Adding additional hard drives to G4

[huds]

I have a mirror drive G4 and need to install a 3rd ATA internal hard disk drive. The back two slots have drives in them and the front two (under the CD drives) are empty. I tried installing two new ATA drive recently but the computer does not recognise either. The drives were set to cable select as per the instructions and shop's advice and I cannot determine why the drives cannot be recognised.

Any ideas/assistance?

[caveman_uk]

weren't recognised where? Do you mean they didn't mount or that disk utility (or whatever it's called) didn't find them? Have you formatted them?

[huds]

I clearly need some assistance here. Basically, when I installed a second drive it was automatically "picked up" and I could access it on the desktop, disk utility etc. It was probably already formatted. When I installed the third, I could not find any reference to the drive anywhere - including disk utility, desktop etc. I need to format the drive but cannot locate it to format it. Does this make sense?

[yamadataro]

I'm not an expert on this, but does "cable select" has something to do with Master/Slave setting of your drives? When I installed mine once, the drives weren't recongnized because of the master/slave settings.

[DrBoar]

So the drive is "invisible" to ayour disk format tool?

If so there is some IDE snafu, have you tried setting it on an other IDE chain or use Slave/master instead of cable select?

If you can not get the disktool to locate the drive at all you have a hardware problem. BTW have you tried booting with the case open and a finger on the disk so that you feel that the the disk spins up, that is kind of important.

[IndyGopher]

On an MDD G4, the drives should be on cable select, as you have them (ie, not Master/Slave) If you are in OS X, drives may or may not pop up with the usual "You have inserted a disk that Mac OS does not recognize... blah blah blah" If you go into Disk Utility, though, it should show the two drives... you need to partition or erase them to get them to mount on the desktop. I have 4 hdd's in my MDD 1.25 and everything is peachy... so your setup should be working...

[Horrortaxi]

Check your cables. Is the IDE cable plugged in firmly to the drive and the board? I think on my MDD those front IDE cables weren't plugged into the board. Trace them and find out.

Disk Utility should be able to see the drive.

[caveman_uk]

Now that you mention it my cable wasn't connected to the logic board when I got the machine either...

[James Craner]

Same on my MMD G4 the cable for third and fourth drives was not connected. I wonder why it was not connected ? anyone know the reason?