Problems with installing new hard drive

[Tom B.]

Hi folks, please forgive my lack of tech-savvy. I have a sawtooth G4 running system 10.3.9. Last year I upgraded to 1.2 Ghz and installed 1.12 Gb SDRAM. Now I've decided to do something about the puny 10 Gb hard drive. I just purchased a Seagate 300 Gb hard drive and the needed controller and power adapter. So far so good. Yesterday, I installed everything, but when I connected the power supply, the computer booted up right away (without my hitting the power button). The monitor display looked HUGE. So I went into Startup Disk, specified that the old hard drive was still the startup drive, and rebooted. That took care of the monitor display.

The next step was to create the RAID volume on the new drive. I opened Disk Utility (version 10.4.4) and dropped the new drive into the window. But when I do so and click on the drive in the window, the options for the RAID settings remain grayed-out. By the way, I noticed that the Disk Utilities window says that the new drive's device identification is "Device 0." I'm not sure if this is important, but I thought that only the primary hard drive, which came with the machine, is Drive 0 (are these two different things?)

I looked at the primary drive with Disk Utilities, and it also is identified as "Device 0." Can these disks both have the same identification, or could this be my problem? And if so, what to do about it?

This morning I went at it again, but the computer wouldn't boot up. It would not respond to the power button at all. So I opened it up and, just for good measure, moved the PCI card for the new drive to a different slot. I removed an old SCSI card that was unused and put the drive's card in its place. Then I booted up the computer and it worked, except ...

The monitor wouldn't come on, even though its power button was illuminated. I opened up the case again and noticed that the monitor was plugged into a card that was sitting directly above the new drive. Could incidental contact between the drive's cables and the monitor card be causing this problem? I then noticed that I had a second graphics card sitting unused in the top slot. I plugged the monitor into that one, booted up, and everything seemed was fine.

Except that the original problem remains: Disk Utility does not allow me to set the RAID options on the new drive. Everything is still grayed out. Also, Disk Utility identifies both the old hard drive and the new one as "Device 0." Can anyone tell me what I'm doing wrong?

By the way, when I booted up, the computer asked me if I wanted to initialize the new drive. I assume that this is different from setting the RAID, right? I just clicked Ignore to make the dialog box go away and proceeded to try to set the RAID first.

Sorry to be so long-winded, but any help will be greatly appreciated.

[Nicolas]

you'll need at least two HD's to setup a RAID using disk utility.

If you have two 300GB you can setup a RAID0 (not bootable) or a RAID1 (Mirroring, bootable, but only the capacity of one drive).

Take a look here for more information about RAID levels:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Redunda...ependent_disks

And TZ' great posting here:
http://www.macgurus.com/forums/showp...9&postcount=34

Regards

Nicolas

[Tom B.]

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks for the advice. I'm not actually "trying" to set up a RAID. I don't even know what that means. I just wanted to increase the amount of internal hard drive space by adding another drive. As for setting the RAID, I thought this was something I had to do to get the new hard drive working. Am I mistaken? Can I just bypass the Disk Utility altogether and initialize the new hard drive? Again, any and all advice is much appreciated.

--- Tom

[TZ]

Next time, just click on "Initialize." All that does is open Disk Utility. Doesn't touch the drive. My advice would be to take the long road, but may as well do so now than later, and click on Erase -> Options -> Zero-All. Takes a while but you know the drive is fine.

Next, go to the Partition tab after erasing, and setup some partition scheme. Archive, boot volume, whatever you think - unless you have other plans for that 300GB.

Next step, just copy anything and everything you can to the drive. Load it up. Give it a workout. You'll erase it afterwards. just shaking it loose and more breaking it in. You could do this before partitioning.

Want to be sure it works, will hold your data, and performs well.

Afterward, you can copy or restore or clone your system and boot from it.

[Nicolas]

Hi Nicolas,

Thanks for the advice. I'm not actually "trying" to set up a RAID. I don't even know what that means. I just wanted to increase the amount of internal hard drive space by adding another drive. As for setting the RAID, I thought this was something I had to do to get the new hard drive working. Am I mistaken? Can I just bypass the Disk Utility altogether and initialize the new hard drive? Again, any and all advice is much appreciated.

--- Tom

If you want to setup (partition, initialize) a disk, go to disk utility > click once on the new drive > click on partitioning > choose how many partitions (virtual devices) you want (300GB = 1 partition, 2 =2x 150GB), choose Mac OS extended under format, if you are using OS9 click on "install OS9 driver", enter a name for the new drive, then click (bottom right) partitioning, that's it after a few seconds the new drive should appear on the desktop.

Regards

Nicolas

[Tom B.]

Thanks so much to both of you! Last question (I think): Is there a benefit to partitioning a drive? (Told you I wasn't tech-savvy )

[Nicolas]

Thanks so much to both of you! Last question (I think): Is there a benefit to partitioning a drive? (Told you I wasn't tech-savvy )

1. Speed, all drives are getting slower the fuller they get.
The outer (first partition) is the fastest.

2. Example: If you want one partition for MacOSX, one for OS9 and another for the your data.

Regards

Nicolas