I have a G4 with OS 10.4.11. There were 4 internal drives, all working fine. I wanted to substitute a drive from an identical G4. That drive worked fine in the other machine. I brought it upstairs, tested it with a USB-drive cable, it was fine. I took out the sled (the one in the front) with two drives on it, took one out, put the new one back...and whoa! Neither of them are mounting. I tried re-starting multiple times, removing the whole sled and starting over multiple times, plugging and unplugging multiple times. No change. Disk utility doesn't see them. I ran "repair permissions" and "verify" on my system disk. It's fine. No problems. After I went to "system profiler" a couple times, it finally decided to "see" one of the drives, but gave it a weird name, "SP301A@E". But not mounted. Disk utility now "sees" that one drive, but all commands (including "mount") are greyed out. Bizarre. Obviously it's not the drives. I plugged and unplugged the ribbon cable leading to the computer a couple times. It's plugged in just fine, and looks OK. I must be missing something obvious. But what???
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internal drives mounted 5 minutes ago, not now
- Thread starter mamlukman
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jumpers
Five minutes after I wrote what is below, I said "What the Hell," and took your advice and changed the jumpers to "cable select". Poof. Both drives mounted when I re-started. This little project only took me four hours. Thanks for your suggestion. But I am still baffled: how could one drive--which was never, ever, messed with--mount fine and then five minutes later, refuse to mount? And the one from an identical machine...??? Too weird for me. I'm going to bed and looking forward to tomorrow when I try to set up a new computer with WiFi--a first for me.
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Yes, both machines are MDD. Would that matter somehow? Well, one of the drives was never taken out of the sled, and had no jumpers--it went back into the same machine in the same exact location. The other had one jumper--but again, it worked fine in an IDENTICAL machine a few minutes before. So how could they work fine one minute and not the next??
Another weird thing. I re-started again, and now system preferences "sees" one of the drives (?) in the "ATA Bus" section, but it's changed the name from SP301A2E a few minutes ago to "SD14". Any significance?
Five minutes after I wrote what is below, I said "What the Hell," and took your advice and changed the jumpers to "cable select". Poof. Both drives mounted when I re-started. This little project only took me four hours. Thanks for your suggestion. But I am still baffled: how could one drive--which was never, ever, messed with--mount fine and then five minutes later, refuse to mount? And the one from an identical machine...??? Too weird for me. I'm going to bed and looking forward to tomorrow when I try to set up a new computer with WiFi--a first for me.
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Yes, both machines are MDD. Would that matter somehow? Well, one of the drives was never taken out of the sled, and had no jumpers--it went back into the same machine in the same exact location. The other had one jumper--but again, it worked fine in an IDENTICAL machine a few minutes before. So how could they work fine one minute and not the next??
Another weird thing. I re-started again, and now system preferences "sees" one of the drives (?) in the "ATA Bus" section, but it's changed the name from SP301A2E a few minutes ago to "SD14". Any significance?
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If the two original drives are set for master and slave, then you put in a master and take out the slave you'll have two masters. This causes both drives to conflict with each other and neither to work. This can sometimes happen if one drive is set for cable select and put onto the wrong cable connection and if the other drive is set for master/slave.
thanks
thanks-maybe that's what happened, although if a drive has no jumpers at all, can it be a master? In any case, it's working now. As usual, I have no idea why. It's like trying a bunch of random things and eventually one may work.
thanks-maybe that's what happened, although if a drive has no jumpers at all, can it be a master? In any case, it's working now. As usual, I have no idea why. It's like trying a bunch of random things and eventually one may work.
Aye. Standard master/slave configurations will work with two drives on the same ribbon. If you're prone to swapping things around, best to just set everything to cable select and not worry about it.
Also, on an MDD, some configurations can be problematic if anything other than cable select is used. For example, a single drive on the ATA66 set to anything other than cable select can cause random problems. It might work fine for a few days, then suddenly disappear when waking from sleep.
Also, on an MDD, some configurations can be problematic if anything other than cable select is used. For example, a single drive on the ATA66 set to anything other than cable select can cause random problems. It might work fine for a few days, then suddenly disappear when waking from sleep.