[louh]

Third hard drive does not show up.

I just purchased a third hard drive for my 1GHz G4 mirrored door drive. Since both rear drive bays are occupied I tried to install a 160 GB Seagate V Hard Drive into one of the front bays. I repositioned the pins and tried to have this drive show up as a master then a slave and then cable. None of these pin combinations work and I am not able to get this drive to show up on my desktop. I switched hard drives and was able to get the new drive to show up in the rear bay. The drive that was in the rear bay and placed in the front bay would no longer show up.

I'm sure it's something that I'm doing but I don't know what that is causing the drive in the front bay to not show up. Does anyone have any suggestions?

Thanks,
Lou

[Nivag]

you did plug the IDE cable into the motherboard? the default is unplugged, Blue end to blue socket if memory serves me right.

if you've done that, then maybe something is wrong with your cable or motherboard.

[louh]

Yes everything is plugged in. Except the blue plug is for another CD/DVD drive. There are two other cables, black and gray, that are for the hard drives. The power plug is also plugged in. My fingers got really sore pulling these things off and on while attempting to troubleshoot.

Originally posted by Nivag:
you did plug the IDE cable into the motherboard? the default is unplugged, Blue end to blue socket if memory serves me right.

if you've done that, then maybe something is wrong with your cable or motherboard.

[Spliffdaddy]

Current specifications for 80conductor ( aka, grounded 40 pin / ATA66,100,133 ) IDE(ATA) cables are as follows:

Black connector is for drive jumpered to 'master'

Gray connector is for drive jumpered to 'slave'

Blue connector is for motherboard header.

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Apple doesn't necessarily follow these specifications, but since the colors are black, gray, & blue I'd say they did.

Although you mention a blue connector for the optical drive...and that wouldn't follow specs - so maybe Apple used a blue connector and ignored the specs...or maybe it isn't an 80conductor cable.

If all else fails, try jumpering the drive to "cable select" instead of "master/slave".

[ChrisF]

Originally posted by louh:
Yes everything is plugged in. Except the blue plug is for another CD/DVD drive. There are two other cables, black and gray, that are for the hard drives. The power plug is also plugged in. My fingers got really sore pulling these things off and on while attempting to troubleshoot.

The blue plug should be for the front drive bays. There should be an empty ATA socket on the motherboard into which the cable fits. Apple did not ship the MDD G4s with that cable connected.
Chris

[Mac Write]

You must set the Drive to Cable Select. You also should put the Drive at the end of the cable then it will auto select as master.

[Chris Grande]

Most likely you got the drive in but its not formatted. If the drive isn't formatted it won't appear on your desktop. Once you get the drive in open Disk Utility and take a look in the left pane, does it appear there? If so, select it then click erase on the right, give it a name, click erase, then it should mount after a few moments. If you want to partition the drive that will take a few extra steps.

[louh]

Problem Solved. After connecting the blue cable to the motherboard the drive works. Thanks for the suggestion. I didn't realize that Apple left this unconnected. I thought it was for one of the top CD/DVD drive bays. Duh.

thanks,

Originally posted by ChrisF:
The blue plug should be for the front drive bays. There should be an empty ATA socket on the motherboard into which the cable fits. Apple did not ship the MDD G4s with that cable connected.
Chris