Mac OS 9 Lives

Mac OS 9 Discussion => Hardware => Storage => Topic started by: artphotodude on October 08, 2013, 03:15:05 PM

Title: MAX HD Partition Size that OS9 Can See?????
Post by: artphotodude on October 08, 2013, 03:15:05 PM

Am hoping to find a user with actual experience here.  I have the 2003 MDD with a partition of OSX and one of OS9 and I'm fast running out of HD space.  I read a while back that the largest partition that OS9 can use is 200GB, but as long as I keep the OS9 system itself on a smaller partition (probably 120GB), can it see AND access files from a separate drive that is larger than 200GB?  I want to put in a shared 500GB drive for both X and 9 to use for videos and music files, but don't know if OS9 will freak out if it sees it? 

Penny for your thoughts!!

Title: Re: MAX HD Partition Size that OS9 Can See?????
Post by: gsteemso on October 11, 2013, 08:52:21 AM

As far as I know, later versions of Classic Mac OS can handle anything up to 2TB. I know there's a gestalt flag or some such that a program can use to find out if 2TB volume support is available, but I can't recall details. I look forward to hearing if anyone has a definitive answer.

Title: Re: MAX HD Partition Size that OS9 Can See?????
Post by: artphotodude on October 11, 2013, 09:32:55 AM

Many Thanks!  I just needed to know if I was going to run into a problem with say a 500GB file.

Title: Re: MAX HD Partition Size that OS9 Can See?????
Post by: gsteemso on October 11, 2013, 01:57:27 PM

500GB "FILE" or "PARTITION?" Partition is no problem, but individual files within a partition can't get any bigger than 2GB. This is because the functions for looking around in a file use a 32-bit signed number to describe where in the file you are or want to jump to.

Title: Re: MAX HD Partition Size that OS9 Can See?????
Post by: artphotodude on October 11, 2013, 02:18:21 PM

Actually, I just found an Apple note saying that the maximum file size for OS 8 and 9 is up to the full size of the volume (2 TB).  https://support.apple.com/kb/TA21924?viewlocale=en_US

Title: Re: MAX HD Partition Size that OS9 Can See?????
Post by: gsteemso on October 11, 2013, 06:19:33 PM

Huh, shows how much attention I was paying. Thanks for the reference. Too bad the links in there to other relevant tech notes are broken.

Title: Question should be largest manageable partition...
Post by: DieHard on October 17, 2013, 12:06:12 AM

If you wish to be able to provide file maintenance (such as an occasional defrag.)... I strongly suggest keeping OS Volumes/partition sizes to 190GB and smaller.

This will dramatically decrease your chances of ending up with an unusable / corrupted volume