Issue with New HD & MDD

[RicharDM]

Hey all,

I'm new... Hi! I have a weird problem with my newly acquired, not so new 1.0GHz DP MDD. I just put a 500Gig Western Digital HD in and can't seem to make use of it.

I have two HDs in the machine at present. One on each of the two IDE channels - both attached to the Master connectors. The new 500 Gig drive is simply for storage ( no OS ), and is set to Cable Select.

Running 10.5, using Disk Utility to partition the drive to Apple Partition Map, I am presented with a single formatted partition of 465 Gig ( approx. ). The drive is visible through System Profiler, and mounts to the desktop.

Here's the thing though... Get Info describes the drive as having no capacity, and no space available. Top and bottom of it is that I cannot write anything to the drive. When I try to do so, I get a "...not enough disk space" error. I can however create a new folder on the drive.

Very puzzled.

In thinking it may be a permissions issue, I set the drive to "Ignore permissions on this drive" ... no joy.

Any thoughts?? All help greatly appreciated.

Cheers.

 

[RicharDM]

Ok, so stranger still... I have just come to realize that it appears to be a "drag & drop" issue. I am able to create a new folder on the drive with no problems, I can even save a document to the drive using "Save As", but I cannot drag a file to the drive.

Furthermore, it is a system wide problem. I have two drives in the system at present, a 320 Gig ( OS Drive ), and a 500 Gig ( storage ) and neither will allow files to be copied to them via drag & drop.

A look at Permissions shows:
System - Read & Write
Current User (Me) - Read & Write
Everyone - Read Only

All seems well, yet still I cannot write ( by dragging files ) to either drive.

Suggestions? Anybody?

 

[AlexMaximus]

Try out these options...

Hello Richard,

I am not exactly sure if you have the same motherboard as I have.
However, most likely you have a speed difference between both onboard ATA controllers. Something like ATA33 in the front, and a blue ATA66 close to the CPU for the HDs that sit in the back or the other way around.
On top of that, your HD's are from different time frames, -one recently bought, one from back in the day... am I right ??
In any case, this leaves you with two options:
1.
Find out what the faster ATA controller is on your motherboard. If there is a blue ATA plug, use the blue one to connect both HD's with master and slave. If that doesn't work, then jumper both HD's as Master. - It might be possible that Apple does not use any jumper settings like in the PC world.

That should work already. But in the unlikely case it does not, then you try the same procedure on the second ATA controller. It would be possible you have a defective ATA controller on the mainboard.

2. The Jumper settings you have now - having two HD's on two separate ATA controllers- you would absolutely need to set both HD's on Master. I am almost certain the Cable Select setting is the reason for your headache. Do not use Cable Select.

Let me know if it worked

good luck

 

[RicharDM]

Hey Alex,

Many thanks for the reply.


I suspect we have the same logic board ( though I have a slower clock speed on my CPUs ). I have a 2003 Dual processor 1.0GHz MDD.

I understood that the MDDs with 167MHz system bus had (x2) 100MHz ATA controllers for hard drives, and a 66MHz controller for the optical drives.

My drives are (both) new, so likely have ATA100/133... but that should default down to the highest speed available ( ATA100 in this case ) ...no?

At any rate, I will change both drives from Cable Select to Master, and see how things turn out.

Fingers crossed.

thanks.

 

[RicharDM]

Well I changed the storage drive's jumper to Master, the OS's drive was already set to Master on the other ATA controller.

I then booted from the Leopard install media and ran Repair Permissions on the OS drive. The result is that I can now drag files to the OS drive, it also displays accurate information regarding capacity, space used and space available in the Get Info pane... something it was not doing before.

However, the storage drive is still not allowing drag & drop file movement. It will still allow new folder creation & Save As saving though.

So, I appear to be half way there. Not yet tried the creating a new user accout to see if the problem persists.

 

[AlexMaximus]

Some more options for you

Well I changed the storage drive's jumper to Master, the OS's drive was already set to Master on the other ATA controller.

I then booted from the Leopard install media and ran Repair Permissions on the OS drive. The result is that I can now drag files to the OS drive, it also displays accurate information regarding capacity, space used and space available in the Get Info pane... something it was not doing before.

However, the storage drive is still not allowing drag & drop file movement. It will still allow new folder creation & Save As saving though.

So, I appear to be half way there. Not yet tried the creating a new user accout to see if the problem persists.

Ok, -so your configuration is now one HD on both of the two ATA onboard controllers each with a Master Jumper setting. This should be all right on the hardware question. However, you still could try to hook both drives on one controller with a Master/Slave setting.
Anyways, now on the software side of it, -assuming your storage HD is still empty, I would first format the storage HD with the correct apple format. I think there are two different ones as I remember. That could be already the solution. If the formating didn't work, I would format the OS drive as well and put Leopard on it from scratch that the system now sees both HD's from the first second it puts Leopard on it.
If the problem still remains, there is still one more thing you can try.
I don't know what year your Dual MDD is from, but I guess you have 2002 model with a firewire 400 but no firewire 800. Back in the day they came with a 80 gig HD and later on a 120 gig HD Seagate Baracude. Most likely there has been a kind of Firmware or Bios update for your type of mainboard and I am sure there is a way to update that or flash that with the newer version, assuming your error remains because of your HD size. In the gray past there has been always a kind of Gig barrier that the bios can work with. It was the pre- MDD area, however I don't know if they had an new barrier after that...

http://forums.macnn.com/65/mac-pro-and-power-mac/198397/g4-os-x-hard-drive-limitations/

https://forums.macrumors.com/threads/103150/

In any case I am sure you would be able to find the tool mentioned below on some kind of torrent box. I am sure its worth the try.

http://eshop.macsales.com/Catalog_Item.cfm?ID=7108&Item=OWCSPEEDHCCD

Good luck !!