Ti Powerbook won't detect new HD

[dops7107]

Hi there,

I'm trying to replace the internal HD on a 5oo MHz Powerbook G4 Titanium. After fitting it, I boot off the DVD but Disk Utility cannot find the new drive. I cannot hear it spinning either, suggesting there is a power problem. I immediately want to blame a DOA drive, but more likely I have made a mistake. I have checked the connections twice - all seems fine there. I have followed the directions as outlined here, but I am still having trouble. Going to try putting the old one back in now, to see what happens... but if any of you brght people have some ideas please help!

It's a Fujitsu 60GB ATA-100 drive.

 

[dops7107]

Erm, putting the old one back in resulted in the same problem - no detection. Now I'm worried I've screwed something (besides the screws themselves, that is). The cable can only go in one way... it's down tight, there's no visible sign of damage and I was careful. Uh-oh (it's not my computer...)

 

[California]

Why would anyone in their right mind buy a Fujistu drive? That thing is probably doa.

I don't know how you could have messed up the hd cable onto the board, but make SURE you have pressed down the top part where the pins go all the way on the drive. I bet that's what is wrong -- you have to make sure all the pins are making contact...

Other than that -- has to be DOA. Those tibooks are simple and if you broke the hd cable or connector you would know it.

Get a Toshiba or Hitachi. The Toshiba has a 16mb cache, too making it very fast! On one now in a 12 pb.

 

[dops7107]

Thanks for your reply, California.

Why would anyone in their right mind buy a Fujistu drive? That thing is probably doa.

It had to be cheap, basically. A computer at work.

I don't know how you could have messed up the hd cable onto the board, but make SURE you have pressed down the top part where the pins go all the way on the drive. I bet that's what is wrong -- you have to make sure all the pins are making contact...

I must have tried reseating the thing ten times. Worst of all, putting the old hard drive back in (it's not completely dead, but I have my suspicions that it was going tits up) did not work - that one refuses to power up too. I don't know how the cabe could be broken - I was gentle and it looks fine, with no bent pins or anything.

What about a hard drive controller? Is there such a thing? Perhaps if I describe the original fault this might help. Basically, OSX was hanging randomly, and quite frequently this would happen after a "hard drive powering down" whir could be heard. The thing would beach ball and sometimes the hard drive would whir up again, sometimes not. So, I figured it might be worth changing the HD (even though the SMART status was ok). Is it possible that something more fundamental was on the blink and by changing the HD I have broken it totally? As I say, there seems to be no power going to either drive.

Also let me check I'm doing this right - I put the drive in, I get a flashing icon indicating no bootable drive I gess, until I put in the OS X DVD. Then it boots and, presumably, I go to Disk Utility and try to select the drive for formatting. Except the only drive there is the DVD...

 

[California]

Thanks for your reply, California.



It had to be cheap, basically. A computer at work.



I must have tried reseating the thing ten times. Worst of all, putting the old hard drive back in (it's not completely dead, but I have my suspicions that it was going tits up) did not work - that one refuses to power up too. I don't know how the cabe could be broken - I was gentle and it looks fine, with no bent pins or anything.

What about a hard drive controller? Is there such a thing? Perhaps if I describe the original fault this might help. Basically, OSX was hanging randomly, and quite frequently this would happen after a "hard drive powering down" whir could be heard. The thing would beach ball and sometimes the hard drive would whir up again, sometimes not. So, I figured it might be worth changing the HD (even though the SMART status was ok). Is it possible that something more fundamental was on the blink and by changing the HD I have broken it totally? As I say, there seems to be no power going to either drive.

Also let me check I'm doing this right - I put the drive in, I get a flashing icon indicating no bootable drive I gess, until I put in the OS X DVD. Then it boots and, presumably, I go to Disk Utility and try to select the drive for formatting. Except the only drive there is the DVD...

When you look down at the hd cable on the board, are you sure it is connecting there? And are you sure the top of the cable is sitting right on the hd? Maybe you have a bad cable, somehow? So it boots from the dvd, correct? Does the drive show up when you go to About This Mac?

When you put the dvd in, you go to disk utility when it asks you the first tiger questions about languages or something, as I recall. If you have a firewire hard drive caddy that would help because you could boot and format and test the drive off the hd-less Tibook. My uneducated guess is a bad hd cable (I've seen it happen, on a 500, btw) or a bad connector on the board (fixable) or the drives are dead or you are somehow not booting up right with the DVD drive.

If it is the logic board, Daystar will fix it AND do an CPU upgrade to 550mhz at the same time. They fixed my 500 that had the broken hd connector. $225USD. And it also puts the logic board back under warranty, which is nice. I'm not trying to get work for Daystar (in the states, in Georgia) but that's what I ended up doing on my Tibook 500, now 550mhz. They knew how to solder the connector.

But since you are UK, I guess I would try to see if it isn't the cable first, or the dvd methodology, or the hd itself. Another cheap solution is that fw hd enclosure (I actually bought mine from Daystar too, 35USD) so I could boot my laptops from an external and also test drives. How much memory is in it, too, and is the memory good? Just another question; and also reset the pram and all that while you are at it.

 

[dops7107]

When you look down at the hd cable on the board, are you sure it is connecting there? And are you sure the top of the cable is sitting right on the hd? Maybe you have a bad cable, somehow? So it boots from the dvd, correct? Does the drive show up when you go to About This Mac?

Haven't tried going to About This Mac. I'm not hopeful though...

If it is the logic board, Daystar will fix it AND do an CPU upgrade to 550mhz at the same time. They fixed my 500 that had the broken hd connector. $225USD. And it also puts the logic board back under warranty, which is nice. I'm not trying to get work for Daystar (in the states, in Georgia) but that's what I ended up doing on my Tibook 500, now 550mhz. They knew how to solder the connector.

Sounds good, but somehow I don't think it's worth it - that is, I certainly couldn't convince the boss that's it's worth it. I think the best bet is an external FW caddy. I don't know where I could get a cable from around here to try it out, and if we get a caddy then conceivably we could use it as a backup device for our other Macs. i did try to convince the boss that a LaCie external would be a good option for this very purpose, but it was too expensive. So now we have a botched computer and need to spend *more* money to get it back in action

How much memory is in it, too, and is the memory good? Just another question; and also reset the pram and all that while you are at it.

I think 256 MB - the original amount. Not much. I'm not too sure because I don't have the computer to hand. I will certainly give the PRAM reset a try though - thanks for that.

Erm... we also have two dead iMac G3s... with the PB, that's a third of our computers out of action. It's not a good time to be a Mac at our place!

 

[California]

Erm... we also have two dead iMac G3s... with the PB, that's a third of our computers out of action. It's not a good time to be a Mac at our place!

Well at least the Ti and the iMacs are good solid machines. Probably all have hd failures. My mom has a iMac like that still going very strong with new hd.