Question URGENT - Installed a new hard drive in my iBook but it doesn't show up

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sadena

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I just went through the agonizing process of disassembling and reassembling my G4 12" iBook to replace a failing hard drive.

I carefully went though every step, reconnected everything (every other part is working) but the new drive does not show up on Disk Utility or Tiger Installation.

Do I need to set it up in BIOS or something? I work mainly with PC, this is the only Mac in my life and I treasure it.

Installed a Western Digital WD1600BEVE Scorpio Blue Mobile Hard Drive - 160GB, 2.5" EIDE, 5400, 8MB, OEM
 
i am not familiar with macs and I do not know if the same things apply.. but does it show up during boot process or in bios? Can you boot into xubuntu and check fdisk?

If none of these check again to make sure hard drive cable is plugged in correctly and securely. Both disk utility and install gui should detect it if the device is being enumerated by the OS.
 

sadena

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Skittle you are stalking my posts. Thank you.

There is no real boot process or BIOS screen with Macs, it's all behind the scenes.

I'm booting to xubuntu right now, and will try fdisk -l ...

Result...

1kb Apple Map
744mb xubuntu.

It doesn't see the hard drive, and I was damn certain that I got both ends of the hard drive cable connected.

I'll wait 1 hour in case some Mac Genius comes up with something, then I'll go through the horrible 2 hour process of taking my Mac appart and putting it back together.

Actually it wonbe too horendous because I'll just be able to pop off the bottom to check the cable to motherboard connector, which is where my only doubt it, because the cable to hard drive connector, for which I'd have to take off the top as well, is an all or nothing connection and I know I got that right.
 

sadena

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I have the laptop completely disassembled now, with just the keyboard, power button, touchpad, and hard drive connected. The connection is solid on both ends. I can boot to the install and it does not see the hard drive.


Why not?
 

sadena

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Interesting information. If I hook the new drive up to a USB enclosure and plug it into the Mac, boot to the install CD and use Disk Utility, it sees the drive, and I can format a Mac partition onto it. But then plugging it back into the IDE cable, it vanishes.

This has got to be a BIOS / Firmware issue.
 

hairystuff

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The hdd must be set to cs (cable select) to work in a powerbook or a ibook, plus the drive can not be larger than 137Gb (if it is larger it will either only use the first 137Gb of the drive or allow you to format the remainder as an additional partition).
 

sadena

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1. It is currently formatted to have 2 75gb partitions.
2. It has no jumpers for selecting master slave cable select. It connects the same way as the existing hard drive, with the connector covering all the pins.
 

hairystuff

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The drive may not be compatible, I've used seagate momentus drives in the past on G3 - G4 iBooks and Powerbooks without any issues. It could be a soft select issue when the system starts up, you could force select the drive by using a thin piece of wire between the connector hole to make a jumper (had to do something similar on a toshiba laptop in the past). If you look at fig 4 on page 2 of the link I sent you before, just put a strand of wire between the D-B contact to make a cable select configuration, try the drive in SLAVE (A-B contacts) configurations too, sometimes both the optical drive and HDD drives are set to CS and the system goes into a crazy loop (I've seen it happen on a iMac G3).
 
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