Swapped HD's now issues....??

**NickBurns** · June 12th, 2006, 09:23 PM

Hey guys,

I got a new-to-me G4 500, and decided to take most of the RAM and slave drive from my old G4 400. I swapped the RAM 1st, and started it, and it recognized fine and dandy. So i shut her down, and then pulled my WD 20g drive from my G4 400, and put it into the G4 500, leaving the original 10g drive in place, and untoched....

Well now the G4 400 wont start up. It gets the flashing folder with the question mark in the middle. I have checked to make sure all is plugged in, and it looks good. What could it be? Could it be the ID on the original drive needs to be changed? Its in the middle right now....? I thought that was correct for the Master?

Any help appreciated....

**DeltaMac** · June 12th, 2006, 09:33 PM

I think you have the jumpers set wrong. Recheck the drive jumpers. If you have two drives installed, one must be jumpered as a master, and the other must be slave. It makes no difference which is which, but they cannot be the same. Best to check at the web site for the drive's manufacturer, such as Western Digital, or Maxtor. Each will have support pages showing you exactly how to set the jumpers.

**NickBurns** · June 12th, 2006, 09:42 PM

Thanks for the quick reply...

But the problem is with my old G4 400 and its original drive only. I put the slave drive in my new computer and it works fine..,.?

So basically my old G4 doesnt work now. I have never touched the stock drive in it. So the jumper ID is where it was always i believe? Are we talking about the little white plastic looking things? This computer just worked fine, and i only removed the 2nd drive, wich contained absolutey nothing to do with the OS, ect...? And now it doesnt work? Am i missing somthing?

Thanks again for your help....
Miles

**ElDiabloConCaca** · June 12th, 2006, 10:38 PM

Have you tried leaving it at the question mark folder screen for an extended time? When you removed the hard drive, it's possible that the G4/400 "lost" it's Startup Disk. If you leave it at the blinking question mark/folder screen for a while (a few minutes), then the G4 should find the hard drive and boot from it -- at which point you can set the Startup Disk in the System Preferences to circumvent this procedure the next time you reboot/start up.

**NickBurns** · June 12th, 2006, 10:46 PM

Thanks Ill try that....

**NickBurns** · June 12th, 2006, 10:58 PM

Its been blinking for about 8 min.... LOL

**NickBurns** · June 13th, 2006, 07:09 AM

Anyone else have any ideas on what it could be?

**fryke** · June 13th, 2006, 08:23 AM

Hold down the option key at startup. It then shows you all volumes you can boot from. If the drive _then_ doesn't show up, it's really jumper settings or the drive is otherwise unreadable for the Mac.