PowerBook G4 Hard Drive Wiped

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Level 1

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PowerBook G4 Hard Drive Wiped

Hi

I have an old PowerBook G4 that has been sat around for years without being used. I want to give it to my parents to use, as it should still be in pretty good working order. The only problem is, the reason I stopped using it was the hard drive had died.

I bought a new 2.5" IDE drive and installed it myself. I tested it in an external caddy with my iMac and MacBook Air beforehand to make sure it was functioning OK. It seems to be fine, so I formatted the drive and put it into the PowerBook.

Now, however, when I boot the machine and hold 'C' with the Tiger install disk inserted, it just boots to a blue screen. I fear it may be the disk drive failing.

I have tried to boot to Target Disk Mode and install from another Mac. This didn't work because Tiger won't boot on my iMac or my housemate's MacBook Pro- perhaps because they're Intel?

If anyone can shed any light on this, or offer a possible solution that would be amazing.

Thanks

PowerBook

Posted on May 16, 2012 7:10 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,965 points

May 16, 2012 9:28 AM in response to qowenp

You got it. If you format the drive with an Intel Mac, you have to double check the partition type is Apple Partition Map. Otherwise the Powerbook won't accept it. The 10.4 installer disc must look like if the Mac is older than Tiger. If it is newer than Tiger, it can still look like that, but the disc that looks like that must be newer than the Mac itself. If the machine doesn't have Firewire or a built-in DVD drive it won't accept Tiger either. If you can find the original Powerbook installer discs, that would be ideal. You can't use the retail 10.4 on an Intel Mac. If the optical drive is apparently broke, you'll either need to replace the PRAM battery, or get an external Firewire DVD drive to attach to the Mac to install Tiger from http://www.macsales.com/

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