G5 won't recognize 2nd hard drive

Hi Neal, and a warm welcome to the forums! 🙂

G5s may have trouble with SATA 2 3Gb/sec drives, many have a jumper to slow it to SATA 1 1.5Gb/sec speeds.

I find little but conflicting reports on the Hitachi drives...

http://www.techsupportforum.com/forums/f16/hitachi-sata-hdd-268771.html

From page 137 of the PDF...

* 3.0Gbps is default setting; however, 1.5Gbps is supported.

The jumpers are usually smaller than those on an IDE drive and sometimes not in an obvious spot. Your issue is the 3.0 setting.

I don't know if Hitachi's have jumpers, like I said the info was confusing, but on WD drives it's pin 5&6...

http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1679#jumper

Tough to tell what is wrong, I "think" the Hitachi is supposed to automatically step down to half speed, but if it's a SATA 3 drive it'll only step down to SATA 2 speed, which the G5 cannot talk to.

Here's one that says SATA 6 Gb/s/3 Gb/s/1.5Gb/s compatible...

http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Western%20Digital/WD10EALX/

http://eshop.macsales.com/shop/hard-drives/3.5-SerialATA/WesternDigitalCaviar

Not likely a driver issue, especially if it works with the one SATA drive already.

Have you tried the good drive with that data cable?

The beeping normally indicates a big problem with the drive, though one cannot be certain it's not caused by incompatibility, I think I'd return it.

It might be worth checking here to see what hard drives other users have had success with:

http://forums.xlr8yourmac.com/drivedb/search.drivedb.lasso

Your drive should mount and run fine in a G5.

It is a SATA-2 drive and there are not any jumpers needed to have it negotiate the speeds (as I recall, the Deskstar SATA-2's don't have speed jumper positions). I just realized that I have apparently installed a SATA-3 Deskstar, judging by the reported model number of HDS723020BLA642 in my original G5 and it plays just fine. Mind you, what the box said was SATA-2 and 32 MByte cache, so I may have scored something there.

Nonetheless, all of the Deskstars (four different 2TB drives) seem to play just fine on the SATA-1 interface.

Now I am getting curious about the odd drive that I just discovered wasn't reporting what I thought it was supposed to be.

Message was edited by: old comm guy

Great info as always ocg, fo keep us posted if you find out more! 🙂

It does seem that it's supposed to auto-negotiate at least SATA 2 to SATA 1, so it does seem like a bad drive so far.

BDAqua wrote:
Great info as always ocg, fo keep us posted if you find out more! 🙂

I am due to swap the drive in the lower bay with an offsite drive in a day or two, and I will be curious to see what they other drive reports for a model number, as I believe it was purchased at the same time as the seemingly SATA-3 drive. The model number for the lower-slot drive is for the new higher-capacity drives that are 3TB, 2TB or 1.5TB. Veerrry eenteresting, as Arte Johnson would have said. (As an aside, Hitachi doesn't seem to put the actual model number on the retail packaging.

It does seem that it's supposed to auto-negotiate at least SATA 2 to SATA 1, so it does seem like a bad drive so far.

If truly the cable swap that the OP reported was such that the boot drive was now connected through the second cable to the second SATA plug, then I would say the smart money is gonna bet on a bum drive. The K2 chip could be the problem, but that seems to have been eliminated by the drive swap on the cables. Since the drive should work but it doesn't, the boot drive works on both interfaces, the OP should take it back and try another one. Infant mortality is not an impossible event.

I pulled the internal drive in the lower bay this morning and had a look at the label on it, and it definitely says 6 GB/s SATA, so it probably is a 7K3000 Deskstar. The other drive that I bought at the same time says 3 GB/s and thus is a 7K2000 Deskstar. Hmmm. I guess the factory folks dropped one of the new drives into the box.

The good news is that it took this thread for me to find that out and discover that at least the Hitachi's will auto-negotiate back to SATA-1 speeds from the SATA-3 drives. Good to know. Now I feel the urge to run down to Fry's and pick up one of the 3TBs they have in.

Sort of a Tim Taylor thing, I guess. 🙂