New HD not bootable in iMac (revB)

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libellule

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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'm not sure what the problem is with your drive, but if you still want to use it (which I don't doubt you do), I suggest you buy a compatible Firewire enclosure for your 40 GB drive and use the iMac's internal HD for your systems, like maybe 1.5 GB for 9/2.5 GB for X. Then you can have a full 40 GB for your data and applications.
 
libellule: I suspect your hard drive jumper is set wrong.
If you don't know what I mean, then I can probably give you some more instructions.
We just replaced the DVD drive in our iMac DV, and we had the same problem. It turned out that we had the master/slave jumper setting wrong.
 
Yea, could be jumper setting. It should be set to Master w/o slave on old Macs, Cable Select normally doesn't work well.
I had both a 30 GB IBM drive in a rev.d and a 100 GB Maxtor in a rev. a, both work perfectly.

In case you can't get it to work and want to do some major hardware modding, the early iMacs actually have two ATA busses - one for HDD and one for CD-ROM. If you replace the ATA cable and split the power cable, you can have both a master and a slave drive on the HDD bus :D
If you can't find space for the second drive inside, just have the original 4 GB hanging out of the computer ;)
 
On the original HD, it was "Dev 0, forcing Dev 1". So I did the same on the new.

May I try "Master" or disable the CD-ROM drive (just to see) ?
 
Initially I didn't think my jumper setting wasn't correct, as I was able to mount the disk and install the OS.

I'll try next week and post a reply afterwards. Thanks the hint.
 
Also, make sure you formated with HFS Extended not the UFS (or whatever they call it).

Don't disable the CD Rom. Just make sure the drive is set to Master.
 
On the original iMac, as on the Beige G3, OS X MUST be installed completely WITHIN the first 8 GB of the hard drive.

So the OS X partition has to be the first partition, because 3 + 5 = 8. Any installation in the second partition is not WITHIN the first 8 GB.

I had to partition my 80 GB drive when it was in my beige with the first partition less than 8 GB for OS X. It was pretty annoying; I had to partition the drive twice to get it to install.
 
Also note that only the Mac OS X partition needs to be within the first 8 gigs - so you can make an OS X partition out of the first 7.9 gigs and be safe :)
os 9 partitions can be anywhere on the drive.
 
man i thought iMac's werent expandable... where have i been this whole time? :b i thought all you could do to it is increase the memory. if i wanted a new hd for my iMac could I just swap out the old one and then transfer all my stuff over firewire? you can't upgrade the video card on an iMac can you?
 
I installed today the new 40 GB HDD in the iMac G3 Rev B with the Jumper settings set as "MASTER" and it works !!!

I also tried to install OS 9 in a partition not contained within the first 8 GB but I can't start up from this OS.

So I formatted the disk in HFS+ and created 3 partitions : one 2.99 GB for OS9, another 5 GB for OSX and the remaining for a Data partition. I put both my old 4 GB and new 40 GB in my PowerMac G4, copied all the data onto the HDD and installed the new HDD in the iMac ... et voilà ! I can boot up conveniently from my new disk, which is quieter and a bit faster. :D

I also installed MacOSX 10.2.5. It is even not as slow as I exspected on this kind of machine.

THANK YOU ALL FOR THE HELP. And God Bless Apple and MacOSX.com.
 
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