my audio burning.
So the moral of the story is stick with 2x for audio or only listen to punk, which I think is the better choice! <grin>
Patrick
*
From: Brett <botte1@yahoo.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Continued Toast 4.x burning problems
Date: Tue, 22 May 2001 01:30:10 -0000
Message-id: <tgjg92ls5kkkf8@corp.supernews.com>
David M. Fresco, Ph.D. wrote:
>
>
> First off, thanks to all who steered me in the right direction to get
> Toast 4.x working again. I hope you all can help again.
>
> I have an external Lacie brand 1.2 GB SCSI HD hooked up to the Apple
> Store BTO SCSI card. I am using it as a place to store files for later
> burning. In this case the files are AIFF files and I am making a music
> DAO cd.
>
> I have made my first two coasters with my new Que Firewire drive!!! It
> is the 16 x 12 x 40 CDRW.
>
> I successfully burned one CD with files resident on my internal ATAPI
> drive after the whole Authoring Support affair, but I have now made
> these two coasters trying to copy files from the external SCSI.
> Actually, the first coaster occurred when I saw the burn stuck with 57
> secs remaining and I forced quit. The second CD got stuck with 22 secs
> remaining and I let it finish out. Toast gave me a warning to be
> cautious because there were write errors. I listened to the last track
> and did not notice any problems.
>
> I used the newest Drive Setup to low level format the drive and write
> the newest driver on it. The HD checks out with Disk FirstAid.
>
> TIA for thoughts. Please cc my email on replies.
There's no need to convert music files in to AIFF format. They only need be in mp3 format to burn into an audio CD that can play on any CD player. I investigated this myself and thought I had to keep 800 MB of HD space free to burn a CD, but IT IS A LIE! I keep all my mp3's on iTunes and just open Toast 4.x then drag the song from iTunes to Toast's window. That's it!
You may be trying to burn at too fast a rate. The stored up info in your cache may be spent by the time you reach the end of a CD. You should only burn at 1/2 the speed of the highest possible speed of your burner. Since it is 16x12x40 try burning at only 8x or even 4x and set the cache to it's highest level. Although, I burn at 4x on my 4x4x16x burner for mp3's but have the cache at 64MB and all my audio CD's only have about 70 MB of data anyway.
*
From: outcast125@aol.comspamfree (Outcast125)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc
Date: 22 May 2001 10:48:58 GMT
Subject: Re: Continued Toast 4.x burning problems
Message-id: <20010522064858.07728.00000894@ng-fz1.aol.com>
Brett botte1@yahoo.com wrote:
>There's no need to convert music files in to AIFF format. They only
>need be in mp3 format to burn into an audio CD that can play on any
>CD player. I investigated this myself and thought I had to keep 800
>MB of HD space free to burn a CD, but IT IS A LIE! I keep all my
>mp3's on iTunes and just open Toast 4.x then drag the song from
>iTunes to Toast's window. That's it!
>
>You may be trying to burn at too fast a rate. The stored up info in your
>
>cache may be spent by the time you reach the end of a CD. You
>should only burn at 1/2 the speed of the highest possible speed of
>your burner. Since it is 16x12x40 try burning at only 8x or even 4x and
>
>set the cache to it's highest level. Although, I burn at 4x on my
>4x4x16x burner for mp3's but have the cache at 64MB and all my
>audio CD's only have about 70 MB of data anyway.
This is what we like to call "voodoo burnanomics." In other words, there are lies, damned lies, and newbie audio conversion routines. (I would not razz Brett if he had not written "IT IS A LIE!" in caps like that. Brett, better to say "perhaps untrue." Then we can save face more easily if we are wrong.)
If you want to preserve cd quality in your audio tracks, then DO NOT convert cd tracks to mp3. Audio cd players cannot play mp3 tracks. The reason you're able to burn a cd from 70 MB of mp3 data is that Toast is converting the mp3's back to cd audio data - but Toast cannot "invent" the quality that was lost when you ripped the cd tracks to mp3 in the first place.
Now if you don't mind hearing your cd's at mp3 quality and the saved disk space is worth it to you, then you can use Brett's method. Personally, I think people have enough problems burning audio cd's without putting them through two unnecessary conversions - one of them on the fly during the actual burn.
Brett's other advice about maxing out the RAM cache in Toast and trying lower speed burns is good. To that I will add some other tips:
-Use Toast's "Create Temporary Partition" feature to create a contiguous chunk of space on your hard drive which you can use as a cd staging area.
-Create a custom extension set that turns off extensions and control panels not needed for cd burning.
