Boot Camp / XP made my hard drive disappear

Running on a 20" Intel iMac w/ 10.4.6 and the latest updates. Also installed the latest firmware upgrade prior to this exercise.
Ran Boot Camp and created the Mac Driver CD and a 10G partition.
Then, booted from my XP disk and when it took me to the 'choose partition' screen, there was only one drive listed, as C:, of 130G. Shouldn't this have been the 10G partition? And shouldn't the OS X partition have shown up as it does in the documentation for Boot Camp? BTW, my drive is the 250G and had about 155G remaining before I started.
When I saw that, I dared not select and format, so I quit the XP installation.
Now, it only wants to boot into XP. Holding the Option key upon bootup only displays one disk to choose from, Windows. And of course, there's no XP for it to boot into, so it's just a flashing cursor on a black screen.
When I use the OS X Install Disk's Disk Utility, it does not even see my original OS X HD. All that shows up is the Maxtor drive with no installed disk information at all (no sub-drive or partitions under Maxtor).
Selecting Startup Drive doesn't do it either since my HD does not show up - only the CD drive and the Network choices.
And even if I wanted to reinstall OS X, I can't because there's no Destination drive to choose from in the installer!!!
How do I remove XP from the boot partition (is there even a boot partition on these things)? I'm sure the data on the disk was not deleted as I never let the XP installer actually do anything to the existing drives and Boot Camp is not supposed to actually delete any data.
Needless to say, any help would be appreciated.
20" iMac (Intel Core Duo)   Mac OS X (10.4.6)  

Its funny....I got my new INTEL IMAC set it up with all my old IMACs information 3 hours or so of work (Itunes...Iphoto)
and in 12 minutes....it had no bootable harddrive...and no volume information for disk utility to work with.
I saw your post...and that partition size (130 GB) was exactly the same as mine (I had created a 60gig windows Partition).
Did you ever figure out what happened.....I had not backed anything up....because I had never had this issue with a piece of Apple Software Before...and since I did not even hit F3 to create the windows partition...I thought I would be safe.
So it must have been the original Partition change in Boot Camp that destroyed OS X?
I bought Parallels product in the meantime...but it does not have very good graphics support, and it looks like it will not run certain CDROM games...due to copy protection (Keeps looking for the CDROM that is already in the drive).
So...I am going to backup everything to an external drive and see what happens.....again

Similar Messages

  • Can I reinstall Windows in Boot Camp without unpartitioning my hard drive?

    Hi!
    I've had my iMac with Boot Camp for a while, and I'm the kind of person that likes to download lots of junk. On my Mac partition, I downloaded Parallels, and used it with my windows partition. Later that day, I found out that using Parallels with a Boot Camp partition can corrupt files, which is what happened. My Windows partition still works, but it's a little screwy.
    So, I was wondering if I can reinstall Windows XP without unpartitioning my hard drive, and without effecting Mac OS X.
    Thanks~

    Yes. It is quite straightforward - you boot into OS X, insert your Windows install disk, go to Applications (or is it Utilities?) open BootCamp - the Assistant opens. Then you ignore the partition options and just click on install Windows. BootCamp should be used for all things Windows.. ....I myself originally made the mistake of re-installing Windows one time while IN Windows (I didn't even think). I made a mess!
    Edit
    My machine came with Tiger. I was sooooo impressed when I purchased Leopard that I could choose to do an erase/install of OS X without even touching the Windows side. Really nice - I still have that original Windows install untouched!
    Message was edited by: NA Smith

  • Boot Camp 3 Nightmare - External Hard Drive

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    Update:
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  • I want to install windows7 on my 27in iMAC. I have an OEM version of Win7 which is win pro 7, 64 bit english.  I will use boot camp to partion the hard drive for a win7 install.  Can I use this version for the installation ??

    My iMAC is a 2011 3.4 GHz intel i7 based with a 27in display.  A year ago, I bought a Microsoft win pro 7 64-bit english OEM OS to install over a newly assembled AMD PC.  I never installed it.  Now, I want to put it on my iMAC using either Apple Bootcamp or Parallels.  The win 7 OEM package has a lot of verbage about using an OEM preinstallation kit (OPK) and that it must be preinstalled on the hard drive.  Is it OK to install this win7 version following the Bootcamp instructions.? 
                                          K6JPJ

    Please post in the Boot Camp (not Bootcamp) forum I'm sure someone there can answer your quesiton if no one here is able to.

