My Mac can't see the hard drive

D

derekjohnston

Registered
I need to install Windows on a 3.5 inch SATA drive but the only SATA machine I have is my MacBook Pro. I disconnected my internal laptop drive and connected to the larger drive. I booted from the Windows DVD but the install program could not see the drive. It could however see an unformatted 2.5 drive I had. I even tried booting from my Mac install disk and then going to Disk Utility. OSX could see the 2.5 inch unformatted drive but could not see the 3.5 inch drive.

What would be different between the 2.5 inch and 3.5 inch drive? Would adding a jumper on the 3.5 make a difference?

dj
 
What did the drive come out of? Can you hear it spin up? I put 2.5" drives in the second bay of a G5 tower all the time and that works just fine. Perhaps the HD controller on the board doesn't provide enough juice to spin up the larger 3.5" drive. Maybe you should just invest in a external 3.5" SATA enclosure or perhaps put the drive in the computer it is supposed to be in to load Windows?
 
>> What did the drive come out of? Can you hear it spin up?

Brand new drive. After the problems I mentioned, I installed MacOS on the 3.5 inch drive and booted from it without problems, so the drive is good. Tried again to have laptop mount it without success.

>> put the drive in the computer it is supposed to be in to load Windows?

The only desktops I have are PATA. I have begun to check with friends to see if someone has a SATA desktop I could use.

>> Maybe you should just invest in a external 3.5" SATA enclosure

That's where this story begins. I have just purchased a RocketFish (RF-AHD35). My MacBook Pro can boot from this through the eSATA card in the ExpressCard slot. After formatting the 3.5 inch drive as OSX, it will boot from the external drive.

I currently use VMWare to access Windows for that rare situation that OSX can't handle. I believe it would be easier to boot from external drive when I need to use Windows. I need to find a way to install Windows to the external drive.

>> Perhaps the HD controller on the board doesn't provide enough juice to spin up the larger 3.5" drive.

That's quite possible. It hadn't occurred to me. It that is true then the only recourse I have is to install Windows from another machine. Afraid Windows will panic when moving OS to a new hardware.

dj
 
Last edited:
You must log in or register to reply here.
Back
Top