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Mac Mini G4 not recognizing hard drive anymore

feelingsupersonic

feelingsupersonic

macrumors member
Original poster
Jan 2, 2020
79
105
Texas
I did a preliminary google search but didn't see anything useful so far.

The Mini was working fine with the stock 80gb HDD but I decided to upgrade it with a mSATA SSD, using one of those ebay IDE adapters that is the same size as the stock HDD. I actually already had it, in my 17" PB G4. But after a keyboard failure I figured this SSD would go to the Mac Mini as an upgrade, it was working fine in the PB and already had Leopard installed on it.

First boot after install and I was getting that Finder animation with the question mark over a folder. Booted from a Tiger DVD to try and re-install but the installer did not find the SSD at all. That was over 6 months ago.

Today I thought I would have another go. Booted it up and I get a blank screen (same color as the background of the normal boot screen, but without the grey apple). Then after a few mins it's the question mark animation. So I swapped back to the original 80gb drive, and it's doing the same thing! Something must be wrong. The optical disk drive audibly spins up and accepts disk, so there is power at the disk module (or whatever you call it.... they all connect through that same header). I have tried a PRAM reset but nothing changed.

Does anyone have any other tips before I turn the Mini into a rifle target?
 
Have you tried a PMU reset?

PMU Reset (PowerPC)
Step 1
Disconnect the Mac Mini's power cord, as well as any other cables that may be connected to the computer. Wait 10 seconds before proceeding.

Step 2
Hold down the computer's power button, then reconnect the power cord. Release the power button.

Step 3
Press the power button to turn on the computer.
 
I think in the mini the hard drive needs to be set for 'slave' and most of those msata boards are set for master. But it depends on which one you have. Does the original spinning disk have a jumper on it?
 
No jumpers. On either the mSATA disk or on the original HDD (or any IDE HDD I have pulled from a Powerbook ever).

Regarding the Firewire boot, I am not that keen on using it again... it was just a convenient machine I already had laying around that I thought I could use for something productive in the guest bedroom. If I can fix it, great. If not, I'll see if someone wants it for $20 as is. For the cost of a Firewire HDD and cable, to put on a broken system, it would be like pissing in the wind to me.
 
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“…one of those eBay IDE adapters”

The G4 Mini requires a setting of Master, Slave or Cable Select. Don’t remember which* at present… and some of those adapters don’t offer any jumper settings. Almost missed that setting when I installed my first sled-mounted mSata in a G4 Mini to run OS 9.

Will be into a G4 Mini later this week and can then answer that *question.
 

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Have you tried reseating the IDE connector to the adapter?

If I recall, my iBook G4 wouldn't see its mSATA drive until the connection was reseated one or two times.
 
Thanks for the ideas. I'm not sure about the jumpers being the culprit, as I have tried re-installing the original HDD in the exact state that it was in when I removed it. There were no jumpers on it at all. Even if it was a problem unique to the SSD I would expect the original HDD to work but here we are.

Regarding re-seating the connector, I have taken it apart and put it back together a few times now. With both the original HDD and the mSATA SSD / adapter.

Another possible clue: tried again to boot from my Tiger DVD and it doesn't boot from it at all. It acts like there's nothing bootable at all available to the system... yet the optical drive spools up and is obviously doing something in those first 10 seconds of being powered on.
 
Try disconnecting the optical drive, set the disk drive to master, and see if it will recognize the disk that way.
 
feelingsupersonic said:
Another possible clue: tried again to boot from my Tiger DVD and it doesn't boot from it at all. It acts like there's nothing bootable at all available to the system... yet the optical drive spools up and is obviously doing something in those first 10 seconds of being powered on.
Click to expand...

I’ve seen this behavior when cable select isn’t working as expected and there is a master/slave conflict. The Mac just hangs at a gray screen.

If jumper settings don’t resolve things, the next step would be to buy another adapter to confirm the adapter is not at fault.
 
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I'll give the jumper settings a try. Umm... on any of the hard drives, I am not seeing a schematic. Instead of 6 or 8 pins like most drives, there are only 4 pins on any of these drives. Anyone have a cheat sheet? My google searching is not really coming up with anything.
 
First: found out that on PB G4 / Mac Mini hard drives, no jumper = master.

Second: found the issue, it was weird. I took off the optical drive and had a new angle to view the HDD from. Noticed that an entire row of pins on the PATA header was exposed! What the hell? It turns out that the backplane connector was offset a millimeter or so, and the HDD would never line up. So when you slot in the drive, it only engages 1 row (the wrong row), and the other row is just hanging out into the air. Couldn't see this until the optical drive was removed but I also wasn't looking for it, seemed like a normal fit earlier.

It's booting normally now... thanks again for the ideas guys, it ended up spurring me in the right direction. This G4 was a few hours away from being target practice but now it will be a media client for guests.
 
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I was exaggerating a little back there. I would have seen if someone wanted it for cheap. It's one of the higher end models and I'm glad it's working, I remember wanting one as a teen back in 2005 and desperately trying to convince my parents that it made sense to get me one.
 
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Thanks for following up and letting us know how it turned out. I'm glad you got it working.
 
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