Can/t get new hard drive to be seen.

V

vernoncoffee

Registered
Mac G5 1.6 Hz. 2 GB ram, a Maxtor 80 GB HD, running OS 10.4.

I bought a new Hitachi (500 GB Ultrastar A7K2000) and put it iin the empty lower drive bay. I could hear it going (click-click-squeek) every 3 seconds as soon as I powered up, but the Disk Utility does not see the new drive at all.

Next, I took out the master & put the Ultrastar in the top bay. Again the drive made the repetitive click, click, squeek, and again it does not show up in the Disk U, Finder, or the System Profiler.

I exchanged the drive with OWC, but a second Hitachi is doing the same thing. Does anyone have any suggestions on how format this?

if you have command line instructions, please be very simple : )
 
Click, click, squeak?
every few seconds?

I think you have a bad hard drive - even though brand new - and you are having some bad luck with that.

I suggest that you Call OWC Tech Support, or try an online Chat with them.
http://eshop.macsales.com/tech_center/
They are knowledgable folks, and I have had good experiences with their help.
My other suggestion would be to try a different brand hard drive.
 
I'll give owc a call. As far as trying a different maker, its ironic- this all started when my Seagate died, two weeks ago. It turns out many of their models now only have a 1 year warranty. I switched to ultrastar with is, i believe, a commercial (server) grade with 3-5 years but that isn't helping me, is it?

PS, do all sata's use the same drivers. There was no disk with the HD, nor a download that I could find. How does the OS know how to interface?

PSS, I left a message with Hitachi, over the weekend. Their tech. went straight to the root of the problem and blamed my G5, , "your machine is so old, it probably can't handle that big a HD or maybe it doesn't have enough power.
 
Yes - could be a power supply problem - but the power needed by a hard drive is not significantly different among hard drives.
Your PowerMac should not have any difficulty with the power needed by something as "big" as a 500 GB hard drive, and if so, your old hard drive should also fail. Even your old G5 could have come from Apple with as large as an optional 250GB.

Your OS uses the hardware configuration (the firmware) to decide how to interface. Older PCs would use a BIOS setting to determine how to interface with the hard drive. Usually that setting is completely automatic, auto-sensing a different hard drive. A Mac doesn't use a BIOS. The booting firmware talks to the chipset, and is essentially plug-n-play for devices that attach to the drive controller. The hard drive has to be properly formatted before you can INSTALL the OS. Booting to the installer will provide you with a utility that gives you a method to properly format the hard drive for use.
That utility MUST be able to recognize the hard drive, before you can format it.
The clicks, etc, that you hear indicate that either you have a bad hard drive, or (because you already have an older hard drive that seems to be failed), you have a failing drive controller (fixed by completely replacing the logic board, or maybe adding a PCI drive controller card that is compatible with your Mac), or the power supply connections to the hard drive are not providing enough power for both hard drives (and the power supply needs to be replaced.

If you continue to boot and run just fine with the Maxtor hard drive, then it's not likely that your HARDWARE (the Mac) is bad, except for the possibility of a "weak" power supply.

The Hitachi drive MIGHT not be compatible with the drive controller. Some SATA drives have newer features that an older SATA controller might not work with. There is sometimes a jumper near the connectors on the hard drive, that allow you to turn off or modify certain features that are built-in to the hard drive. I can't find anything that says what the open jumper connector on your Hitachi drive will control.
THAT'S what I would ask the Hitachi tech "what does that single jumper control? Will it make any difference to try that?"

OWC - because they are experienced with a large variety of Macs and Mac hardware, are a better choice for troubleshooting than the hard drive manufacturer.
 
thanks for the suggestions, it turned out to be 2 bad drives in a row, the 3rd spun up and has been working fine for a week.
Well, maybe I spoke too soon; I had the new drive in bay B and decided this morning to switch the position to Master as I phased out the old 80 Gb HD.

After I switched places between the two drives and powered back up the drive cooling fan (on the top shelf) starts on high and stays there continuously even though the other fans appear to be running on low.

I''m wondering where the heat sensor is for the fan (is it on the drives?)
Even with the metal cover closed up the one fan makes quite a roar. I tried restarting the computer to see if that would unstick the sensor and now after 40 minutes it just stepped down to low speed on its own???
Hope that doesn't get to be a habit.
 
SATA drives don't have something like "master", and there's no need to move the drives around. The system knows which position the drive is installed (upper or lower slot), but it makes no difference in the operation of your Mac, or which drive position is used for the boot drive.

The temp sensor for the hard drive compartment is on a tiny board, inside the case, directly above the upper hard drive slot, and should be attached inside the top panel.
My take is that there is likely nothing wrong with that sensor, if the fans come under control.

A PMU reset should bring the fans under control again (assuming you haven't disturbed the processor)
PMU reset: Unplug the power cord. Open the side door, and remove the battery. It's near the top of the logic board, close to the PCI slots.
Test that battery for between 3.3 and 3.7 volts. If it checks low, replace it.
Put the battery back in. Press and release the reset button (that's near the bottom of the logic board, under the bottom RAM slot.
Do not press that reset button a second time - one press and release is sufficient.
Wait 10 seconds, then connect the power cord, and boot up.
 
Followed your instructions, believe I found everything (If apple is trying to hide the reset button ffrom terrorists, maybe they should make it smaller and more non-descript, ha)
The battery read 3.66v. But the HD fan is still going to high speed and staying there ( sometimes on startup or wake up, sometmes it waits a while to fool me into thinking its fixed).
Thanks for any further ideas.
 
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