G4 HDD problem

i recently got an old 450 mhz powermac g4. there is no OS installed. it came with a retail version of 10.4. I tried to install 10.4 but it says that there is no hard drive. i looked on the disk utility and it says that s.m.a.r.t. status is "not supported", and i can not click on any buttons to try to repair the HDD. Disk Utility seems to know all about the hard drive though (size, type, connection type, et cetera...). What is going on?!?!?!

Can you give us the HD details that show up in Disk Utility, then we can help you further from there.

ya. it says that the hdd is an IBM deskstar 20gb ATA drive. the smart status is "not supported". the write status is "read/write", and the connection id= device 0. if i physically look at the drive it seems to be the original because it has the words apple firmware on it, and the year of the firmware is 1999. march 2000 is printed on the label also. thanks

Before you can install Tiger you would need to ensure the firmware has been updated to version 4.2.8f1. Maybe the no hard drive message is telling you the drive has failed or the firmware is not current. IBM Deathstars are too old for SMART status verification and 20GB will be much to small to do anything with.

For starters pop the Tiger install DVD, and I take it this is black coloured retails install DVD as a grey coloured disc will not work as they are model specific, boot whilst holding down 'C' and see if you can get to Utilities.

If so run Repair Disk from there as you cannot repair a drive you are booted from.

Keep us posted as to your progress justin.