Hard Drive Problem

[Academician]

:O I'm having some horrible luck with my Macs lately...

I just got a 4.0Gb Apple 50 pin SCSI HDD to put in my Centris only to find that it, like many things, wont work.

I first attached it to the SCSI cable on the second connector with the original 80Mb drive in the first like it always has been. I booted up into System 7.5 and it did not recognize the new HDD, not even to format it.

Next I hooked it up on it's own, and removed the original drive, still no joy. I used a 7.5 Network Access Disk to boot the system as I got a "no bootable disk" error if I booted without it.

Then I plugged it into the last connector where the original drive used to be and still got nothing.

Of course I figured it had to be a jumper setting, so I looked up the exact settings on the net and found that the jumper was already set to Terminate, so it should have been good to go.

I've even tried to remove the jumper entirely, on both cable connectors, with and without the original hard drive. So far, nothing.

I have felt the drive as the system powers up and it does seem to spin.

I do not have any other macs or PCs with a SCSI interface, so if I don't get it working here I'll be kinda screwed.

I hope you guys can help me, I have little experience with SCSI even though I do know the basics (A+ Certified, even).

-Shawn

 

[MacG4]

u may need a 3rd party formatting program like silver lining

 

[Academician]

I'll try and google that up. In the meantime I should mention the exact hard drive model...

It has an apple symbol on it. Quantum Fireball ST 3.5 Series

I'll list some numbers I can see on the main label, see if they help:

4320S ST43S02H REV 02 - B S0F0D

4.0GB FBSTS 655 - 0471 *ML726016S8LHB*

This last number is on the bottom of the SCSI connection:

4 .3S P/N ST43S011 Rev 02-C

 

[The Macster]

The 3rd party tools are more for if you're using a drive that doesn't have an Apple logo on it, as what happens then is that while the drive is recognised by the Mac OS tools like Drive Setup, it shows up as "not supported" and can't be formatted by the Apple tools - only non-Apple tools will format non-Apple drives.

Does the hard drive spin up when you start the machine up? If you run Apple HD SC Setup or Drive Setup when the hard drive is installed, can you see the drive in the listing? The only time you said you tried this was when it was in there along with the original drive, but was the termination active that time, as it should only be set to terminate if it's right at the end of the SCSI cable. Have you set a unique SCSI ID on the drive?

 

[Academician]

The hard drive does seem to spin up, I have felt vibration when power is applied to the computer.

I don't know what you mean by Apple HD SC Setup or Drive Setup, I'm relatively new to Macs (in fact, this is technically my first and only).

The terminator was jumpered to "off" while it was in with the original drive, the original drive is automatically terminated (no jumper) and is at the end of the cable as I understand it should be.

I have not set a unique ID on the drive, I had considered that one of the problems. At the moment I only have 1 jumper and I cannot set an ID for both the original drive (which doesnt have one set as it is) and the new drive at the same time. I may be able to dig around and find an extra jumper if you believe that may be the source of the problem.

Thanks fr the help so far, look forward to hearing more =]

Edit: I was able to track down Drive Setup 1.5 through google, an article said it was the suggested software. I'll port it to my pc that has a floppy drive and try and get it over to my Centris and see what I can do from there.

 

[The Macster]

Some drives will be set to SCSI ID 0 if there are no jumpers on the ID selector - there is often a label on the drive that explains the various jumper positions. You could always take jumpers off the original drive if you need more. It may be that the original drive is also set to ID 0, as that is the conventional ID to use for the main internal drive, which could explain why it didn't work when you tried both together.

You could use the Mac OS 7.5 Disk Tools floppy (this should be around for download somewhere), which contains a boot system to start up from and one of the Apple formatting tools (HD SC Setup is the older formatter made by Apple; Drive Setup the newer). Be careful if moving files through a PC - Mac applications must be inside an archive like .sit, .sea etc if they are to survive intact.

 

[Academician]

Success !

I was able to get Drive Setup on the Centris, it found, and then formatted the drive to HFS and I think I'm good to go. Thanks for that hint, I don't think I would have found that otherwise.

As for how I got it to the Mac, I chanced upon the TransMac software, been using it ever since, haven't had much choice since I only own PCs [] ]'>

Also thanks for the lesson on the jumpers, even though I was aware each drive had to have a unique ID, etc, I haven't had much experience in dealing with drives to know that some have things set automatically.

I'm going to proceed to get OS 7.5.5 on the new drive, then wipe and remove the old drive. I hope to get a cd drive for this soon, so hopefully I can get it right the first time

Again thanks, I'll probably have a few more questions once I actually get this thing setup

 

[phreakout]

I was about to say that you need to make sure both internal hard drives are not on the same SCSI ID number, otherwise the Centris would get confused as to which is which.

73s 8)

 

[fidel]

Success !
I was able to get Drive Setup on the Centris, it found, and then formatted the drive to HFS and I think I'm good to go...

I'm going to proceed to get OS 7.5.5 on the new drive, then wipe and remove the old drive.

Cheats/tips...

Since the drive is bare, you can partition it in a little more than a trice (use Drive Setup again). You could begin by creating one partition that is just under 2Megs, and another that occupies the remainder of the 4G.

You could then drag the icon for your 80M onto the icon for the larger partition in your new drive and, once the ensuing copy operation completes, dig inside that partition and pull the contents - minus the Desktop Folder and possibly Trash - out of the folder named for the original drive, and drop it into the root of the new drive...

You'd then have successfully cloned the 80, and could then boot to that partition. Open the Desktop Folder one level down, zoom the window for it, and you can probably figure out what's going on there...

You can keep the 80 around until you're happy with everything - then toss it, or use it for your virtual memory, if any.

Still later, if you find and install a copy of System Picker (or is it Switcher), you could copy the contents of the Network Access disk onto the 2M partition - along with Disk First Aid or whatever you like - to have an alternate boot partition (assuming just the one drive), to which you could boot in order to fix the main partition...

Creating a second boot drive or partition is soooo much easier on a Mac, and so handy.