Failing HDD ... but it doesn't seem to be?

Hi folks, first time poster so go easy on me!

I recently bought a dual processor PowerPc G5 from a friend, as a 'blank slate' with OSX 10.5.6 installed. They had used it for years seemingly without issue, and indeed I have had no problems with it. It has a Hitachi 500GB HDD, installed around a year ago.

My previous G5 Mac blew it's logic board ages ago but the HDD (Samsung 500GB with 10.4.11) was fine, so I thought to install it in the PowerPC and recover my pics and projects - so far, no worries.

When I went to the Disk Utility though (for no reason other to see what it would say), it claimed the PowerPC Hitachi HDD is reporting a "fatal hardware error to Disk Utility" and that the SMART Status is "failing". I removed the Samsung drive (which had no errors being reported) in case that was confusing the system, but no change.

So what does this mean??! The Hitachi drive makes no noise, boots up quickly and seems in all respects to be fine. I wouldn't have thought the Hitachi drive was having any issues, let alone close to total failure -- even now I can't see any inkling of it. How imminent can any "failure" be?

As a side note, I do not have 10.5.6 install discs but don't really want to revert back to 10.4.11 (which is on the still-working Samsung drive). Can I keep or transfer Leopard somehow onto the Samsung drive?

Many thanks in advance for assistance.
Mike

Are both drives set to 'master'? I believe one needs to be 'slave' if you're going to use them both inside the G5.

Meantime, you can still extract what you want from the Samsung by using a SATA-USB2 adaptor, like this Newer Technology Universal Drive Adapter -... (U2NV2SPATA) at OWC, or a dock, thus Voyager by NewerTech- Hard Drive Dock for 3.5" and 2.5" SATA Devices provides high-performance and flexibility, and in fact continue to use the Samsung 'bare' via either adaptor. Your only limitation is USB transfer speed.

Thanks for your reply.

hughvane said:

Are both drives set to 'master'? I believe one needs to be 'slave' if you're going to use them both inside the G5.

Click to expand...

How do I set one drive to master? (I assume it is a pin configuration on the HDD, near the SATA connector ... please correct me if I'm wrong!)

In advance of trying, I'm not sure this will account for the issue as I did unplug the "no error" Samsung, yet the Hitachi still threw up an error in the Disk Utility despite being the only HDD now plugged in. Attached are two screenshots.

Is there a way to transfer Leopard 10.5 onto my Tiger 10.4 HDD without too much calamity? (ie. not having to resort to CDs which I don't have, and preferably without deleting content on the Samsung 10.4 drive)

Thanks,
Mike

Sorry, my error, I was thinking ATA. SATA, so I read, doesn't follow the master-slave protocol.

Why the Hitachi is showing an error report when - as you say - it is functioning normally, I cannot say. A mystery, that can only be solved with an external source, eg. OS disks, which you don't have, or another computer. Do you have access to a Mac laptop for example? If so, you can interconnect the two with firewire, boot in Target Mode, and run Disk Utility from the second computer. Another - expensive - option is Disk Warrior.

Transferring the OS. I don't know about the legalities of that, but purely from the technical side, you can use software such as SuperDuper or CarbonCopyCloner, but you will need to connect the Samsung to your G5 with firewire, or, as suggested, a drive dock (that's the way I'd do it).

Archive & Install is a way to avoid deleting files other than OS when installing.

There's a little application called SmartReporter Download SMARTReporter for Mac - Hard drive pre-failure warning utility. MacUpdate Mac Software Downloads that you should try before going too much further with the hardware adjustments.