-Use good quality cd blanks. Try and stay with a brand that works well with your recorder. Don't chase the "cheapies of the week."
-If burning music cd's, carefully listen to the finished cd in a standalone audio cd player. Don't rely on your computer's cd-rom. Standalone audio cd players are often less forgiving of minor imperfections in the finished cd. Sometimes recording at a slower speed will reduce the potential for clicks and pops. For critical audio cd's, try using Mitsui gold media.
-If the original cd's you're ripping are suspect due to scratches, you can use Track Thief 2.0 to rip them at 1x speed. This will sometimes produce cleaner tracks than applications which try to rip as fast as possible. Track Thief is a quick download at:
http://homepage.mac.com/blgl/misc/TrackThief2.0.sit
--outcast125
P.S. Brett, unless you're burning cd's with only eight minutes of music, your audio cd's definitely have more than 70 MB of data.
Should I Convert to HFS+
From: zzjean@uq.net.au (Jean Claude)Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Should I convert to HFS+ ?
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 08:58:59 +1000 Distribution: world
Message-id: <1ev509a.12vhsjgddhyi4N%zzjean@uq.net.au>
I was about to convert my HD to HFS extended format as I am squeezed for space. Is this a good idea? What problems can I anticipate?
My setup:
PowerMac 5500, 225Mhz
64Mb RAM
Quantum 2Gb HD
MacOS 8.6
I am aware that the disk would not be able to be used with a system below 8.1, but that's not an issue. Other kinds of problems come to my mind:
1/ Am I going to find many incompatibilities with the software I now safely use on my machine?
2/ The reduction of the block size will obviously result in increased fragmentation. Is there a serious risk of a drop in performance (and perhaps an increase in the possibility of directory errors)?
Are there any other problems?
A member of my family has an imac, bought in 1999, with a 6 Gb HD that came formatted as STANDARD, not HFS+. Is there a reason for that? Would Apple themselves be hesitant about this new format?
Thanks for your comments. Jean zzjean@uq.net.au
*
From: willie raye <willie@macknowledge.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Should I convert to HFS+ ?
Date: Sun, 17 Jun 2001 16:05:13 -0700
Message-id: <willie-35D840.16051317062001@enews.newsguy.com>
In article <1ev509a.12vhsjgddhyi4N%zzjean@uq.net.au>,
zzjean@uq.net.au (Jean Claude) wrote:
> 1/ Am I going to find many incompatibilities with the software I now
> safely use on my machine?
No. Rarely does software know or care about how a disk is formatted. If the system and the disk driver know, that's good enough. An obvious exception would be hard disk utility software. Your disk utilities have to be HFS+ aware but the good ones have been for a long time.
Files that get re-sized often may become fragmented but that can happen no matter how the disk is formatted. Not a big enough problem to worry about, IMO. I have far fewer directory problems than I did years ago. That may have more to do with regular manitenance with Diskwarrior than with HFS+ but HFS+ formatting by itself does not lead to directory errors.
HFS+ is not a problem. It was long overdue. Macs have been shipping with HFS+ formatted disks for a long time now. Most people don't even know the difference.
*
From: B Collins <bcollins@home.ifx.net>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: Should I convert to HFS+ ?
Date: Sat, 16 Jun 2001 21:28:09 -0400
Message-id: <3B2C07A7.B7D59182@home.ifx.net>
HFS+ will definitely save drive space on a drive larger than about 1 GB. The bigger the drive, the more it will save.
I recommend doing it. Make sure you back up all your data and have installers for all your applications before you do it!
I have been running HFS+ on a PB G3 that came originally with 2GD HD and OS 8.1, with no problems. Meanwhile I have upgraded to OS 9 and a 12 GB drive; again, works great. I also upgraded a PowerCenter 150 with a 1 GB drive to OS 8.6 and HFS+. Again, works great.
Why your family member's iMac with 6GB HD came formatted HFS (Standard) I son't know. It is true that is you reformat a drive using Apple Drive Setup, the default setting is HFS (Standard). You have to deliberately tell Drive Setup to format the drive as HFS+ (Extended Format). I think the reason for this default setting of Apple Drive Setup is so that people with older versions of the Mac OS (before 8.1) will not inadvertently format the drive as HFS+.
