i'm trying to reinstall os 9 onto a G4 and when I boot from the mac os 9.2 cd, the hard drive won't show up. i can't go into the utilities and initilise the hard drive since it's not there either. when i boot into OS 9 and use either Disk Warrior or Norton Disk Doctor, it always says that there not enough memory/cannot replace original image/or crashes on me. the hard drive always says that it has Zero K available of storage, which says to me that it's bad to the core, thus why i wanna reformat and reinstall os 9 again.

so can anyone help me? thanks!

[Mr Bobbins]

have you tried formatting the harddrive with the Norton CD ?

Originally Posted by Mr Bobbins

have you tried formatting the harddrive with the Norton CD ?

Can't do that. When i boot from the Norton CD the hard drive doesn't show up, only the cd-rom drive. When I boot into OS 9, of course then the hard drive shows up, but it won't format the hard drive as it's the startup disk.

[Mr Bobbins]

That's odd. Did you try the search for extra drives function ? on the Norton CD.

The only other option i can think of involves having an extra harddrive with which you could install the system on and then install the other one as a slave drive and then wipe it.

I take it that the hard drive has always worked in the past and hasn't just been installed with the wrong jumper settings ? Check that the jumper pins are in the right place and that the cable is well connected.