8GB first disk partition size limit

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Tray-loading G3 iMacs and Beige G3s can only boot from an operating system contained wholly within the first 8GB of the hard disk drive.

This only applies to IDE drives. Mac OS X installers won't permit installation on a partition which isn't wholly within the first 8GB on these machines. Mac OS 9 will install, and will run, but if crucial items in the System Folder subsequently get moved outside those limits, the machine won't boot, so installing on such a partition is a bad idea.

What this means in practice is that a hard disk drive larger than 8GB installed in one of these Macs should be partitioned, with a first partition of around 7.9GB (remember that before the visible partition on the disk some space will be reserved for low-level matters, so to be absolutely certain you need to account for this - 100MB will be ample). Then the Systems should be installed into that first partition.

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