G5 Imac Hard Disk Issue

Hi, wonder if anyone can shed some light on a problem.

I have a g5 iMac 2.0Ghz. The factory fitted hard disk failed recently and I replaced it with a 320Gb SATA Hitachi drive which worked fine. A couple of days ago the machine frooze while I was transferring a large amount of files from my PC (via ethernet). It remained on the spinning wheel with no data transfer (I thought it was my fault as I had switched my xbox on which had fixed ip temporarily causing the Mac to loose its IP (same as the 360 one)).

I rebooted but the machine failed to find the startup volume (flashing question mark folder icon). I ran the 10.3 setup disk on the machine and opened disk utility but it failed to find the volume. I then ran Apple Service Diagnostics (v2.5.8) which passed all diagnostics (with the exclusion of not listing the hard disk).

I removed the hard drive, fitted it into my PC and formatted it fine (and ran a surface scan to verify everything is ok). I then copied a couple of gigs of data to the drive to verify everything is ok.

After refitting the drive into the iMac I still had the same error (I have also run disk utility again (from both a 10.3 restore cd and the 10.5 upgrade disk from my macbook pro) and the apple service diagnostics with the same results). I have tried resetting the Pram but no difference

On all occasions it sounds as if the drive is powering up as I can hear it constantly spinning (even when sleeping).

Any ideas?? What is the chances this the SATA controller on the motherboard (everything else in the mac seems fine) or is there anything I have missed?

Thanks for any help anyone can give

anyone?

Hi paulstorey,

being a long time user of MS (+20years) until I swapped for APPLE 4-5 years ago, I just wandered why you are formatting your HD on the PC?
Why not just reformat and partition in the iMac G5's Disk Utility (which I have used for the last 3 years with iMac G5 and different HD installations).

Good luck!

Hi, reason I formatted on the PC was to verify the disk was ok as it wasnt showing in disk utility. I formatted it on one of my PCs and ran a surface scan.

Hi again paulstorey,

yeah, that was what I guessed. However, I would still believe it could pay-off to run the formatting on Disk Utility and choosing the 'Mac OS Extended (Journaled)' format. At least that is what has served me well on four different Apple computers up to the Leopard OS version. I take it for granted you already tried the VERIFY/REPAIR in the Disk Utility?

Hi, unfortunatly I cant as the drive is not visible in the disk utility both under a 10.3 install CD and 10.5 install CD. Both installations only see the cd! That is the main problem which is why I am wondering if it is something to do with the SATA drive controller.

If I cant get it working by the new year, Ill take it to work and install it in one of the G5 Powermacs to see if they find it. I cant think of anything else to try

Your last remarks made me wonder if you could use one of the 'nifty' SATA/DIE cables. They are - as you possibly know - cables that connect externally via USB 2.0 and with their own power supply. I'm ready to lend you mine, but I fear we are too distant!

Sorry for the mistyping, the name is correctly: SATA/IDE i.e. USB 2.0 to SATA/IDE cable

Just to update, I opened the iMac up again checked all connections and refitted a new drive and still nothing. I then reopened the mac, removed all data cables, memory, drives, bios battery and sprayed the entire machine in antistatic spray (quite heavily). Then left it for an hour, reconnected everything and fitted the drive and success!

The drive was detected by the installer and OSX is now installed and working. (Antistatic spray was a trick I used at my old workplace to revive dead PCs and it worked some times!).