Path: utzoo!attcan!uunet!lll-winken!xanth!nic.MR.NET!umn-cs!bungia!orbit!pnet51!shawn
From: shawn@pnet51.cts.com (Shawn Stanley)
Newsgroups: comp.sys.apple
Subject: Re: Prodos Limitations
Message-ID: <1134@orbit.UUCP>
Date: 11 May 89 14:53:04 GMT
Sender: root@orbit.UUCP
Organization: People-Net [pnet51], Minneapolis, MN.
Lines: 30

farrier@Apple.COM (Cary Farrier) writes:
>In article <8905100033.aa06016@SMOKE.BRL.MIL> STEIN@UCONNVM.BITNET (Alan Stein) writes:
>>
>>  Several people have responded to my inquiry about why I haven't been
>>able to use more than 40 megs out of my 45 meg hard drive.  Thanks.
>>  The answer seems to be that apparently GS/OS insists on a relatively
>>round number of megs when it formats a hard drive.  The low level format
>>seems to leave between 41 and 42 megs out of the 45, and then the high
>>level format rounds things off to 40 megs.
>
>	As I said in my post before, GS/OS is not the limitation. The
>	limitation is inherent in the old ProDOS filing system.  ProDOS
>	can only format a volume up to 32Mb.  Therefore if you want to use
>	your entire drive, partition it.

Forgive me, but this just seems a little bizarre.  On one hand, Alan says he
can format his hard drive to 40 Mb.  On the other hand, Cary says that's
because ProDOS can only format a volume up to 32 Mb.

You guys are 8 Mb apart in your discussion!

One valid point is that no matter what ProDOS does with the volume when you go
to use it, you should be able to do a low level format to the entire drive. 
As someone mentioned earlier, the unformatted and formatted drive space can be
two totally different numbers, depending a lot on your controller and the
formatting method it uses, etc.  I rather think that's part of the answer
here.

UUCP: {uunet!rosevax, amdahl!bungia, chinet, killer}!orbit!pnet51!shawn
INET: shawn@pnet51.cts.com