General Question

benseven's avatar

Mac heads, help! iBook G4 HD Issue?

Asked by benseven (3189points) March 6th, 2009

Hi guys,

I just repaired one of these by installing one of these – but I can’t see the new HD at all, not in Open Firmware*, not in OS X Install disc booting (Disk Utility can’t see it), Terminal* tells me there’s something under /.vol called 234881026 – could that be it?

I guess I should have stuck it in a caddy and initialised it first? I’ve never had this problem before. It’s gonna be a huge pain in the ass to open it up again so is there anything else I can try software wise?

A friend is bringing around a copy of Diskwarrior, so I’ll be giving that a shot too.

* I have limited experience with the commands for Open Firmware and Terminal, so if anyone can suggest some commands to fire in, I’ll give them a shot.

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11 Answers

Bri_L's avatar

You know more that I do about this, you could do a fire wire boot and see if another mac sees it, that is if you have another mac.

benseven's avatar

@Bri_L Thanks for the contribution though. I tried this (which I should have mentioned too!) and Disk util on my Macbook doesn’t show it either over Target Firewire mode. So frustrating!

Bri_L's avatar

NO doubt. I wish you luck. I know what it takes to get in there and replace a drive. 38 screws wasn’t it?

benseven's avatar

Something like that. I stopped counting after 27!!

Bri_L's avatar

@benseven – their desktops are genius for easy access. Laptops, not so much.

jrpowell's avatar

john-powells-imac52:~ johnryanpowell$ cd /Volumes
john-powells-imac52:Volumes johnryanpowell$ ls -a
. Clone of HD Macintosh HD
.. Extra Media

I’m not sure what you are seeing in there. My best guess is that the drive just isn’t visible. It could have just been a bad drive or something went wrong during the install. It is probably time to open it back up. Godspeed.

benseven's avatar

Thanks JP.
Ls -a run in Terminal under the booted OS X Install disc gives this result:

• ••

Nada!
I shall open it up again tomorrow. Yay.

simpleD's avatar

Wild guess here. Is there a set of exposed pins on the back of the drive? You may need to reposition the jumpers so that the drive is set to be a master—it may be set to slave. You would have to consult the drive’s documentation for the correct position of the jumpers.

Bri_L's avatar

@simpleD oooo worth a check!

benseven's avatar

@simpleD- worth a check, though there aren’t any on the old drive and I don’t recall seeing them on the new one… Going to try diskwarrior today and then pull it apart again.

Bri_L's avatar

Good luck!

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