17" PowerBook G4 does not detect internal HDD

rfomlover · Aug 9, 2019

Hello, bought this AS-IS PBG4 17" as it was missing its internal hard drive. Picked up another IDE HDD for it and went to put it in. Then I saw it was missing the HDD cable as well. I ordered 821-0325-a as the replacement cable. Fast forward a week or so, I go to put it all together, set the IDE drive to master and try to view it in the OS X installer in Disk Utility. No HDD is visible. I took it apart again and reseated the cable and the same issue persists. I am able to boot it off of another PBG4 in target disk mode and the computer works fine, aside from not being able to detect an internal hard drive. Is there a different cable that I should order? I saw some old forum posts around on google from like 2006 mentioning that there was different cables available for the 15" model depending on whether or not it was a hi-res one. Could not find any such info for the 17" Before I toss this otherwise mint PBG4 in the trash, does anyone else have any ideas? Thanks!

ferrarr · Aug 9, 2019

You should not need to set the IDE drive to master or slave, try it without the setting.

pm-r · Aug 9, 2019

That PB G4 requires an Ultra ATA/100 compatible hard drive and I believe it also has to be under the "Big Drive Limit" of no larger than 137 GB I believe.

Also check with the manufacturer as to recommended jumper settings to use, if any.

Man, the last time I had to look for any IDE/ATA HDD the choices and selections werte getting pretty slim and that's got to be well over 10 years ago if not almost double that.

Do you have a compatible external enclosure you could try using with the hard drive to boot the power book???

Maybe the hard drive itself is kapuy???

- Patrick
======

rfomlover · Aug 10, 2019

I think I may have an external enclosure, however I know it boots external and runs fine since I can boot off of target disk mode. I ordered the drive for $10 on eBay as a refurb. It is a 100 GB. It was initially set to cable select, then I changed it to master which for this hard drive is having no jumper at all. Interesting. I’ll have to take it back apart to see what I put in it. Actually just copied and pasted from my purchase history. Seagate Momentus 4200.2 ST9100822A 100GB 2.5 Laptop IDE Hard Drive HP 376771-001

pm-r · Aug 10, 2019

I think I may have an external enclosure, however I know it boots external and runs fine since I can boot off of target disk mode.

That prooves that it can Boot and run fairly normally, but there's something wrong with the internal HDD settings or connections or the drive itself.

Maybe deal with a more reliable dealer such as macsales.com for a guaranteed good working IDE Drive if they still even carry them.

I guess you could always strap on an external!!! ;-) But I have a suspicion that those models cannot boot from any external USB connected drive, and if so one would have to use firewire or something which I believe is supported.

It's been a long time since working on such models I've forgotten a lot of the details.

- Patrick
======

ferrarr · Aug 10, 2019

Does the drive work in another G4? You mentioned Target Disk Mode, maybe install the OS from another Mac?

iggibar · Aug 10, 2019

The standard hdds are already recognized as drive0 on the PowerBook(as well as almost ALL computers with 1 HDD slot), so return the pins to how it originally was. It was common for the PowerBook G4s to have IDE port issues. However, most of the time, PowerBooks have issues with reading NEW drives because they are not formatted correctly from the factory to be recognized on PowerBooks. This is common with HDDs that have blank formatting(meaning absolutely zero previous formatting from the manufacturer). Even Windows has problems detecting these drives sometimes.

Here's what I would do. I would find a Windows PC and plug it in to see what it detects. If it's detected, format the drive as fat-32. Then you should be able to plug it into your MBP and reformat it. For use in your G4, you need to format it as "Apple Partition Map". This is the easiest way to check if the HDD or logicboard has problems. If you're able to reformat the drive as APM on your MBP, and it's still not recognized when you install it in your G4, then it means your IDE port is toast. You will need a new logicboard.