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Other Mac Pro Can't partition

T

timgowen

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Aug 19, 2021
17
6
I've acquired a Mac Pro G5 without a HD; got myself a 500Gb drive and a set of install discs from eBay, although that might be the problem. The drive shows up as /dev/disk1 but Partition in Snow Leopard (10.6.4) install is greyed out. The drive appears in disk utility as Media but any options in Erase and Partition are greyed out.

Is this likely to be because of the install disks?
 
timgowen said:
The drive shows up as /dev/disk1 but Partition in Snow Leopard (10.6.4) install is greyed out.
Click to expand...
You need to select the whole drive to partition it. Is the drive unpartitioned (empty)? (A picture of Disk Utility may also be helpful.)

timgowen said:
Is this likely to be because of the install disks?
Click to expand...
Unlikely. If they’re too old for the machine they won’t boot at all, if they’re for a different machine the installer will complain. Disk Utility is unaffected.
 
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timgowen said:
I've acquired a Mac Pro G5 without a HD
Click to expand...
Such thing does not exist. You either have a Mac Pro or a G5 but not both. As you are trying to install 10.6 I suspect you have a Mac Pro. Which one?
 
ToniCH said:
Such thing does not exist. You either have a Mac Pro or a G5 but not both. As you are trying to install 10.6 I suspect you have a Mac Pro. Which one?
Click to expand...
Sorry, it is a Mac Pro (Mid 2010) 2 x 2.4 Quad Core Intel Xeon
 
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Amethyst1 said:
You need to select the whole drive to partition it. Is the drive unpartitioned (empty)? (A picture of Disk Utility may also be helpful.)


Unlikely. If they’re too old for the machine they won’t boot at all, if they’re for a different machine the installer will complain. Disk Utility is unaffected.
Click to expand...
Yeah I assume as it came from Amazon but there again I just realised now that it says the drive is too small to contain partitions. Plus there are loads of drives: dev/disk0 is optical but I am seeing /disk1 to /disk5
 

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Amethyst1 said:
You need to select the whole drive to partition it. Is the drive unpartitioned (empty)? (A picture of Disk Utility may also be helpful.)


Unlikely. If they’re too old for the machine they won’t boot at all, if they’re for a different machine the installer will complain. Disk Utility is unaffected.
Click to expand...
Yeah I assume as it came from Amazon (It's a Western Digital WD5000AVDS AV 500GB by the way)
but there again I am noticing now that it says the drive is too small to contain partitions. Plus there are loads of drives under /dev/... dev/disk0 is optical but I am seeing /disk1 to
 
Looks like "media" is NOT a drive that you can use. That name often is a default name for a drive that is not operating properly (and likely not usable, just a bad or dead drive that just barely accepts power, and probably doesn't work t all.
You showed the results of diskutil list, but all you show is the DVD that is in the optical drive.
The drive that you want to use (Media) is not appearing at all (unless it is at the top ot the list, whichi you don't show in your post of the terminal window. All those "partitions" that you see are mostly 523.4 KB, or 1MB, or the first device after the DVD shows 0 B, so nothing useful in that part of the list (at least, nothing that you can use to install anything
You apparently have a dead drive, or... it is not connected properly. Recheck both ends of the SATA cables in the various drive bays.
You said you have a 500 GB. Is that a spinning hard drive (HDD), or is it an SSD (solid state Drive). It may be dead, whatever drive type it might be. Send us a picture of the label on your 500 GB drive

(edit) Ah, I see you have a 500GB HDD. You will find very quickly, even if you get that drive to work and install, that it is just not a good choice for a boot drive -- really slow now. Swap that out for a 2.5-inch SSD before you decide to complain about how slow a spinning hard drive might be. It's even a 5400 RPM model, which means that you are already slow before you even start. And, this one appears to be (likely) dead.
 
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Thank you. It's weird because I can hear the drive when the machine starts up. It's a serial ATA hard drive.
 

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DeltaMac said:
10 years old, too...
Try the drive in another bay
Click to expand...
The Mac is old but the drive is supposedly new! Is it easy to attach an SSD to the drive caddy or is it better to get one of those special adapters 3D printed for the machine?
 
timgowen said:
The Mac is old but the drive is supposedly new!
Click to expand...
It says on the sticker that it was made 10+ years ago. Electronics rarely get better sitting in a shelf unused for years. It might be dead. But, try it in different bay as suggested or in a different computer. It doesn't matter if its a Mac or Win -machine.
 
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ToniCH said:
It says on the sticker that it was made 10+ years ago. Electronics rarely get better sitting in a shelf unused for years. It might be dead. But, try it in different bay as suggested or in a different computer. It doesn't matter if its a Mac or Win -machine.
Click to expand...
Yeah I put it in bay 2. It clicks on startup so I reckon it is dead... the Get Info shows what bay it's in, which is clever really and shows that it's at least mounted correctly.
 
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God, what I wouldn’t give to see Leopard/Snow Leopard in retina quality on an OLED display…. Man did the icons look good enough to lick!!!
 
DeltaMac said:
Looks like "media" is NOT a drive that you can use. That name often is a default name for a drive that is not operating properly (and likely not usable, just a bad or dead drive that just barely accepts power, and probably doesn't work t all.
You showed the results of diskutil list, but all you show is the DVD that is in the optical drive.
The drive that you want to use (Media) is not appearing at all (unless it is at the top ot the list, whichi you don't show in your post of the terminal window. All those "partitions" that you see are mostly 523.4 KB, or 1MB, or the first device after the DVD shows 0 B, so nothing useful in that part of the list (at least, nothing that you can use to install anything
You apparently have a dead drive, or... it is not connected properly. Recheck both ends of the SATA cables in the various drive bays.
You said you have a 500 GB. Is that a spinning hard drive (HDD), or is it an SSD (solid state Drive). It may be dead, whatever drive type it might be. Send us a picture of the label on your 500 GB drive

(edit) Ah, I see you have a 500GB HDD. You will find very quickly, even if you get that drive to work and install, that it is just not a good choice for a boot drive -- really slow now. Swap that out for a 2.5-inch SSD before you decide to complain about how slow a spinning hard drive might be. It's even a 5400 RPM model, which means that you are already slow before you even start. And, this one appears to be (likely) dead.
Click to expand...
This. Plus The new boot SSD drive needs to be clean. You need to find some way to be confident that the OS you are installing is malware-free. Personally I would not let "a set of install discs from eBay" within a mile of my workstation. Maybe two miles.

Note also that on Macs many of the antivirus programs of a decade ago caused far more problems than they solved.
 
Thanks, is there a place where the correct install media can be found? This is my first go at retro equipment restoration and I don't even know if I can make Snow Leopard media from my modern Silicon Mac equipment.
 
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