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powermac g5 with raid not starting

B

boneskid1

macrumors member
Original poster
Sep 19, 2012
95
0
I was given a powermac g5 by a family member without a power cord or ram. I was thrilled to finally get one, but I have come across a slight problem. Before I format/erase the 2 WD 250gb drives that are in a raid I wanted to make sure there was nothing on there that might need to be saved.
But when I start it up it gets stuck on the gray apple screen with the fans running full speed.
I did get 4gb of ram installed and found a power cord, the machine itself works great, I tested it with a spare drive I had. I just cannot figure out the startup issue.
The g5 in question is a late 2005 dual core 2.0ghz, 4gb of ram and a gf6600le with 128mb of vram.
 
boneskid1 said:
I was given a powermac g5 by a family member without a power cord or ram. I was thrilled to finally get one, but I have come across a slight problem. Before I format/erase the 2 WD 250gb drives that are in a raid I wanted to make sure there was nothing on there that might need to be saved.
But when I start it up it gets stuck on the gray apple screen with the fans running full speed.
I did get 4gb of ram installed and found a power cord, the machine itself works great, I tested it with a spare drive I had. I just cannot figure out the startup issue.
The g5 in question is a late 2005 dual core 2.0ghz, 4gb of ram and a gf6600le with 128mb of vram.
Click to expand...

Try to reset the PRAM.
 
Boot it from a DVD, or USB/FW Disk.
You will want to install Debian 7.10 if you want to use any modern software, get it at Debian.org
 
rabidz7 said:
Boot it from a DVD, or USB/FW Disk.
You will want to install Debian 7.10 if you want to use any modern software, get it at Debian.org
Click to expand...

Dude really, i see you reply with Debian in all threads, you work for 'em or something? Actually this is more fun than a complaint, so dont take it personal but c'mon, debian is not the answer to everything.
 
rabidz7 said:
Boot it from a DVD, or USB/FW Disk.
You will want to install Debian 7.10 if you want to use any modern software, get it at Debian.org
Click to expand...

None of your suggestions are helpful to the OP and would just waste time. Secondly, stop with the Linix thing. I know that you yourself have trouble with it. If someone of your knowledge has trouble with it, just think of how much trouble others will have.
 
Intell said:
None of your suggestions are helpful to the OP and would just waste time. Secondly, stop with the Linix thing. I know that you yourself have trouble with it. If someone of your knowledge has trouble with it, just think of how much trouble others will have.
Click to expand...

If he/she boots from a FW drive, data from the internal drives will be copyable to the external drive, which is exactly what the OP wants to do.

After the data has been copied he/she should install Debian to be able to use the G5 from its internal drives.
 
rabidz7 said:
If he/she boots from a FW drive, data from the internal drives will be copyable to the external drive, which is exactly what the OP wants to do.

After the data has been copied he/she should install Debian to be able to use the G5 from its internal drives.
Click to expand...

That won't fix anything if the RAID doesn't start. You can try your darnedest to try to get files off of it, but it won't work. Linux isn't the solution to the OP's problems. It is rarely, if ever, the solution. Please stop posting about it. You're starting to fall under the spamming clause of the forum rules. Further irrelevant mentions from you about installing Linux will be reported as spam.
 
No clue how to tell what raid the 2 drives are in. I will try the pram reset here in a bit, and I already tried to boot from a Ubuntu live disc but it hangs due to some error that the later g5s have with Ubuntu 12.04.
If I cannot get into the drives it is not a big deal seeing as how the machine was given to me so therefore it leads me to believe they got all that they needed off of the system.

EDIT: I reset the pram..... No go I am going to just wipe the drives and start fresh. I do have one question to leave here though.
Can I use a sata to PCI-e card to put a ssd as a boot drive and have 2 bays for storage?
 
Last edited:
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