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Leopard Installer doesn't Find Int. Hard Drive

H

hanguolaohu

macrumors regular
Original poster
I've been trying to install Leopard on my Powerbook G4 using a Plextor external firewire DVD drive. When I put the Leopard install disk in the drive, I begin the installation which restarts my computer and I get the install Leopard prompt fine. But when I'm asked where to install Leopard to, my internal hard drive does not show up. I used the upper menu to open disk utility, and it only shows my Powerbook's internal CD-RW and the Plextor ext. drive. What am I doing wrong? Any info much appreciated.

As a sidenote, I earlier DIY upgraded my 40GB internal HD to 160GB, and basically used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything from my 40GB to 160GB. The problem I encounter upon reboot though is sometimes on startup I get a disk symbol with a question mark, which I never got before. So sometimes I have to manually shut down and restart and then OS startup works fine. Not sure if this is affecting the Leopard install.

Thanks,
Alexander
 
hanguolaohu said:
I've been trying to install Leopard on my Powerbook G4 using a Plextor external firewire DVD drive. When I put the Leopard install disk in the drive, I begin the installation which restarts my computer and I get the install Leopard prompt fine. But when I'm asked where to install Leopard to, my internal hard drive does not show up. I used the upper menu to open disk utility, and it only shows my Powerbook's internal CD-RW and the Plextor ext. drive. What am I doing wrong? Any info much appreciated.

As a sidenote, I earlier DIY upgraded my 40GB internal HD to 160GB, and basically used Carbon Copy Cloner to copy everything from my 40GB to 160GB. The problem I encounter upon reboot though is sometimes on startup I get a disk symbol with a question mark, which I never got before. So sometimes I have to manually shut down and restart and then OS startup works fine. Not sure if this is affecting the Leopard install.

Thanks,
Alexander
Click to expand...
The only time this ever happened to me it was a problem with the actual hard drive. I am fairly certain that Leopard will refuse to install on a drive with a failing SMART status. It's certainly something to check anyway.

The folder with the question mark means that the system can't find the OS on the hard drive. While this can be caused by problems with the install, the more likely cause is again, something physically wrong with that hard drive (like a failing SMART status.)
 
After numerous installs, i have figured out that its some sort of data structure problems with the mac. try using some drive directory program to fix the problem, such as diskwarrior to fix it and try installing then.
 
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