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User profile for user: radioactivehead
radioactivehead Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Hard Drive not being detected

So my work was giving away old Power Mac G5. They were old and were restored to factory defaults. I wanted to mainly use it for storage. I went out to the store and bought a 1TB hard drive. When I installed it, I got a message saying that the OS couldn't read the hard drive. I figured it was because it wasn't in the correct file format. I went to my disk utility to try format in the Mac OS Extended format. After the two hour format process, I restarted the computer from some other software I was installing. Upon restart, the new terabyte drive wasn't detected. Here is a copy of the Disk Utility log from when I first turned on the system with the hard drive being recognized till when I restarted the system.


2015-01-02 19:45:42 -0800: Disk Utility started.



2015-01-02 19:46:22 -0800: Preparing to securely remove data from disk : “WD Terrabyte”

2015-01-02 19:46:22 -0800: 7 Pass Secure Erase

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Secure Erase skipped after 2 minutes.

0.3% complete.

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Preparing to erase : “WD Terrabyte”

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Partition Scheme: Apple Partition Map

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: 1 volume will be created

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Name : “WD Terrabyte”

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Size : 931.5 GB

2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)



2015-01-02 19:50:16 -0800: Creating partition map.

2015-01-02 19:50:18 -0800: Formatting disk1s3 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name WD Terrabyte.

2015-01-02 19:50:22 -0800: Erase complete.

2015-01-02 19:50:22 -0800:

2015-01-02 19:51:06 -0800: Preparing to zero disk : “WD Terrabyte”

2015-01-02 19:51:06 -0800: Passes : 0

2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Secure Erase completed successfully in 2 hours.



2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Preparing to erase : “WD Terrabyte”

2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Partition Scheme: Apple Partition Map

2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: 1 volume will be created

2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Name : “WD Terrabyte”

2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Size : 931.5 GB

2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Filesystem : Mac OS Extended (Journaled)



2015-01-02 22:25:55 -0800: Creating partition map.

2015-01-02 22:25:59 -0800: Formatting disk1s3 as Mac OS Extended (Journaled) with name WD Terrabyte.

2015-01-02 22:26:03 -0800: Erase complete.

2015-01-02 22:26:03 -0800:


As of right now, the system does not recognize the hard drive. I know the connection is good because I have another hard drive that reads just fine. I don't have another place to test the hard drive because I only have an iMac. Can anyone help with this or provide any pointers?? Currently running Mac OS X 10.5.8 Dual 2 GHz Power PC G5.

Posted on Jan 3, 2015 1:17 AM

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User profile for user: radioactivehead
radioactivehead Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Posted on Jan 3, 2015 1:58 AM

So I actually seemed to have solved this, to a degree. From what I could read through other help forums, there seems to be a limit on the transfer rate between the system and the hard drive. The OS has a cap of 150 megs/sec, but the hard drive operates faster than that. In order to fix this, you have to put a jumper on pins 5 and 6 on the back of the drive. This was slightly annoying because the hard drive does not come with jumper connectors. I had to find a jumper from another hard drive, and even then, it didn't fit exactly and had to use some strength to get it on.


While it does seem to be operating without any issue now, I still don't understand why it was able to read and detect the hard drive prior to formating.

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User profile for user: radioactivehead
radioactivehead Author
User level: Level 1
8 points

Jan 3, 2015 1:58 AM in response to radioactivehead

So I actually seemed to have solved this, to a degree. From what I could read through other help forums, there seems to be a limit on the transfer rate between the system and the hard drive. The OS has a cap of 150 megs/sec, but the hard drive operates faster than that. In order to fix this, you have to put a jumper on pins 5 and 6 on the back of the drive. This was slightly annoying because the hard drive does not come with jumper connectors. I had to find a jumper from another hard drive, and even then, it didn't fit exactly and had to use some strength to get it on.


While it does seem to be operating without any issue now, I still don't understand why it was able to read and detect the hard drive prior to formating.

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Hard Drive not being detected

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