New HDD for imac g5 (isight)

i have an imac g5 with isight on it, and i finally managed to swap out its dead HDD for a new WD 160GB SATA drive.

now it wont let me partition the HDD properly. i go to utilities, disk utilities, then try to partition it. it seems like it begins to partition it and the progress bar starts going at the bottom, until it gets maybe 25% across, then just suddenly completes. the new "partition" it creates has no available space, doenst have the name i specified, and wont verify because it has "an error" and will not repair because it has "an error"

does anyone have any idea what is going on?

note, i didnt partition the HDD before i installed it, which is why im trying to do it now.

I'm assuming you booted with your install disk to run Disk Utility and do the partitioning? Did the drive come pre-formatted or was it a bare drive? Because it makes a difference in the way you prepare the drive for use in your G5.

Anyway....

Try completely erasing the drive first with Disk Utility. Then select the entire drive as one partition and format it using HFS+ while at the same time giving it the name "Macintosh HD". Let us know.

Regards.

chscag said:

I'm assuming you booted with your install disk to run Disk Utility and do the partitioning? Did the drive come pre-formatted or was it a bare drive? Because it makes a difference in the way you prepare the drive for use in your G5.

Anyway....

Try completely erasing the drive first with Disk Utility. Then select the entire drive as one partition and format it using HFS+ while at the same time giving it the name "Macintosh HD". Let us know.

Regards.

Click to expand...

the drive was a blank drive, not pre-formatted, i bougght it OEM to save some $$. i didnt realize how involved it was to gain access to the HDD tho, it took hours to take that thing apart and put it back together. :S and thats pretty much what i tried doing when i was trying to partition it in the begining, but it was a nogo, although i never tried naming it Macintosh HD.

at any rate, I ended up brining it to a tech to check it out, he said the HDD controller was messed up (im assuming he meant the SATA controller), but doesnt know exactly what the problem was (so the original malfunctioning HDD was due to that, and not the HDD itself). hopefully it can be fixed by flashing the mac equivalent of the BIOS if there is one, otherwise, im assuming it would require a mainbord swap, and it would probably be cheaper to just toss it and get a new one.

OK. Thanks for posting back. If the SATA controller within your G5 is defective it would have to be replaced. Someone who is more familiar with the inner workings of a G5 maybe can respond as to what's involved. Your G5 does not use a BIOS so I'm assuming the tech was referring to some kind of firmware update.

Regards.

wel, the BIOS thing was just my analogy, if there was some sort of chip that apple uses that could be flashed... im not too familiar with MAC hardware and controllers, im a PC user myself. the mac that needs to be repaired is one at my workplace.

the technical support guy just said that the controller was defective (i wasnt there, other ppl went to take it in), and i was just wonding what the range of solutions could be, best and worst case scenarios.