Replaced Hard Drive

[Berniemyk]

Hi,

Power Book G4 1GH 17" (Not Intel)

I replaced the hard drive with a NEW one. I have checked and checked that all internal connections are good.

When I power up, all I get is a folder with a flashing question mark in it.

Have tried holding down alt key. I get two boxes, one for try again and one with an arrow pointing right. they both do nothing.

Have tried to re-boot with OS X disc but the disc rejects itself.

Can anyone help?

 

[wobegong]

Hi,

Power Book G4 1GH 17" (Not Intel)

I replaced the hard drive with a NEW one. I have checked and checked that all internal connections are good.

When I power up, all I get is a folder with a flashing question mark in it.

Have tried holding down alt key. I get two boxes, one for try again and one with an arrow pointing right. they both do nothing.

Have tried to re-boot with OS X disc but the disc rejects itself.

Can anyone help?

Is the new disk empty or have you cloned (Carbon Copy Cloner etc) your old disk across already? If you have cloned did you do as CCC said (when you kicked off the copy) and set up your boot partition on the new drive? (CCC offers to do this right at the beginnng).

I assume you have cloned the disk as your O/S CD does not boot, apologies of that's a wrong assumption.

 

[Berniemyk]

Is the new disk empty or have you cloned (Carbon Copy Cloner etc) your old disk across already? If you have cloned did you do as CCC said (when you kicked off the copy) and set up your boot partition on the new drive? (CCC offers to do this right at the beginnng).

I assume you have cloned the disk as your O/S CD does not boot, apologies of that's a wrong assumption.

Hi,
The hard drive is empty and new. I have a back up of my old drive using CCC. I can't do anything with my laptop because I can not boot it up, it will not start up and all I get is this flashing blue folder with a question mark.

 

[eyoungren]

Hi,
The hard drive is empty and new. I have a back up of my old drive using CCC. I can't do anything with my laptop because I can not boot it up, it will not start up and all I get is this flashing blue folder with a question mark.

Just curious why you would expect the Mac to boot from a new drive that has no OS installed?

If you didn't clone the old drive before you installed the new one then the Mac has no operating system to boot from. That is why you are getting a question mark. The Mac cannot find a bootable operating system so it's telling you that by showing the question mark.

You will need to do one of two things. Either buy a hard drive enclosure and put the new drive in it and the old drive back in the Mac and then clone the old to the new, or use an OS install disk.

You said you had one, but that it keeps spitting it out. Is that a model specific disk or a retail disk? Is it the correct OS? You cannot install a version of OS X that is older than the version the Mac originally came with and you cannot use a model specific disk from a model different than yours.

 

[davidg4781]

I'm not sure if this will work or not but I remember on my '06 MB if you power it on while holding C it'll boot into the ODD. '06 is when I first met Mac but it seems like stuff like this goes way back.

This may not work if it's spitting out the disc. Might be the wrong one or something? Do you have another Mac you can use to either share the drive with or boot into TDM?

 

[eyoungren]

I'm not sure if this will work or not but I remember on my '06 MB if you power it on while holding C it'll boot into the ODD. '06 is when I first met Mac but it seems like stuff like this goes way back.

This may not work if it's spitting out the disc. Might be the wrong one or something? Do you have another Mac you can use to either share the drive with or boot into TDM?

Yeah, that's the old hardcoded option that's been around since the early PowerMacs (the series before the G3). 'C' is short for CD-Rom drive. Doesn't aways work. It's much better to use the OPTN key and choose a drive to boot from.

The problem the OP is having is that OPTN does no good when there is no OS installed on the internal hard drive and the Mac refuses to read (or boot from) the disk in the optical drive.

TDM might work, but you would still need a hard drive enclosure for the old hard drive so that it could be cloned. Either the old drive needs to be cloned or a new setup (to include formatting of the new drive) needs to be made. You cannot boot from a drive that has nothing on it.

 

[Berniemyk]

Thanks for your help.

Just curious why you would expect the Mac to boot from a new drive that has no OS installed?

If you didn't clone the old drive before you installed the new one then the Mac has no operating system to boot from. That is why you are getting a question mark. The Mac cannot find a bootable operating system so it's telling you that by showing the question mark.

You will need to do one of two things. Either buy a hard drive enclosure and put the new drive in it and the old drive back in the Mac and then clone the old to the new, or use an OS install disk.

You said you had one, but that it keeps spitting it out. Is that a model specific disk or a retail disk? Is it the correct OS? You cannot install a version of OS X that is older than the version the Mac originally came with and you cannot use a model specific disk from a model different than yours.

__________________________________

Why do I expect the Mac to boot. Because I know nothing about computers and this is why I am asking you. I am sure you will be able to help me if I give you all the details.

