Re: What kind of SCSI drives can be used on the GS?

[nathan@cco.caltech.edu (Nathan Mates)]

In article <405.UUL1.3#25274@ace.com>, Luigi <luigi@ace.com> wrote:
>> seen a lot of good deals on 1G+ drives that I'm lusting after... :P

>I seriously recommend _against_ getting a 1 Gig drive for an Apple II.
>There was another discussion about the maximum size of HD partitions and
>I think the final decision was that you could only have up 32 Megs in
>each one, and 1000 / 32 = 31, so it would fill up your whole desktop!

   For an Apple //e or so, you're right. But, you're doing a grave
disservice to those of use who own GS's and have System 6 by spreading
information that just isn't right. (You've been rather wrong on things
before in the past. Think before you post, and learn when people
correct you) Let's go over this thing once again:

- The maximum size of a ProDOS partition is 32MB. Your first (boot)
  partition must be ProDOS format, and ProDOS 8 programs only work
  from ProDOS partitions.
- HFS partitions (introduced with System 6) have a max at either 2 or 4
  GB. (Far more complicated than this discussion warrants). There is
  some efficiency lost with lots of really small (<5K or so) files on
  large HFS partitions, but that's usually immaterial for what people
  want to store on large volumes, things like pictures, MODs, fonts, etc.

   Thus, a 1GB drive could have say 5 ProDOS partitions, using up 160
MB of space, and then one 864 MB HFS partition. Will that eat your finder
screen? Only if you have really huge icons. I have a 235MB HD at home.
By your logic, it should have 235/32, or 8 partitions. Nope. 1 20 MB
boot partition, 4 32MB partitions, and 1 87MB HFS partition.

Nathan Mates


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* Nathan Mates   http://www.ugcs.caltech.edu/~nathan/               *
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