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Mac Mini G4 Target Disk issue

T

tampasteve

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 30, 2013
268
0
Tampa, Florida, North American Sector, Earth, Fron
I have a Mac Mini G4 that I am working on, but I have not run into this issue before. The Mac Mini boots either to a screen that says to reboot or to a grey apple screen and a spinning circle. So I am trying to attach it to a Power Mac G4 (10.4.11) in target disk mode. I can start the Mac Mini in target disk mode and it seems to be stable, however, when I attach it to the Power Mac the Target Disk logo stops moving on the screen and then the Power Mac can see the drive, but it will not let me do anything and eventually it unmounts the drive. I am attaching them together over firewire. The ultimate goal at this point is to run disk repair on the Mac Mini, unless anyone thinks the HDD is dead and I should just replace it. Right now I am leaning towards dead HDD.
 
Last edited:
havokalien

havokalien

macrumors 6502a
Apr 27, 2006
649
51
Kelso, Wa
Answered own question.

I would say you have already troubleshot the problem. The HD sounds like is done. Without being there that's a good guess.
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,794
26,885
I had a couple of drives that acted this way. As havokalien has stated, your drive is gone.
 
T

tampasteve

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 30, 2013
268
0
Tampa, Florida, North American Sector, Earth, Fron
Replaced HDD still have issues

So I replaced the HDD with a new unit and then cloned a copy of the drive that I know was good. I get the reset screen sometimes, and then other times I get the grey screen with the Apple logo that then changes to the "0" with a slash. I tried to boot into safe mode and it will not allow me to do so. Any ideas where to go from here? Thanks.
 
eyoungren

eyoungren

macrumors Penryn
Aug 31, 2011
28,794
26,885
tampasteve said:
So I replaced the HDD with a new unit and then cloned a copy of the drive that I know was good. I get the reset screen sometimes, and then other times I get the grey screen with the Apple logo that then changes to the "0" with a slash. I tried to boot into safe mode and it will not allow me to do so. Any ideas where to go from here? Thanks.
Click to expand...
If you backed up the drive when it was bad you probably have a corrupt file system. If you have install disks you might try booting from that and using Disk Utility to repair your drive and then repair permissions. If you don't or can't, if you can get a hold of a copy of Diskwarrior that would be the best step. DW can repair lots of stuff that Disk Utility won't even touch.
 
rabidz7

rabidz7

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2012
1,205
3
Ohio
tampasteve said:
So I replaced the HDD with a new unit and then cloned a copy of the drive that I know was good. I get the reset screen sometimes, and then other times I get the grey screen with the Apple logo that then changes to the "0" with a slash. I tried to boot into safe mode and it will not allow me to do so. Any ideas where to go from here? Thanks.
Click to expand...

Install Debian 7.10
You are kernel panicking on boot, and the only thing that you can do is reinstall your OS. Get Debian at Debian.org
 
Intell

Intell

macrumors P6
Jan 24, 2010
18,955
509
Inside
rabidz7 said:
Install Debian 7.10
You are kernel panicking on boot, and the only thing that you can do is reinstall your OS. Get Debian at Debian.org
Click to expand...

Stop with the Linux suggestions. It is rarely, if ever, helpful or the answer.
 
T

tampasteve

macrumors 6502
Original poster
May 30, 2013
268
0
Tampa, Florida, North American Sector, Earth, Fron
rabidz7 said:
Install Debian 7.10
You are kernel panicking on boot, and the only thing that you can do is reinstall your OS. Get Debian at Debian.org
Click to expand...

Thank you, but no thank you. I do not care to install a flavor of Linux on this machine. I understand that I am kernal panicking at boot, but the key is why at this point I cannot clone over (using target disk) a known good copy using Carbon Copy Cloner. I have a saved image of the HDD on another PPC (PowerMac G4).

I would like to simply reinstall Tiger on it. I will update when/if I solve the issue, but I have not touched the machine since my last post. If anyone else has any ideas I would be appreciative. I have not tried a different clone program.

:)
 
rabidz7

rabidz7

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2012
1,205
3
Ohio
tampasteve said:
Thank you, but no thank you. I do not care to install a flavor of Linux on this machine. I understand that I am kernal panicking at boot, but the key is why at this point I cannot clone over (using target disk) a known good copy using Carbon Copy Cloner. I have a saved image of the HDD on another PPC (PowerMac G4).

I would like to simply reinstall Tiger on it. I will update when/if I solve the issue, but I have not touched the machine since my last post. If anyone else has any ideas I would be appreciative. I have not tried a different clone program.

:)
Click to expand...

Are you able to erase the HDD in disk utility while in target disk?
 
rabidz7

rabidz7

macrumors 65816
Jun 24, 2012
1,205
3
Ohio
tampasteve said:
The disk in the Mac is actually a new disk as the one in the mac previously was shot. I replaced with a new HDD and formatted it while in target disk mode and then tried to clone the dive....so now I am not sure where to go from here. Thanks!
Click to expand...

What are you trying to clone to the drive?
 
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