G5 with Leopard DVD can't see new hard drive

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Before anyone flames me I swear I have searched and searched and tried all of the suggestions but I desperately need help.

I have a friend's Power Mac G5 with a 250GB Hard Drive. It's detecting that hard drive...it's just running low on space. I told him it would be best to upgrade the hard drive so I ordered a Western Digital 500GB Hard Drive Caviar Blue SATA. I remembered that I have to initialize the drive with Disk Utility.

BTW, the old install is Tiger but I have a Leopard DVD that if it works he's willing to buy from me because I don't need it anymore as I bought a new mac with Snow Leopard. So there is no pirated software involved here.

Anyway, I put the hard drive in, ran the installation, started Disk Utility, and it doesn't see the hard drive. So the next option I have is to load it into a SATA dock I have and connect it to my MBP (Snow Leopard) and rule out a DOA hard drive. Snow Leopard sees it with no problem. It prompted me to initialize it. I did then I took it out and put it back into the Power Mac. Still didn't detect it.

I take it back out put it in the SATA doc and decide to partition it with the option for it to be bootable in a PowerPC machine instead of intel. Tried it in the Power Mac again. No hard drive detected.

So then I put it back in the SATA dock and Verify and the after that didn't let it detect it in the Power Mac I tried Verify and then Repair. Nothing. All the time the MBP is detecting the hard drive but the power mac doesn't. I even found a thread talking about disabling SSC. I looked for information on this particular drive and applied a jumper accordingly. Still nothing. I know people have successfully installed a 500GB HD in one of those machines.

What am I missing? I almost never ask for help so I'm out of clues on what I'm missing.

Also, if this is the wrong place for this please don't flame...just kindly let me know.

Please, somebody, help me. :'(

I might be able to get my hands on a Leopard machine if this is the problem but it will take some work to find the person with it. If Snow Leopard's formatting is not compatible for some reason. I don't know. :(
 

dtravis7


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No matter what, the drive should show up in Disk Utility. Do you still have the old 250GB drive? If you put that in place of the 500GB, does it still show up?

I am wondering if something happened to the SATA cable in the PM G5. You SURE you plugged in both the SATA and Power cables into the Blue WD? It should show up in DU no matter what the format is.
 
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No matter what, the drive should show up in Disk Utility. Do you still have the old 250GB drive? If you put that in place of the 500GB, does it still show up?

I am wondering if something happened to the SATA cable in the PM G5. You SURE you plugged in both the SATA and Power cables into the Blue WD? It should show up in DU no matter what the format is.

Yes, I put the old hard drive back in and it booted (forgot to include that information). So then I also installed the new drive in the second bay and the tiger (old drive) install doesn't see the new hard drive either. Both cables are firmly plugged in. The new hard drive doesn't show up as either the primary or secondary drive. Snow Leopard again sees and formats it with no problems.

Thanks for any ideas.
 
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I'm wondering if it's the actual partitioning of the drive. The MBP would use a GUID partition and the PMG5 would use Apple Partition Map. Might that cause the drive to not be seen properly?
 
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I'm wondering if it's the actual partitioning of the drive. The MBP would use a GUID partition and the PMG5 would use Apple Partition Map. Might that cause the drive to not be seen properly?

Right, I saw that and I made sure I picked Apple Partition Map. I've repartitioned it and everytime I make sure it's set to Apple Partition Map. I looked back also with the specs on this hard drive and it's listed as Mac compatible.
 
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UPDATE: I put the original 250GB with tiger in as the primary. I connected the SATA dock to the Power Mac. Booted with no problem. I opened finder and it showed the 500GB that I was so desperately looking for. Opened Tiger's DU, repartitioned, verified, ran repair and made sure it still showed up from Tiger. I thought, "Great! It just may work this time!" (NOTE to self: Don't underestimate the power of bad luck.). I put the 500GB in as the primary drive and put the 250GB to the side. The Leopard DVD still does not detect there is a hard drive installed. Nothing in DU and nothing to select in the screen "Select A Destination".
 
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The new drive is going into position one and no chance it is set up as a slave drive? Also take it it is a SATA I and not newer SATA II or SATA III which sometimes have problems being recognized by SATA I?

On some faster drives have had to 'throttle' them back using jumpers.
 

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The new drive is going into position one and no chance it is set up as a slave drive? Also take it it is a SATA I and not newer SATA II or SATA III which sometimes have problems being recognized by SATA I?

On some faster drives have had to 'throttle' them back using jumpers.

Good suggestion Harry. I am shocked I did not think of it. Seen is happen with really old computers in general with older SATA controllers and newer SATA II drives. If you look up the drive on the internet, you can find which pins to jumper to limit it to SATA 150. Worked here in 2 cases I can remember.
 
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The new drive is going into position one and no chance it is set up as a slave drive? Also take it it is a SATA I and not newer SATA II or SATA III which sometimes have problems being recognized by SATA I?

On some faster drives have had to 'throttle' them back using jumpers.

HEADS UP, Harry!!!!! Here comes a big (long distance) bear hug to you! Thank you, Thank you! I put the jumper on pins 5 and 6 and it worked. I was so close too, because I had been trying to use a jumper to solve the problem but it was on the wrong pins. Thank you everybody for your help and patience.

*Jadzia doing the happy dance*
hahaha. :)
 

dtravis7


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That is great. Glad that worked. I have seen it happen but it's been a while back. Don't see it mentioned except with older machines. Anyway, enjoy your new drive.
 
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Hope this thread helps somebody else too. I've been working on Windows and Linux quite some time. But I have a lot still to learn about macs. I definitely will be lurking here to learn more. Thanks again everybody!
 
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Ahh Jadzia did enjoy that hug to start the day. Bit worn and frazzled however by the time it arrived in Australia! Yep stay here it is a great place to learn. Anything more PM me by highlighting my name and hit the PM button.
 

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