Maxtor HDD inside MyBook - flashing light?

[cosmichobo]

G'day,

I wanted to move the 1TB drive from my MyBook Home Edition into my G5 PowerMac, and move the 250GB drive in the G5 into the MyBook...

Both are SATA... so I figured it would work.

But, the MyBook just flashes its light repeatedly... about once a second...

If I just turn it on with no USB/Firewire cables hooked up, the light is solid... but put a cable in, and it flashes...

Any ideas to get around this?

cheers

cosmic

 

[RedTomato]

Is the 1TB drive working in the powermac? As you didn't mention it, I presume it is.

The most likely reason for the 250GB drive not to work is that it's formatted in a way the MyBook doesn't recognise.

Check the 1TB disk in the G5 to see what it's been formatted as, (if you haven't already reformatted it), put the 250 GB back in the G5 and do the same to it. (most likely will be FAT32).

The MyBook may also be looking for some software on the disk - again, check the 1TB drive, and copy it over. There might be a hidden partition on the 1TB disk with the MyBook system OS on it. Recreate it on the 250GB disk, but you may need to do some research on this.

 

[pastrychef]

I don't know if it's still being done, but I remember instances where the firmware on the bridge boards used in external enclosures were set so that hard drives from other makes would not work.

 

[cosmichobo]

The WD drive came as Fat32... I've already reformatted it for Mac Journaled... and deleted the tools that came with it - a backup application, and a menubar icon that tells you how full the drive is.

This is my 2nd 1TB MyBook Home - identical drives - and the first never had issues after I deleted the installed software. Not sure about the "hidden" partition... I can't see anything in Disk Utility on the WD drive.

The G5's original disk is a Maxtor.

I have read that it's possible that the enclosure may be brand specific... though haven't been able to confirm for this model. Been trying to log into WD's website to ask on their forum, but having issues even getting in.

The Maxtor has a jumper on 1 pin... (upper right) which appears to be fixed in place. I'm guessing it's to stop that pin being grounded to any other pins? All of the jumper position diagrams show that jumper in that position.

Gonna make life so much harder if I can't make this swap... (setting up an AppleTV hacked to use external storage)

cheers

cosmic