Hey everyone. I actually replied to the G5 SSD thread, as I thought it would be relevant since the issue there is essentially just SSDs refusing to step down to SATA I.
No replies there so new thread.
I am having all sorts of issues trying to an SSD in my gigabit G4, I never thought this would be a problem. I’ve had an SIL3114 card in it for years, and its primary boot disk has been a 1TB SATA hard disk. Never any problems with it, or the three other hard drives that have been connected to it.
I started out with an SSD I had laying around, a Crucial BX500 240GB. It formatted and appeared to work, until I attempted to install Leopard. The installer would fail. Cloning the existing install didn’t work either, CCC would just say it had successfully completed while cloning 0.00 bytes.
I thought okay, well this SSDs cousin is listed as not working in G5s, so it’s a safe bet this one probably doesn’t work either, I attribute it to SATA I incompatibility.
Fast forward to now. I ordered an OWC Electra 3G 250GB. Listed as compatible with a G5s controller, is known to be able to step down to SATA I properly, and is natively a SATA II SSD. Still having issues.
I started with a clone. CCC completed with errors. The log showed all types of random errors in most the applications, including Finder. I decided to do a fresh install from there. Erased the disk, booted up my leopard installer, started it, did some dishes and went out for coffee. The installers probably been running for over an hour at this point. I get home, and it appears hung in the same spot it was when I left.
Here’s what it shows in the installer log:
So obviously issues with this SSD too. I can’t comprehend why. Anybody have ideas? This makes no sense to me. The next thing I’m going to try is sticking it into a FW enclosure, or a G5 and running the install there and putting it back. Assuming that works I’d be a little paranoid it would eventually break itself.
I could use an IDE to SATA adapter, but this is a Mystic, not an MDD so it has a slower bus. I also removed all the IDE cables except the one for the optical drive. At that point I’d rather stick with the HDD. Plus I don’t have a startech adapter right now, only a couple cheap eBay ones and we all know those almost never work properly either.
Edit: After quitting the installer and attempting to boot back into 10.5.8 on the hard drive, it just kernel panics. I think I’m done with this, and I’ll throw the SSD in my iMac G5 or something. Nonetheless this is super weird.
No replies there so new thread.
I am having all sorts of issues trying to an SSD in my gigabit G4, I never thought this would be a problem. I’ve had an SIL3114 card in it for years, and its primary boot disk has been a 1TB SATA hard disk. Never any problems with it, or the three other hard drives that have been connected to it.
I started out with an SSD I had laying around, a Crucial BX500 240GB. It formatted and appeared to work, until I attempted to install Leopard. The installer would fail. Cloning the existing install didn’t work either, CCC would just say it had successfully completed while cloning 0.00 bytes.
I thought okay, well this SSDs cousin is listed as not working in G5s, so it’s a safe bet this one probably doesn’t work either, I attribute it to SATA I incompatibility.
Fast forward to now. I ordered an OWC Electra 3G 250GB. Listed as compatible with a G5s controller, is known to be able to step down to SATA I properly, and is natively a SATA II SSD. Still having issues.
I started with a clone. CCC completed with errors. The log showed all types of random errors in most the applications, including Finder. I decided to do a fresh install from there. Erased the disk, booted up my leopard installer, started it, did some dishes and went out for coffee. The installers probably been running for over an hour at this point. I get home, and it appears hung in the same spot it was when I left.
Here’s what it shows in the installer log:

So obviously issues with this SSD too. I can’t comprehend why. Anybody have ideas? This makes no sense to me. The next thing I’m going to try is sticking it into a FW enclosure, or a G5 and running the install there and putting it back. Assuming that works I’d be a little paranoid it would eventually break itself.
I could use an IDE to SATA adapter, but this is a Mystic, not an MDD so it has a slower bus. I also removed all the IDE cables except the one for the optical drive. At that point I’d rather stick with the HDD. Plus I don’t have a startech adapter right now, only a couple cheap eBay ones and we all know those almost never work properly either.
Edit: After quitting the installer and attempting to boot back into 10.5.8 on the hard drive, it just kernel panics. I think I’m done with this, and I’ll throw the SSD in my iMac G5 or something. Nonetheless this is super weird.
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