  • Is it possible to use Boot Camp on a second hard drive?

    I would like to buy a new drive to install which will be used entirely for boot camp. Is it possible to use a second installed drive for Boot Camp?

    Yup, right now I'm running Windows Vista on a second hard drive I installed right when I got my new system.

  • Boot camp on an external hard drive

    Is it possible to use bootcamp and run windows on an external hardrive rather than the built in one with out sacrificing speed. Im looking to get a hard drive for all my windows stuff and I was hoping to be able to run windows straight from it but I understand that alot of them dont run fast enough to support running an operating system. Any suggestions as to a hard drive to look at getting. I'd be looking at something about 100 gigs. The most important thing would be running Vista or xp. Any suggestions? Thanks - Peter

    I belive there might be a way, I just haven't gotten around to trying this out.
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    2) attach this disk to a pc and install the OS
    3) install refit onto your mac
    4) attach the drive via fw800, or even better yet esata, to you mac.
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    this seems, in theory, that it should work. but this would probably be an easier solution:
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    2) install XP onto your internal drive via boot camp.
    3) create a disk image of XP
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    5) install refit onto your mac
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    http://eshop.macsales.com/item/Other%20World%20Computing/MEAQ7320GB16/
    http://refit.sourceforge.net/

  • Boot camp without deleting external hard drive

    Hi,
    the external hard drive im using has 2 partitions. One for Time machine backups and one which I would like to use for Windows/Bootcamp.
    Is there a way to only delete/format the Windows partition without having to delete the partition used for back ups during boot camp?
    thanks

    Loner T wrote:
    Windows on an external drive is officially supported, but you can use this How to run Boot Camp on External Hard Drive?    A TM drive is onto typically used for non-TM purposes either, so please be…
    Auto-correct. .
    It is NOT supported. Windows-to-Go, Winclone or the link I provided are the options that you have.

  • Repairing Boot Camp on a secondary hard drive

    Hi, I managed to install Windows on a partition of a secondary hard drive with Winclone, but I am unable to boot on it.
    Now when i choose windows as startup device i get the "No bootable device --- insert boot disk and press any key" error.
    I played a lot with eFit, rEFind, gptsync and friends, but I did not manage to fix it yet.
    I found a similar thread, but I did not find anything about fixing the MBR for two drives.
    (https://discussions.apple.com/thread/4144252?start=600&tstart=0)
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    Last login: Sat May 11 09:02:53 on console
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    GPT fdisk (gdisk) version 0.8.6
    Partition table scan:
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      BSD: not present
      APM: not present
      GPT: present
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    Command (? for help): p
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    Logical sector size: 512 bytes
    Disk identifier (GUID): 5AB6E84E-2E88-4DE1-9931-03182B67EABE
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    First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 125045390
    Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
    Total free space is 13 sectors (6.5 KiB)
    Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
       1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
       2          409640       123775847   58.8 GiB    AF00  SSD
       3       123775848       125045383   619.9 MiB   AB00  Recovery HD
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    Jolin-M:~ JolinM$ sudo gdisk /dev/disk1
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    Partition table scan:
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      BSD: not present
      APM: not present
      GPT: present
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    Command (? for help): p
    Disk /dev/disk1: 488397168 sectors, 232.9 GiB
    Logical sector size: 512 bytes
    Disk identifier (GUID): 0E0A8E5C-5CA7-4C12-AAA9-C454E9E6ABF1
    Partition table holds up to 128 entries
    First usable sector is 34, last usable sector is 488397134
    Partitions will be aligned on 8-sector boundaries
    Total free space is 1271309 sectors (620.8 MiB)
    Number  Start (sector)    End (sector)  Size       Code  Name
       1              40          409639   200.0 MiB   EF00  EFI System Partition
       2          409640       438299463   208.8 GiB   AF00  Untitled
       3       439570432       488396799   23.3 GiB    0700  BOOTCAMP
    Command (? for help): w
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    has no corresponding GPT partition! You may continue, but this condition
    might cause data loss in the future!
    Final checks complete. About to write GPT data. THIS WILL OVERWRITE EXISTING
    PARTITIONS!!
    Do you want to proceed? (Y/N): n
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    Command (? for help): q

    On reboots, disk0 and disk1 designations can flip around, so it's not reliable to specify them as disk0 and disk1. However, given the information you've given, disk0 (os x) and disk1 (windows), you should only have a protective MBR on disk0, and either a hybrid MBR with partitions 2 3 added for disk1, OR you can just remove the GPT and have an MBR only disk. There's no advantage to using GPT for a disk that's smaller than 2TB, without OS X on it. Way safer to go with MBR only.
    Anyway, you haven't presented the fdisk result for either disk to show the MBR. You've only supplied the GPT information. So you need to do:
    fdisk /dev/disk0
    fdisk /dev/disk1

  • I guess I didn't explaine that I have a healthy operating Windows 8 Boot camp partition on my hard drive. When I upgraded to Mavericks I am no long able to access the bootcamp partition from the disk icon in system preferences; the Windows 8 works fine.

