G4 Quicksilver 933 wont see hard drive

I have not used a Mac since 1999. My uncle just gave me an old G4, there was no hard drive in it. I got a Mac OS 10.2 CD and a Seagate Barracuda 7200.7 80 GB ATA Ultra on ebay. Now, I am able to start the Mac from the OS CD but it wont show the HD on the "select target disk" section. I have tried a bunch of different jumper settings, but nothing seems to work. I also tried other HD's (non ATA Ultra) and still nothing. I am getting frustrated!! Anyone has a clue of what I should do?

holbach36 said:

Now, I am able to start the Mac from the OS CD but it wont show the HD on the "select target disk" section. I have tried a bunch of different jumper settings, but nothing seems to work.

Click to expand...

Are you sure that you tried ALL of the jumper settings? I know on my 933 Quicksilver it can be very tricky. Try both the "master" & "slave" jumper settings.

Also, do you have one or two hard drives installed in this computer? If you have 2, that can mess things up if the jumpers aren't properly setup.

If your hard drives are the correct type (ATA or IDE), and the jumper settings are correct, then everything should work fine. Otherwise, it may be a problem with the computer.

Hope this helps,

- Nick

p.s. I'm assuming that the hard drive you're starting to boot from already have an OS installed on them...otherwise the hard drive won't show up in the "Startup Disk" preference area!

I have had good luck on my Power Macs using Cable Select instead of Master/Slave. But, the reason the drive is not showing up could be because it's not partitioned. When you boot into OSX before you get to that drive selection part, look up top for I believe the Tools Menu. Click and on the drop down find Disk Utility. Open that and see if the drive shows up there. If so, Partition it and then the HDD should show up in the Installer drive choices.

dtravis7 said:

I have had good luck on my Power Macs using Cable Select instead of Master/Slave. But, the reason the drive is not showing up could be because it's not partition.

Click to expand...

That's a great idea as well! When I had 2 drives in my Quicksilver I did "master/slave"...but with one drive I did Cable Select.

- Nick

And no jumpers sets the drive to master. Then go to Disk Utility and format Mac OS Extended (Journaled).