Sidebar Sidebar
Become a MacRumors Supporter for $50/year with no ads, ability to filter front page stories, and private forums.

Help! Replaced internal HDD in PB G4 but disk not detected during install

iPoodOverZune

iPoodOverZune

macrumors regular
Original poster
Jan 13, 2007
235
0
LOST
Hi,
I just replaced the old 80 GB fijutsu drive in my Powerbook G4 (1.25 Ghz, late 2003 model) with Seagate Momentus 5400.3 160GB hard drive following the instructions given at ifixit and xlr8yourmac. The installation of new drive went relatively fine. However, when I start to install mac OS X from DVD, I dont see my hard drive in "select a destination" or in disk utility. I cant even see it to initialize and format it. Disk utility only shows the DVD drive itself.

I am not well proficient in this. Please help how to detect the drive. I hope the drive itself is not DOA (bought from best buy). I took precautions while replacing. Had a static wrist wrap to make sure i dont short anything, etc. Your suggestions will be appreciated.

Thanks
 
Are you totally sure that you put everything back together properly, since you just replaced it I would guess that you forgot to reconnect something while reasembling it, or the drive is DOA.
 
mrkramer said:
Are you totally sure that you put everything back together properly, since you just replaced it I would guess that you forgot to reconnect something while reasembling it, or the drive is DOA.
Click to expand...

Yes I did put back everything. Well, I installed a little differently i guess from ifixit in that I did not remove any yellow ribbons etc they had mentioned. I guess that was just to remove the lid completely off. So I let the ribbons there and had the lid against the screen. So I only removed the IDE connector from the old hdd and put into the new one. put back everything. I am able to boot from my firewire hard disk (back up) and install cd but I dont see the new hdd in both cases.
 
Try using disk utility

I had a similar issue when I changed the hard drive in my MacBook. I believe what you have to do is first open disk utility and format the drive into the Mac OS Extended (journaled) file system. After you do that, the drive should appear for you to install on. I believe when you begin the installation, the disk utility should be listed in one of the drop down menus up at the top of the screen.
 
jnolas2 said:
I had a similar issue when I changed the hard drive in my MacBook. I believe what you have to do is first open disk utility and format the drive into the Mac OS Extended (journaled) file system. After you do that, the drive should appear for you to install on. I believe when you begin the installation, the disk utility should be listed in one of the drop down menus up at the top of the screen.
Click to expand...

yes thats exactly i am looking at. yet i dont see the new hard disk there to format it. I click on utilities and select disk utility. what i see then is only my DVD drive and nothing else.
 
There was a plastic kind of covering on the old hdd. i even removed that and put on the new one (thought it might prevent some static shock or something). I think the installation part was pretty good. didnt had any problem with it. my only conclusion is that i am missing something somewhere in understanding how to install osx now or the disk was DOA. :mad:
 
since you put everything back correctly, the only thing that I can think of is that the drive is DOA, do you have an external enclosure you could put it in to test it?
 
mrkramer said:
since you put everything back correctly, the only thing that I can think of is that the drive is DOA, do you have an external enclosure you could put it in to test it?
Click to expand...

no! bad luck, dont have it. thats what i was thinking about right now to check. but dont have an enclosure. i wonder if the connector for 3.5 and 2.5 inch are same so that i can check on some windows system here. (sorry may be dumb to do it)
 
sp guys, pardon me for my naivety, but coming from a windows world 3 years ago, i didnt do much of DIY thing with computers after that. So my question is when you install a new hard disk in mac, you are supposed to detect the hard disk much like windows show it as an unpartitioned (unformated) drive in C or D, etc. so in this case what possiblites could be? Did i short something? apparently laptop is working fine when connected to firewire drive? I am not sure what other possibilities are there that i may not know. otherwise it is dead drive and heck, i hate to remove those three dreaded latches to open the lid. took a long time to figure it out!
 
Can be the G4 don't support that type of disk, my 400Mhz G4 can't do bigger as 120GB disks f.e. I've put in a 300 GB once but it format and than shows up as a 120 GB one :(
 
rrijkers said:
Can be the G4 don't support that type of disk, my 400Mhz G4 can't do bigger as 120GB disks f.e. I've put in a 300 GB once but it format and than shows up as a 120 GB one :(
Click to expand...

I checked about that and I do know it supports more than 127 GB limit that was for older systems (older than 2002; my PB is late 2003 model). Also, even if can take 127 GB, at least it should be recognized.

Now the only things that I can think of:
1) HDD formatted for windoze from the manufacturer (dont know though if that could be the problem)
2) I recieved a dead product
3) Static shock during installation caused any problem (although i had a wrist static wrap during installation)
4) the IDE connector did not connect well (in my memory, i think I had it fixed very well)
I video taped the essential portions of installation and i could not find anywhere that could have been problem.
Looks like tomorrow I will do the sucker job again. I hate to open those three latches on DVD drive thats really hard to let loose. otherwise, its a smooth process.
Any suggestions, please. what i could be doing wrong. i checked online many forums and i saw many people with that problem but no solution anywhere.
 
Hi, sorry to revive this old thread, but did you ever find a solution?

The 80GB drive in my PB G4 12" just failed, so i bought a new 320GB WD Scorpio. Installed the drive, put the PowerBook back together, and booted the Leopard install DVD, only to find that my shiny new drive isn't detected. It doesn't show in System Profiler or in Disk Utility. Booting the Ubuntu 9.10 live CD gives errors about /dev/hda timeout.

I love my PowerBook and hope it hasn't come to an untimely end!
 
Does it show up in Disk Utility? Most likely the HDD is DOA and you'll need to request a replacement, assuming you connected everything back together properly. I've replaced the HDD in my PBG4 (250 GB WD Scorpio) and it showed up first thing (can't remember if I had to format in Disk Utility first or not).

If you have an external FW enclosure, you could try putting it in that to see if it shows up then.
 
Well I put the drive in a USB to IDE enclosure and connected it to my iMac. It works fine there. but no dice with the PowerBook. I also tried an old 20GB drive i had just for fun and it's not detected either.
 
Sorry to once again bump an old thread, but figured i'd post the solution for the sake of closure.

What happened in my case was that I damaged the IDE ribbon cable. The original drive had all but fused with the plastic connector, so I had to pull harder than I should have and must have detached the cable slightly from the connector.

Luckily, the replacement part was easily found on eBay for about $15.
 
You must log in or register to reply here.
Register on MacRumors! This sidebar will go away, and you'll see fewer ads.
Top Bottom
Back