I'M DESPERATE!!! Hard drive won't mount

[MDLarson]

OK, I was bored and I decided to mess around with an old 1 GB hard drive out of a 6220CD Performa and my G4 Sawtooth.

My 20 GB drive did not read. My Mac OS 9.2.1 Drive Setup saw the drive, but it said it was unsupported!!! I tried plugging in the power cable and the IDE cable in different configurations, because after all the 1 GB drive DID work, etc., but I am at a loss!

I need to get this back up as soon as possible because I have some homework due really soon. I'm a dork for messing around at this time, but I really need your help!

[Captain Code]

Have you tried changing the jumpers on your HD?

If the 1 gig one is set to master, and the 20 gig one is set to master, then you will have problems.

[MDLarson]

Yes, both hard drives' jumpers were set to "DS". I have no idea what DS means, but I think it's safe to assume they were both set to Master. They were both single drives in each computer. So how do I fix this problem?

[Captain Code]

You need to set your 20 GB to master, and the 1 GB to slave then. Since they were both single drives in separate machines, it's pretty much guaranteed that you are having a jumper setting conflict.

DS might mean Detect Slave, but I'm not 100% sure. Most drives have an option like that where they will check to see if there's a master drive on the chain and if there is, to configure themselves as slave.

[MDLarson]

Thanks for being my tech support, devonferns! I really appreciate it.

I changed the jumper setting on the 1 GB from DS to SP, and my 20 GB remained on DS. I looked at Apple System Profiler (from the 9.2.1 OS on the 1 GB), and the 20 GB showed up. Before it did not.

It reads:
Internal ATA 2 (both drives are under this heading)
Hard drive
Driver version: Not available
Mac OS partition: 0
Removable media: No
Vendor: QUANTUM
Revision number: A1S.3700
Product ID: FIREBALLP KX20.5
Serial number: <a number>
Size: 20.54 GB (1K=1000)
Capacity: 19.14 GB (1K=1000)

I will try to switch jumpers around a little more to get the 20 GB to be the master and post back with what I find.

[Captain Code]

Hey, no problem at all

I had the same problem a while ago when I got a new HD.

My old Maxtor drive has no labels, and Maxtor doesn't have any documentation on the old HD, so I had to keep messing around for hours to find a setting that worked.

Good luck!

[MDLarson]

New developement:
I can use either DS or CS for my jumper setting on my 20 GB. Right now, it is the only hard drive in my G4. The problem is it won't mount. When I pop in my Mac OS X CD, I switch to the Disk Utility and I see two hard drive icons on the left:

19.15 GB
736.44 MB

Both have drop down arrows and it looks like this:

19.15 GB
Slow Piece of (<- My original 1 GB hd name was "Slow Piece of Crap" )
736.44 MB
Mac OS X Install

The interesting point is how the "Slow Piece of" hard drive (the 1 GB) is under the 20 GB. That's strange, and even more strange is that I renamed the 1 GB to "Mac OS 9", and it's not even connected anyway. So really I think my problem is an identity crisis of sorts. I will try to peform Disk First Aid on it.

[MDLarson]

My 20 GB definitely has an identity problem. It adopted the hard drive name of "Slow Piece of Crap" from the 1 GB when I first installed both drives. I don't know what to do from here!

Running Verify or Disk First Aid show no problems on the 20 GB, but the name is completely wrong, and it does not mount.