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SpeedTools ATA Hi-Capacity Driver 3.0 - Mac
Bust the 128 GB Barrier for ATA hard disks on G3 & G4 PowerMacs!
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The ATA Hi-Cap Support Driver software was created to allow the use of extended capacity ATA drives (drives greater than 128 Gigabytes in size) on older (Pre-Mirrored Door) G4 and G3 Macintoshes -- including Cubes, PowerMacs, PowerBooks, iBooks, eMacs and iMacs running MacOS X versions 10.2 and later.
Without this software installed, any extended capacity drive which is connected to the built-in ATA bus on older Macintosh models will be limited to only 128 Gigabytes. Intel Macs, PowerPC G5 Macs and late model PowerPC G4's do not suffer from this limitation.
The ATA Hi-Cap driver package also includes an easy-to-use installation/removal utility.
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- Enables full capacity of ATA drives greater than 128 Gigabytes.
- Fully Bootable - unlike some FireWire and USB devices.
- Eliminates the need to buy a costly PCI ATA Card or FireWire enclosure
- Compatible with most S.M.A.R.T. utilities - unlike FireWire and USB devices
- Perfect for Macs which don't have a PCI slot (like Cubes, iMacs and eMacs)
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Just a couple...
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If you plan to use this drive under BOTH MacOS X and true MacOS 9 (not the Classic shell), please download a copy of our SpeedTools ATA Hi-Cap Driver User's Guide file. There you will find a full explanation of possible issues involved and several recommendations for eliminating possible problems.
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If you boot your Macintosh from another source (such as a MacOS software installation CD/DVD or a disk repair utility CD/DVD), the SpeedTools ATA Hi-Cap Driver will NOT be available to load and your drive will revert back to the 128 Gigabyte limitation -- until you reboot from a drive which has the ATA Hi-Cap Driver installed again.
The easiest way to guard against problems relating to these situations (where the ATA H-Cap driver can't load), is to partition your drive using Apple's Disk Utility. You simply create one partition with the size of 128GB, and another partition for the remaining drive capacity. What this does is ensures that if the Hi-Cap driver cannot load for any reason, your Mac will continue to see and use your drive's first partition safely with 128GB limitation back in place and not touch/damage the second partition. Your second partion will return as soon as you reboot your Mac from a hard disk that has the driver installed. See our ATA Hi-Cap User's Guide for other recommended partitioning stategies.
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We have been pleased by the great amount of interest that we've received about this product. Based upon the feedback we have been getting, there seems to be a few key questions which are regularly asked:
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Will I be able to recover my Hi-Cap boot drive with a repair utility if I need to boot from an emergency CD/DVD?
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If you plan to use this drive under BOTH MacOS X and true MacOS 9 (not the Classic shell), please download a copy of our SpeedTools ATA Hi-Cap Driver User's Guide file. There you will find a full explanation of possible issues involved and several recommendations for eliminating possible problems. |
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Will this driver fix capacity limitations with older FireWire cases or PCI ATA Cards?
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Sorry, no. This driver ONLY fixes the 128GB limitation with drives connected to Apple's built-in ATA buses. |
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Is an ATA drive which is installed in a FireWire or USB case supported?
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Sorry, no. This driver ONLY fixes the 128GB limitation with drives connected to Apple's built-in ATA buses. |
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Will I get the full speed of the drive?
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Absolutely. There is no performance penalty for using this driver whatsoever. |
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The "Safe Partitioning" guidlines in the 'User's Guide' pdf file recommends I setup a 127.99 GB first partition and allocate the rest of the drive in a second partition. Can't I create a smaller (less than 127.99 GB) first partition to boot from and allocate the rest to a second partition?
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Yes, this will work. But it is riskier: Intech does not consider any partition scheme which causes a single parition to span the 128 GB addressing "barrier" to be ideal. To understand why, consider what will happen if you have a volume which spans this barrier and for some reason the Intech Hi-Cap Support Driver does not load. The volume which spans the "barrier" will still mount and appear to function as normal. However, when a read or write request is made which is beyond this barrier, it will fail. This means you would likely never even be aware of the situation until you actually see such an error. In theory, whichever application program made the failed request should be able to elegantly handle a data transfer error, but you never know for sure. This is why we at Intech think any partition strategy other than the one we recommend is not the best choice. |
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- MacOS X (10.2 through 10.5.x)
- One or more ATA drives greater than 128 gigabytes in size
* Note: Installation on the 'Rev A.' Blue & White G3 Ultra-33 ATA bus is NOT supported! However, it is compatible with the Multiword DMA bus (CD/DVD bus). So, you can simply connect your hi-capacity drive to your CD/DVD bus and all will work well. For 'Rev B' Blue & White G3 owners, we have had several reports that our hi-capacity driver works great on the built-in Ultra-33 bus.
Did you know that SpeedTools Hi-Cap Driver is included with SpeedTools Utilities Pro?
SpeedTools Utilities Pro starts at just $39.95!
See SpeedTools Utilities Pro
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