Mini sees my 320GB Ministack as 2TB

[Mac Milkman]

Hello Mac Miniphiles!

I'm fairly new to the Mac game and am quite thankful these forums exist. It seems that most troubles get diagnosed pretty quickly by the vigilant members here. I have what I THINK is a simple problem.

I just bought a Mini and a NewerTech 320GB Ministack. When I first plugged in the Ministack, the system recognized it fine. I partitioned it into three volumes (160/80/80) intending to use the 160 as the bootable startup disk and the two others and internal HD for file storage/scratch. I cloned my internal to the 160 volume with SuperDuper. Everything worked fine and was a fair bit speedier on startup and app launches.

My problem started when I had to move the Mini's physical location from one room to the next. I shut down and disconnected everything, but I neglected to dismount the newly partitioned drives beforehand. When I reconnected and powered on, only the internal and 160 partition were showing up on the desktop. I went to Disk Utility and saw the two missing 80GB volumes, but they were grayed out and unavailable. Since I hadn't yet used the new setup much I thought I would just reformat the external and start over, but since I did it now shows up as a 2TB drive! I can read/write to it fine, reinstalled the OS on it and booted off it, but the fact that the system thinks my Ministack is much larger than it actually is worries me. I think it will probably implode if I get close to its actual capacity and it looks to write to areas that aren't there.
2TB actually sounds like a pretty amazing deal for the cost of a 320GB, but I think an accurate size reading would be better.

I contacted OWC tech help, and they suggested the directories may have been damaged and recommended DiskWarrior. Ran it, but the drive still appears as 2TB. Aaaaagh! Someone please help me figure out what's up with this week-old set up!

Thanks very much,
Mac Milkman

[blackjaw]

damn, i dont know how to help you, but imagine the look on your friends faces when they see 2TB...haha
_________________
1.42 ghz mac mini w/ 1gig ram
17" LG flatron 1720p
30GB ipod photo

[devo]

Have you tried Verify and Repair Disk in Disk Utility First Aid? Are any of the partitions locked for editing? I would ease this disk, then partition it with one partition using Mac OS Extended Journaled. Try naming the disk something other than untitled before you start.

[Mac Milkman]

Thanks for the reply, Devo. I did what you suggested, and also ran DiskWarrior again and the Mini now sees the proper 320GB for the Ministack. I also installed DW on the internal and ran it from there instead of booting off the CD, and that may have made a difference as well. I think it runs in a modified version of 10.3.7 off the CD, and it may have done a better job running within 10.4.2 off my internal drive. Quite a relief, really (although 2TB WAS a chest-puffing amount of storage to pretend to have, I'll admit). Thanks!

Mac Milkman