To upgrade my iMac (233 MHz Rev. B with tray-loading CD-ROM), I bought a 256 MB RAM chip and a 40 GB IBM hard disk (DeskStar 40GXP). The iMac immediately recognized the additional memory, but I ran into an unexpected problem with the new disk:
I partitioned it with the DriveSetup utility from an original MacOS 9.0 CD (Intern'l English), respecting that boot partitions must reside on the first 8 GB of the hard-disk. I thus created a 3 GB partition for OS9 and a 5 GB one for OSX, allocating the remaining 30 GB at the bottom to a Data partition.
I had no problem to install both operating systems on the two corresponding partitions, or to read or write data to the disk. However, it turned out that the new disk is not bootable (the folder symbol with the flashing question mark appears during the boot process). If I boot while an install CD (of the same OS version as the one I want to start up from) is in the drive, it will boot, even if I remove the CD after the pointer has appeared at the screen with the grey background, just before the Mac happy face, i.e. it will in the end run off the system that is installed on the new harddisk.
Interestingly, when I took the very same disk and attached it to a desktop gray G4 machine, it turned out to be bootable there!
In order to see whether there was a specific problem with the IBM Deskstar GXP disk, I took an old Quantum 6 GB HD (where there should be no problem with the location of boot sectors) and repeated the procedure, installing OS 9.2. The same problem occurred: the disk was recognized, but not bootable.
In order to solve the problem I've tried the following procedures:
- Select the correct partition in StartUp Control panel.
- Zap the PRAM
- Reinstall the latest version of the Firmware (1.2) that is available for this iMac
- reformat the disk with the Standard format instead of HFS+
- Use the Mac OS 10.2 version of the DriveSetup utilitly to partition the disk, and the corresponding HDD drivers.
In the end, I returned to my old 4 GB disk, and upgraded the system from the 8.6 (which was installed when I bought the iMac in 1998) to 9.2, which caused no problem whatsoever.
Can anybody give me a hint as to what could be the problem with installing a new bootable disk in my iMac?
I partitioned it with the DriveSetup utility from an original MacOS 9.0 CD (Intern'l English), respecting that boot partitions must reside on the first 8 GB of the hard-disk. I thus created a 3 GB partition for OS9 and a 5 GB one for OSX, allocating the remaining 30 GB at the bottom to a Data partition.
I had no problem to install both operating systems on the two corresponding partitions, or to read or write data to the disk. However, it turned out that the new disk is not bootable (the folder symbol with the flashing question mark appears during the boot process). If I boot while an install CD (of the same OS version as the one I want to start up from) is in the drive, it will boot, even if I remove the CD after the pointer has appeared at the screen with the grey background, just before the Mac happy face, i.e. it will in the end run off the system that is installed on the new harddisk.
Interestingly, when I took the very same disk and attached it to a desktop gray G4 machine, it turned out to be bootable there!
In order to see whether there was a specific problem with the IBM Deskstar GXP disk, I took an old Quantum 6 GB HD (where there should be no problem with the location of boot sectors) and repeated the procedure, installing OS 9.2. The same problem occurred: the disk was recognized, but not bootable.
In order to solve the problem I've tried the following procedures:
- Select the correct partition in StartUp Control panel.
- Zap the PRAM
- Reinstall the latest version of the Firmware (1.2) that is available for this iMac
- reformat the disk with the Standard format instead of HFS+
- Use the Mac OS 10.2 version of the DriveSetup utilitly to partition the disk, and the corresponding HDD drivers.
In the end, I returned to my old 4 GB disk, and upgraded the system from the 8.6 (which was installed when I bought the iMac in 1998) to 9.2, which caused no problem whatsoever.
Can anybody give me a hint as to what could be the problem with installing a new bootable disk in my iMac?