Bill
CD-ROMs Not Readable
From: Tim Lance <NotAbitOFspam*tlance@austin.rr.com>Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: CD-ROMs all of a sudden not being readable
Message-id: <NotAbitOFspam*tlance-C7D1D6.22295218062001@news-server.austin.rr.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 03:29:49 GMT
Suddenly, putting any CD into the burner (SCSI) results in a Finder window saying "This disc is unreadable...". This first happened when I was intending to burn one (gee, I remember when that meant something else!). I tried a different brand. I put in commercial CD-ROMs. No luck. I switch the burner to a different machine. No problem there!
I had used this burner with the first nmachine for over a year. I recently switched burners (to USB) but wasn't happy and went back. That's when the problem occurred. The only other change was upgrading to Toast 5. I tried going back to Toast 4, throwing away all preferences I could find (BTW: Adaptec for 4 and Roxio for 5). No luck.
Any ideas?
PowerBook G3 400 MHz / 320 MB RAM / VM set to 321 OS 9.1 Smart and Friendly SCSI burner
Thanks for any info,
Tim tlance@austin.rr.com
*
From: Avery Raskin <araskin@mac.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.system
Subject: Re: CD-ROMs all of a sudden not being readable
Message-id: <araskin-6A1D53.22272618062001@news1.rdc1.bc.home.com>
Date: Tue, 19 Jun 2001 05:27:56 GMT
Sounds like the Authoring Support conflict. It's in the info for Toast 5. There are a couple of iTunes/Disc Burner extensions you are supposed to disable -- FireWire Authoring Support and USB Authoring Support. You DO leave Authoring Support 1.1 enabled, though. With that configuration, things should work fine. If not, try disabling all the iTunes extensions. If that cures it, then you probably need to upgrade iTunes. You should also have the Toast 5.01 update.
*
From: Tim Lance <NotAbitOFspam*tlance@austin.rr.com>
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.apps,comp.sys.mac.system,comp.sys.mac.misc
Subject: Re: CD-ROMs all of a sudden not being readable
Message-id: <NotAbitOFspam*tlance-972E79.18575022062001@news-server.austin.rr.com>
Date: Fri, 22 Jun 2001 23:57:48 GMT
Thanks for responding. I should have been more specific. It was the extension, Toast CD Reader, that Toast 5 installed that was the problem. I can still use Toast 5 for burning and use the Toast CD Reader extension from Toast 4 for using the burner as a reader, too.
Tim tlance@austin.rr.com
Firewire Drive Booting
From: John H. Snow (johnsnow@tca.net)Subject: Re: What's "Oxford 911 chipset"?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc
Date: 2001-12-14 21:59:23 PST
David Lesher wrote:
>
> The other question about Firewire chipsets is... Can you boot
> from a drive with one? I've been told not all support that.
I don't think you can boot from Firewire unless it is built in.
*
From: Benny (Antispam@mail.n)
Subject: Re: What's "Oxford 911 chipset"?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc
Date: 2001-12-15 13:58:33 PST
I believe I read that you can boot from some external FireWire drives,
Including the iPod.
*
From: asif (whatever@nevermind.invalid)
Subject: Re: What's "Oxford 911 chipset"?
Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc
Date: 2001-12-15 14:47:35 PST
I think the poster meant that unless your Mac has built in FireWire, you won't be able to boot from an external FireWire drive. If you're using a PCI card to give your older Mac FireWire capabilities, drivers for the card have to load before it can mount the external drives. These drivers load during the boot process--not before it.
My 9500 with a FireWire PCI card cannot boot from an external FireWire drive; my TiBook can boot from that external drive.
/whatever
Miscellaneous
From: Dan K <dankeSNIPphoto@hoSNIPme.com>Subject: Re: Formatting a HD ?!?!
Message-id: <100520010002324882%dankeSNIPphoto@hoSNIPme.com>
Date: Thu, 10 May 2001
ATTO's Express Pro-Tools is a free (well, give-them-your-email free) DL from ATTO's web site and works just swell to format most any SCSI HD ever made. Not sure about IDE support as I don't have any IDE HDs, but sure worth a try.
http://www.attotech.com/software/input2.php3
Hope that helped,
Dan K
***
From: Bogdan Srdanovic <bogdan@erols.com> Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Subject: Re: partitioning mistake?
Date: Mon, 14 May 2001
Message-id: <3B0082B5.1F0FFF2E@erols.com>
Phil Curry wrote:
> I just put a new Maxtor 40Gb in my G3MT Rev1. Works great! But... I
> partitioned it as:
> 1 Linux 10Gb
> 2 OS 9 10Gb
> 3 OS 9 10Gb
> 4 OS X 10Gb
>
> Now I can only see partitions 2 & 3. What did I do wrong?
>
> Thanks.