My old drive does not work, it has destroyed itself. I do though, have a full Back-Up on external drive using CCC.

I have my original Tiger Install DVD and Leopard Install DVD that I purchased. I would just like my old Tiger back working again.

This is what I'm trying:-

I switch on laptop, flashing blue folder shows itself. I put in the Tiger Install DVD disc. OMG, something is happening The screen comes on for installing. It asks me for destination volume but there is no icon to choose from, I only have the option to Go Back. I am sure that I am almost there, just need a little more guidance from you. Thanks

 

[MultiFinder17]

__________________________________

Why do I expect the Mac to boot. Because I know nothing about computers and this is why I am asking you. I am sure you will be able to help me if I give you all the details.

My old drive does not work, it has destroyed itself. I do though, have a full Back-Up on external drive using CCC.

I have my original Tiger Install DVD and Leopard Install DVD that I purchased. I would just like my old Tiger back working again.

This is what I'm trying:-

I switch on laptop, flashing blue folder shows itself. I put in the Tiger Install DVD disc. OMG, something is happening The screen comes on for installing. It asks me for destination volume but there is no icon to choose from, I only have the option to Go Back. I am sure that I am almost there, just need a little more guidance from you. Thanks

I forget exactly where it is in the Tiger installer, but there should be a menu up in the menu bar named "Utilities". Find Disk Utility in there, then format the disk; after formatting, the OS X installer should see it and give you the option to install

Disk Utility instructions can be found here.

 

[Berniemyk]

__________________________________

Why do I expect the Mac to boot. Because I know nothing about computers and this is why I am asking you. I am sure you will be able to help me if I give you all the details.

My old drive does not work, it has destroyed itself. I do though, have a full Back-Up on external drive using CCC.

I have my original Tiger Install DVD and Leopard Install DVD that I purchased. I would just like my old Tiger back working again.

This is what I'm trying:-

I switch on laptop, flashing blue folder shows itself. I put in the Tiger Install DVD disc. OMG, something is happening The screen comes on for installing. It asks me for destination volume but there is no icon to choose from, I only have the option to Go Back. I am sure that I am almost there, just need a little more guidance from you. Thanks

____________________________

eyoungren - MultiFinder17 - davidg4781 - wobegong.

Thank you all for your help. I now have my Laptop "Tiger" working again. I purchased the new Hard Drive in March 2011 and only today have I got it to work with the help of you all. Now I can download all my Data from CCC Back-Up.

This is a great place to get help even though at times I do not understand what you are all saying. I think what did it for me was the following statement from eyoungren: "Just curious why you would expect the Mac to boot from a new drive that has no OS installed?" and "(to include formatting of the new drive)

I went into Utilities to Erase/Format the hard drive and this did it.

Thanks to you all.



Thanks

 

[eyoungren]

____________________________

eyoungren - MultiFinder17 - davidg4781 - wobegong.

Thank you all for your help. I now have my Laptop "Tiger" working again. I purchased the new Hard Drive in March 2011 and only today have I got it to work with the help of you all. Now I can download all my Data from CCC Back-Up.

This is a great place to get help even though at times I do not understand what you are all saying. I think what did it for me was the following statement from eyoungren: "Just curious why you would expect the Mac to boot from a new drive that has no OS installed?" and "(to include formatting of the new drive)

I went into Utilities to Erase/Format the hard drive and this did it.

Thanks to you all.



Thanks

Glad we could help. Yes, any time you buy a new drive, it's blank. It's like buying DVDs or CDs to burn. They are all blank. So, you have to put your data on it. In your case, your old drive was not cloned to the new drive. So, this required you to format it, which you can do from the installer as was pointed out. The formatting prepares the drive to accept the data you are going to give it.

Your situation is a little unique in that you need to get CCC to clone back your backup. But in order to run CCC you need an OS on the drive so you had to reinstall Tiger (after formatting the drive) in order to do that. An extra step, but necessary in your situation.

Glad it all worked out and glad you got the Mac to boot off the disc and install.

 

[Berniemyk]

Glad we could help. Yes, any time you buy a new drive, it's blank. It's like buying DVDs or CDs to burn. They are all blank. So, you have to put your data on it. In your case, your old drive was not cloned to the new drive. So, this required you to format it, which you can do from the installer as was pointed out. The formatting prepares the drive to accept the data you are going to give it.

Your situation is a little unique in that you need to get CCC to clone back your backup. But in order to run CCC you need an OS on the drive so you had to reinstall Tiger (after formatting the drive) in order to do that. An extra step, but necessary in your situation.

Glad it all worked out and glad you got the Mac to boot off the disc and install.

_________________________

Yes, I am so pleased to have my Tiger working again. I realise its an old version but there was something on it that was precious to me and I have it again.