01-07-2010, 08:47 PM

Hi, i'm new so go easy, kind of a novice. My harddrive recently went crazy on me and i've resorted to just erasing the whole drive and was trying to reinstall mac os x 10.4.11 on my powerbook g4. when i tried to install that i couldn't get it to work, the install would either freeze, or say "error installing software please restart". i gave up on that, so now i'm trying to just install it on my external drive (seagate freeagent go) and it seems i have to partition it to a GUID. i've looked up how to change the partition type to GUID so i know what i should do,
but the problem is when i'm at the step that says go to "options..." while in the partition tab, on my disk utility it says "no options available" so i can't change it to begin with. no matter what i do, trying to set the volume scheme to 1 or 2 partitions, the "options..." button isn't even there.
apparently on the intel-based macs and what not, you just erase the drive and that resets it to GUID (from what i've read) but when i check the info on the drive afterwards, it still says it's an apple partition scheme. i need it to be GUID so i can install mac os x onto my external drive. but it also seems to not work just erasing it either.

is there any other way to change it to GUID, some program i can download (except i would need to do that through my windows), or to get the options button to show up? this is driving me crazy.
any help would be appreciated, thanks.

01-07-2010, 09:54 PM

With a PowerBook G4 the external drive should be erased, partitioned using Apple Partition Map even if for only the single partition and formatted Mac OS Extended (Journalled).

What type of Tiger install disc are you using, a black or silbver grey disc? If black, boot from it, go into Utilities and run Repair Disk, then format as described avove, back to Installer and start from there.

Keep us posted?

01-07-2010, 11:20 PM

that's the problem, apparently i can only install mac os x onto the flash drive if the partition type is a GUID. right now it's on the apple partition scheme (stuck on it i think) and when i try to install on that it gives me this message saying "you cannot install on this volume"

my disk is grey. and from all the sites i've looked at i can't seem to find a 'how to install onto flash drive' for someone who can't even do it with mac os x running in the first place :/ that's my problem also, i can't just install it onto my flashdrive while it's already installed onto another drive.

any other ideas? thanks for the reply.

01-08-2010, 04:01 PM

Silver grey discs are extremely model specific and designed to work only with the model they were released with. Get it from eBay?

01-08-2010, 11:56 PM

okay get what exactly... a certain disk? if so which color? sorry if the question seems dumb... i've never dealt with this problem before.


if anyone knows ANY way i could possibly get my harddrive (the internal one) working again, if it's happened to you where it's frozen up and now has errors and doesn't seem to want to repair, and you've some how gotten it to work, let me know what you did! would disk warrior work for me? otherwise is there a cheaper way of getting this taken care of? i'm afraid if i go into apple they'll just tell me i should get a new computer/ and or they won't help me because i'm not under warranty or anything.

01-09-2010, 04:43 AM

You're going to need either the original disc that shipped with that machine or a retail set of discs (which would be black).

The grey discs are those that shipped with their respective machines and will not function properly on any but an identical machine to the one they shipped with.

If the grey disc you're using is the one that shipped with your machine and is unable to repair the drive, sounds to me like it's time for a new hard drive.

I'd have a hard time justifying the purchase of $100 piece of software (that may or may not work) to attempt salvaging a 4-5 yr old drive instead of purchasing a new drive for around $60.

But, the new drive is not going to help if you don't have the proper install discs.

(And as Harry stated, you would not use the GUID partition scheme on your PPC.)