How many files and drives will a Mac support?

Oh joy, I have filled 4 internal 120gig drives and a firwewire 160 and 80 with photos from the Canon 1DS. I am picking up another 250 gig firewire, but that will fill quickly and I'm interested in the new 300 gig ATA drives just announced from Maxtor as I feel there should be less problems with the internal drives than firewire.

Is there any limit (that I am approaching) with the number of drives and tens of thousands of photographic files I have installed? What about installing 4 x 300gig drives internally to give me 1.2 Terrabytes of storage in my Mac Dual 1.25mhz with 2mb of ram? Doing the math, this should give me enough storage to hold all my active weddings online until all photos and albums are ordered at which point they will be archived to CD/DVD.

I've considered a server, but have spent so much money in other areas I would hate to spend it if it's not absolutely necessary. I also don't want to have to learn and maintain an new piece of equipment if it's not essential.

Hi

Difficult question, but check out this tread at Apple discussion. It might help.

http://discussions.info.apple.com/[email protected]@.4aaa87f7

Michael,

I believe your machine, being a MDD (Mirrored Drive Door) G4 should be good clear up to the OS' 2 Terabyte limit. You don't have the 120/137GB limit of IDE 5, so you should have no trouble with your drives.

As you can see from the limits posted by Apple in their HFS+ spec, you could even stripe all four drives into one logical Volume.

Maximum number of volumes
21 (2)

Maximum volume size
2 terabytes

Maximum file size
2 terabytes (3)

Maximum data fork size
2 terabytes (4)

Maximum resource fork size
16 megabytes (5)

Maximum number of files
more than 2 billion (1)

Maximum number of files/folders in a
folder
32,767

Michael Ray White said:

What about installing 4 x 300gig drives internally to
give me 1.2 Terrabytes of storage in my Mac Dual 1.25mhz with 2mb
of ram?

Click to expand...

Thanks Brian, I've posted on several forums and that's the first concrete answer I've received.

Brian Bush said:

I believe your machine, being a MDD (Mirrored Drive Door) G4 should
be good clear up to the OS' 2 Terabyte limit. You don't have the
120/137GB limit of IDE 5, so you should have no trouble with your
drives.

As you can see from the limits posted by Apple in their HFS+ spec,
you could even stripe all four drives into one logical Volume.

Maximum number of volumes
21 (2)

Maximum volume size
2 terabytes

Maximum file size
2 terabytes (3)

Maximum data fork size
2 terabytes (4)

Maximum resource fork size
16 megabytes (5)

Maximum number of files
more than 2 billion (1)

Maximum number of files/folders in a
folder
32,767

Michael Ray White said:

What about installing 4 x 300gig drives internally to
give me 1.2 Terrabytes of storage in my Mac Dual 1.25mhz with 2mb
of ram?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Hi Michael

You realise of course that these drives will ALL fail?

You have backed up these images?

Dave

Michael Ray White said:

Brian Bush said:

I believe your machine, being a MDD (Mirrored Drive Door) G4 should
be good clear up to the OS' 2 Terabyte limit. You don't have the
120/137GB limit of IDE 5, so you should have no trouble with your
drives.

As you can see from the limits posted by Apple in their HFS+ spec,
you could even stripe all four drives into one logical Volume.

Maximum number of volumes
21 (2)

Maximum volume size
2 terabytes

Maximum file size
2 terabytes (3)

Maximum data fork size
2 terabytes (4)

Maximum resource fork size
16 megabytes (5)

Maximum number of files
more than 2 billion (1)

Maximum number of files/folders in a
folder
32,767

Michael Ray White said:

What about installing 4 x 300gig drives internally to
give me 1.2 Terrabytes of storage in my Mac Dual 1.25mhz with 2mb
of ram?

Click to expand...

Click to expand...

Click to expand...