G4 Powerbook - Not Recognising Hard Drive.

Hi All,

Hope you can help...?

I have a Powerbook G4 (A1138) which does not recognise the Hard Drive.

I have tried a few drives with the same results... The Drive is not detected within Disk Utility.
I have swapped the ribbon cable connecting the drive to the logic board and still no joy.

Have also booted into Open Firmware and ran 'devalias HD' and the controller is listed regardless of whether the drive is connected. I don't know if this proves that the logic board is NOT faulty.

I don't want to waffle on too long but to cut a long story short, the Powerbook was purchased from a friend who had been swapping the drives between this Powerbook and another one he had.
After opening this Powerbook, I found that the ribbon cable had a different part number and was not the right part for this machine. I have since purchased the correct cable and fitted it and this is where I am now...

I hope someone can offer some advice...

Many thanks,

Gavin

I suspect that it is not formatted to a standard the Mac OS can read. Do you know what format it is in?

Kevriano said:

I suspect that it is not formatted to a standard the Mac OS can read. Do you know what format it is in?

Click to expand...

I removed the drive from the machine and formatted it on a Windows PC using a USB Caddy just to see if there are any issues with the drive.
I have done this with 3 different drives to make sure they are not faulty.

The issue I have is that I cannot see the Hard Drive in Disk Utility to format it to Mac standard.
I assumed that the HD had to be recognised in Disk Utility before it can be partitioned/formatted unless I am missing something?

Yes you would need to, but does it show up grayed out at all, or is it just not there?
What format did you use? If you format to FAT on the Windows machine it should be read/write on the Mac too, and show up in DU.

I don't want to waffle on too long but to cut a long story short, the Powerbook was purchased from a friend who had been swapping the drives between this Powerbook and another one he had.
After opening this Powerbook, I found that the ribbon cable had a different part number and was not the right part for this machine. I have since purchased the correct cable and fitted it and this is where I am now...

Click to expand...

I would start suspecting a problem with the interface between where the drive connects and the logic board. It's possible that all the drive swapping and the use of the wrong ribbon cable has damaged something. And if it's on the logic board, you might as well just buy another machine instead of trying to repair that one.

The hard drive you have should show up in Disk Utility whether it's formatted or not.

Kevriano said:

Yes you would need to, but does it show up grayed out at all, or is it just not there?
What format did you use? If you format to FAT on the Windows machine it should be read/write on the Mac too, and show up in DU.

Click to expand...

The HD does not show up at all in DU but was formatted to NTFS on the Windows machine.
Would this make a difference or would it show up but greyed out?

Read chscag's response,. You have tried a replacement ribbon so it is major troubles alas. Think your friend owes you your money back.

chscag said:

I would start suspecting a problem with the interface between where the drive connects and the logic board. It's possible that all the drive swapping and the use of the wrong ribbon cable has damaged something. And if it's on the logic board, you might as well just buy another machine instead of trying to repair that one.

The hard drive you have should show up in Disk Utility whether it's formatted or not.

Click to expand...

I did wonder if it was a problem with the logic board and had the wrong ribbon cable damaged some circuitry.
I was really hoping the fault wasn't the logic board, but hey... we live and learn right. lol.