[generationfourt]

Upon bootup it said the drive was not bootable and prompted for disk utility...

In the disk utility I can't erase, or format or do anything to the drive. It just shows up as 0 bytes and labeled as "media"

Someone suggested I format the drive in another computer into smaller partitions? I searched around and couldn't really come up with any ideas

[reader50]

There is no need for another computer. Since it is a new drive, you haven't defined any volumes for it yet. Erase puts down fresh formatting on an existing volume, which is why it's greyed out.

Go to the Partition tab. Set the "Volume Scheme" to 1 partition for the volume. There can be reasons to split it into more than one, but if you don't know a reason, then you don't need more than one. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and choose a name for the new volume. You can change the name later if desired.

Click on the "Options..." button to confirm the drive is set to "Apple Partition Map" - anything else and your G5 will not be able to boot from this disk.

Click the Partition button when done. You'll be able to use the drive afterwards.

[generationfourt]

Originally Posted by reader50 

There is no need for another computer. Since it is a new drive, you haven't defined any volumes for it yet. Erase puts down fresh formatting on an existing volume, which is why it's greyed out.

Go to the Partition tab. Set the "Volume Scheme" to 1 partition for the volume. There can be reasons to split it into more than one, but if you don't know a reason, then you don't need more than one. Set the Format to Mac OS Extended (Journaled), and choose a name for the new volume. You can change the name later if desired.

Click on the "Options..." button to confirm the drive is set to "Apple Partition Map" - anything else and your G5 will not be able to boot from this disk.

Click the Partition button when done. You'll be able to use the drive afterwards.

All of the options under partition are greyed out as well

[reader50]

Check it in another type of computer if you have one available. If it comes up as 0 bytes & unformatable on a Windows or Linux box too, then the drive may be DOA. You can also check Western Digital's posted FAQs to see if anything sounds likely. Or email their support describing the problem.

My G5 has handled Samsung drives at 1 TB and 1.5 TB without issues. Question, is this a new drive, or has it been used before, say in a RAID enclosure? Can you hear the drive spin up?

[generationfourt]

I handed it to the IT dept and it came up as a NTFS working drive on one of their PC's. IT came down and looked at it and is as puzzled as I am. It's a brand new OEM drive. I can hear it spin up and kind of read over and over a few times then it's quiet.

IT is going to try to swap it into my 1tb External and maybe we can format it that way...

thanks for the help so far!

[reader50]

In the Partition tab, go to the Options button near the bottom. It will likely show the partition scheme as Master Boot Record since the drive was preformatted for an NTFS volume. Switch the partition type to Apple Partition Map for a bootable drive (or GUID for a data drive). Disk Utility may not do much with a drive already set up as Master Boot Record. This would explain everything being greyed out.

If that doesn't do it. Your internal SATA interface is SATA-1, while the drive is SATA-2 (hush please, mduell). This normally makes no difference. But there have been a few reported cases of SATA-1 controllers having issues with SATA-2 drives. You can check the drive's label or WD's support website - there may be a jumper to force the drive to operate in SATA-1 mode.

[generationfourt]

forgot about this. we rma'ed the drive and the new one worked perfectly fine. I guess the original was doa...