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Path: utzoo!utgpu!news-server.csri.toronto.edu!bonnie.concordia.ca!uunet!cbmvax!jesup
From: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.amiga.misc,comp.sys.amiga.hardware
Subject: Re: A3000 hard drive capacity
Message-ID: <21990@cbmvax.commodore.com>
Date: 29 May 91 03:32:38 GMT
References: <1991May20.102326.27503@NCoast.ORG> <192e8a94.ARN00a5@core.north.de> <42674@cup.portal.com>
Reply-To: jesup@cbmvax.commodore.com (Randell Jesup)
Organization: Commodore, West Chester, PA
Lines: 35

In article <42674@cup.portal.com> FelineGrace@cup.portal.com (Dana B Bourgeois) writes:
>At a rough guess I would say that about 350Meg is the limit for a 3.5"
>drive (right now anyway).  Definitely less than 500 Meg.

	It's about 500 Meg now (quantum, seagate, others), and Micropolis
just announced a 1gig 3.5" drive for 3rd quarter.  They expect it to get down
to about $1/MB by the 2nd quarter of next year or so.  I think Fujitsu is
about even with them.

>I've got another question (to keep you gurus on your toes :->).  SCSI
>has a block address limit of about 1.2 Gig for 512 Byte blocks.

	No, common scsi drivers don't think to switch to 10-byte reads
when they pass the amount addressable with 6-byte reads.  Since Gig+ drives
have arrived, suddenly everyone is reving their drivers, including Dec.

>  If I
>buy a 2.0 Gig drive and partition the drive into at least two logical
>drives, do I avoid this problem?

	No.  It's not the offset to the partition, it's the offset to the
device.

>I ordered
>a SPARC 2 with a pair of 2.0 Gig drives for work and I'm not sure what
>will happen when we format them.  So enlighten me O gurus.

	Good luck.  A solution: format them as 1024 byte logical blocks.
I'm not certain that the Sun drivers/format will allow this.

-- 
Randell Jesup, Jack-of-quite-a-few-trades, Commodore Engineering.
{uunet|rutgers}!cbmvax!jesup, jesup@cbmvax.cbm.commodore.com  BIX: rjesup  
Disclaimer: Nothing I say is anything other than my personal opinion.
"No matter where you go, there you are."  - Buckaroo Banzai