> -Phil
My set-up is exactly the same, but I wasn't able to install OSX at all, because I had 15G+25G partitions. Apparently on beige G3 models (and some others) OSX must be installed on the first 8G partition of any larger drive. That means that you have to partition your drive so that the first partition is smaller or equal to 8G, and the others can be whatever you wish. OSX must be installed on that first partition in order to work. Here is the page on Apple site that describes this in detail:
http://til.info.apple.com/techinfo.nsf/artnum/n106235
Good luck. Bogdan
***
From: outcast125@aol.comspamfree (Outcast125) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Date: 26 May 2001 02:
Subject: Re: Adding a 2nd HDD ?
Message-id: <20010525225459.20306.00001557@ng-fg1.aol.com>
"Joel Barnett" joel@allegro-music.com wrote:
>I want to add second IDE drives on 3 machines, 2 beige G3-266 towers and
>a
>G4 tower. All are OS 8.6. I'd like to add the new drives as masters on the
>2nd channel and make the CD-ROM's slaves on the first channel. I'm thinking
>of using the Maxtor ST0153000U (30 Gb EIDE Ultra ATA 66). Am I thinking
>right here ?
>
>I mostly deal with PC's, so apologies if the question is dumb.
>
>TIA
>
>Joel Barnett
Installing a new ATA drive in a beige G3 is a good thing to do. But you can only add a second IDE drive to the Mac's controller if your beige G3 is Rev2 or Rev3. Maxtor drives usually work well and offer a good price/performance ratio. Apple Drive Setup 1.7.3 usually works to format and partition a Maxtor drive. There's an excellent installation how-to article with photos at:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/IDE/
(The article also explains more about the "no slave drive on a Rev 1" issue.)
Some people like to use a PCI card that lets them run a new drive at ATA 66 speed in their beige G3. In addition to being faster, this also gets around the Rev 1 issue of no second IDE drive allowed on the Mac controller. Different ATA cards are known under such names as ACARD, TurboMax, Sonnet Tempo, and VST UltraTek. Should you end up installing an ATA 66 card and drive, you can just use the 80-wire cable supplied with the drive.
An ATA drive connected directly to the Mac controller formats differently than an ATA drive connected to a third party PCI card. Therefore, don't expect to move an ATA drive filled with data back and forth between the Mac controller and a third party PCI card. Reformatting is usually required.
Best of luck. --outcast125
***
From: outcast125@aol.comspamfree (Outcast125) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.misc
Date: 28 May 2001
Subject: Re: Int Hard drive to External???
Message-id: <20010528071417.29760.00001924@ng-bh1.aol.com>
Jerry Sam cibomatto@mindspring.com wrote:
>Hello all.. this might be a dumb question but is it possible to turn an
>internal hard drive (IDE) to an external hard drive by way of some sort
>of
>shelling or casing for it?? Thannks..
>Email me with your comments.. :)
You'll find lots of information about putting an IDE drive in a FireWire case at:
http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/firewire.html#cases
However, I don't know if this is really a cost-effective thing to do. FireWire drives have been coming down in price.
***
From: outcast125@aol.comspamfree (Outcast125) Newsgroups: comp.sys.mac.hardware.storage
Date: 03 Jun 2001
Subject: Re: Partition "Extra"
Message-id: <20010603053444.18169.00002374@ng-cc1.aol.com>
Ben Sharvy bsharvy@efn.org wrote:
>I wanted to partition a drive into two unequal sizes. When I do that a
>third partition shows up called "Extra" which seems to be unused space.
>
>I can't get rid of it, although I can size down to something like 10k. I
>
>can't find any explanation of it in the online help. What is it and why
>
>do I have to have it? Given that it is throwaway space, why would I ever
>
>want it to be more than the minimum, and why then can the user resize it?
When people buy a hard drive these days, it often comes with more space than they need for any current projects. So they allocate a couple of 2 GB partitions and leave the rest as free space, or "extra." Then, when they find a new use for their Mac or want to add a different version of the OS, they can use the free space to create more partitions.
Some drive formatting software allows a partition to be resizable. This was more popular in the days of HFS, when a large partition would cause small files to take up more space. With resizing, you could keep the partition down to a useful size, but preserve the option of expanding it if need be.
When partitioning a drive, the numbers you get for available space and partition size are not always accurate to the last kilobyte. Life is too short to be bugged by that final 10k you're losing. Of course, it could all be a plot by Bill Gates to create the world's biggest hard drive by claiming 10k from every Mac user's disk drive...
--outcast125
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