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Need advice on installing a 2nd drive.

A

amberashby

macrumors 6502
Original poster
Nov 6, 2003
254
0
Hi everyone,

I just purchased a 74GB SATA Western Digital Raptor drive to use as my main HD in my G5. It currently has the 160gb drive that it came with.

Do I need to plug the new HD into the location that the current one is in, in order for it to be reognized as the main (boot) drive? Or is this some sort of software setting?

Once I get that far I know I will need to format the drive and re-install Panther. Can I do that and then use my old drive (which is now my slave drive) to transfer my docs, songs, pics etc. before I format it?

Thanks. :)
 
Re: Need advice on installing a 2nd drive.

Originally posted by amberashby
Hi everyone,

I just purchased a 74GB SATA Western Digital Raptor drive to use as my main HD in my G5. It currently has the 160gb drive that it came with.

Do I need to plug the new HD into the location that the current one is in, in order for it to be reognized as the main (boot) drive? Or is this some sort of software setting?

Once I get that far I know I will need to format the drive and re-install Panther. Can I do that and then use my old drive (which is now my slave drive) to transfer my docs, songs, pics etc. before I format it?

Thanks. :)
Click to expand...

install the raptor drive. install OSX on it. boot from the raptor drive and then drag and drop your stuff then clean house on the 160 and do what you want with it.

Tyler
 
Maybe?

I'm new to the Mac world so take this with a grain of salt....

I know holding option key durring startup brings up a menu of bootable drives.

Also can't you just select the "Startup Drive" in the control panel?
 
Re: Maybe?

Originally posted by 3-22
I'm new to the Mac world so take this with a grain of salt....

I know holding option key durring startup brings up a menu of bootable drives.

Also can't you just select the "Startup Drive" in the control panel?
Click to expand...
You are right. OSX (+ OS9) has a startup panel where you tell it what to boot off. Holding the options key will force the computer to search for all available boot devices, whether that be a cdrom, or a hard drive.
 
I'd set the drives to cable select (if they support it) and never worry about master/slave conflicts when you move drives around.

As far as I know, the firmware dictates the startup device, not the HDD order or presence of a bootable device.
 
technical info most of you won't be interested, from this Apple technote:

When the user selects a startup device in the Startup Disk control panel, Startup Disk no longer sets a value in Mac OS PRAM. Instead it generates an Open Firmware path to the device and saves that path in NVRAM as Open Firmware's "boot-device" configuration variable. Open Firmware tries the device specified by "boot-device" first. If this device is unavailable or the user has overridden this with keyboard input, Open Firmware scans other devices looking for bootable drives. Once Open Firmware selects a device, it sets the "bootpath" property in the "chosen" node to the path to that device. The "bootpath" property is what the Mac OS ROM subsequently uses to locate and load Mac OS from disk.
Click to expand...

which just means that Rower is correct. it doesn't matter how you have your drives set re: master/slave as long as they're not conflicting with each other or your optical drive(s).

install your new HD with the jumpers set to slave or cable select, as your existing HD is most likely already set to master. boot up, and use Disk Utility (or your install CD) to install Panther on the new drive. once that's done, transfer all of your files from the old HD to the new. then set your startup disk (under 'System Preferences' in the apple menu) to the new drive. do whatever you want to the old HD -- leave as is, reformat, stir-fry with fresh ginger, etc.

and you're done -- easy pleasy, nice 'n cheesy.
 
Thanks all!!

I'll add the drive tonight and post my results. I'm going to install the OS and all my Apps on the Raptor. I'm hoping that I will get a small speed bump.
 
I'm having problems. Installed the new Raptor. System recognized the hard drive, but it won't let me initialize/erase it. It keeps giving me an error.
 
Disk erase failed. Underlying task reported failure on exit.

It says this right away.
 
Originally posted by amberashby
Disk erase failed. Underlying task reported failure on exit.

It says this right away.
Click to expand...

This sounds like the HD is defective. But, just to make sure... You installed the drive, plugged the SATA cables in, started the computer, and then ran Disk Utility. In Disk Utility, you have the list of drives on the left and they say something like

(hd icon) "157.2GB Seagate...."
(hd icon indented) "Macintosh HD"
(hd icon) "71.8GB Seagate...."

Then you clicked on the 74GB drive, went to the "Partition" tab, selected "1 Partition" from the pulldown menu, named the drive, then clicked "Partition" and it gives you that error?
 
when i chose partition it tells me that the drive is too small to partition. The other error I ge when I choose erase.
 
Originally posted by amberashby
when i chose partition it tells me that the drive is too small to partition. The other error I ge when I choose erase.
Click to expand...

Hehe. Is it reporting the size of the drive properly? We had this one machine once where the IDE bus was reporting the internal drive as 670GBs. I have the picture somewhere... Ahh, there we go, too big. Let me shrink that and I'll attach it. :)

Looks like your drive is dead. Return it.
 
Here we go:
 

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Mine shows 0 for size.

Is there any way that the jumper settings could cause this?
 
Cable to blame?

i just purchased a second drive for my G5 as well and am experiencing the same proiblem. i thought the unit was defective so i returned it for another one. same problem. then i pulled out my top hard drive and installed my new one there. guess what? no problem initializing or partitioning. then i tried putting it in the lower bay and reconnected my old drive in the top bay and the disks showed up but i couldn't copy anything into it. does anyone know how hard it is to replace the SATA cable for the bottom bay? how does one do it?
 
Rower_CPU said:
I'd set the drives to cable select (if they support it) and never worry about master/slave conflicts when you move drives around.

As far as I know, the firmware dictates the startup device, not the HDD order or presence of a bootable device.
Click to expand...

SATA doesn't have cable select since there is only one device per channel [ for now ] ..

He can select the boot device by booting with " option " pressed ..
 
amberashby said:
Disk utility. Should I try it from the Panther install CD?
Click to expand...

Yes .. install the drive in the mac .. boot with the CD .. on the first screen under the blue apple select disk util and erase / partition the drive ..

Then close disk util and either install the OS or reboot ..
 
Mertzen said:
SATA doesn't have cable select since there is only one device per channel [ for now ] ..

He can select the boot device by booting with " option " pressed ..
Click to expand...

*slaps head*

Don't know how I overlooked that - I need to get with the SATA program. :p
 
I just realized that I never posted my resolution for this old thread that I started.

My drive was defective. Exchanged it and now all is well.
 
I use "carbon copy cloner" to clone my system onto the Raptor. Since I already had all my apps installed onto the stock 250GB, I just cloned the system (minus personal files) onto the Raptor and select it as the boot drive from the System Prefs.
 
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