    On both Mini Mac and iMac 27" I am no longer able to utalize the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences; the Windows 8 on Bootcamp partition works fine if I close the Mavericks OX and select the Windows partition at bootup from the hard drive. My question is why don't the icon in System Prederences work anymore since I upgraded to Mavericks. Also, Users & Groups, Printers & Scanners icons no longer work either.

    On both Mini Mac and iMac 27" I am no longer able to utalize the Startup Disk icon in System Preferences; the Windows 8 on Bootcamp partition works fine if I close the Mavericks OX and select the Windows partition at bootup from the hard drive. My question is why don't the icon in System Prederences work anymore since I upgraded to Mavericks. Also, Users & Groups, Printers & Scanners icons no longer work either.

  • Internal Hard Drives Disappeared, Finder Memory Problem

    Hello Helpful Folks,
    I recently installed an addional internal Hard Drive, and an additional 1GB SDRAM. This worked great for a day, but the next morning, after powering up, system was extremely sluggish, and after much deadline-induced impatient problem solving, has gone from bad to worse (system refuses to acknowledge existence of internal Hard Drives). I apologize in advance for the length of this post, but as
    the devil is in the details, I figure too much info is better than not enough.
    Following is a breakdown of my system: AS IT LAST WORKED; RECENT UPGRADES; and MY LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE. Please don't interpret my all caps as shouting, just trying to organize this post for better clarity.
    System is dedicated to Video Editing with FCP 3, running under OS 9.2.2. System is "off the Grid", i.e. no network, no internet, no printer, no gaming devices. System was purchased new in July 2001, by a friend. At one point I know this system had an Airport card, which was removed prior to my purchase in 2003. I can't remember what else it may have had installed in its history, but here's what it has now:
    SYSTEM AS IT LAST WORKED:
    **bold items are upgrades Original Owner or I installed with no apparent problems**
    Power Mac G4 "Quicksilver" 2001
    867 PowerPC G4, 256 L2, 2MB L3
    -1 Stick "ValueRAM - KVR 133 x 64 C3/512" in PC 133 DIMM slot **
    - "Virtual Memory" was turned off years ago due to conflict with FCP 3
    -2 empty DIMM slots
    -1 60 GB internal HD (Maxtor Ultra ATA/100), 1 partition, formatted HFS+, jumpered as "Master" on Internal ATA 2 ID=0 (which as I understand it is ATA/66 speed)
    -1 Pioneer "Superdrive" DVD-R/W/CD-R/W on Internal ATA 0 ID=0
    -NVIDIA GeForce2 MX with 32MB SDRAM in AGP Slot, feeding a 17" Apple Studio Display.
    -PCI Display Card "formacGA7" - not attached to any external device, not sure what its intended purpose is.**
    -3 Empty PCI Slots
    -OEM Keyboard attached to Monitor's rear USB port.
    -Microsoft 3 Button Wheel mouse with "IntelliEye" (wheel is 3rd Button) connected to Keyboard USB port (right side).**
    -2 OEM FireWire (400) ports
    -2 OEM USB (1) ports
    Peripherals that have worked in various configurations with this system over the past 3 years:
    -3 OWC Mercury Elite ("Oxford Chipset") Externally powered, External FireWire(400) 200GB Hard Drives, 1 partition each, formatted HFS+, daisy-chained to either of the FireWire ports.
    -1 Canon GL1 MiniDV camera, attached either to the other FireWire port, or to the last drive in the chain, depending on my urgency/laziness factor. BTW, FCP 3 has worked flawlessly controlling this Cam for logging and Batch Capturing.
    Applications on System Hard Drive that I have OEM CDs for:
    -OS 9.2 - (I think I remember that OS X was removed from system due to conflicts shortly after original purchase)
    -FCP 3
    -DiskWarrior (version unknown, purchased from Alsoft in 2003)
    -OWC Intech Hard Disk SpeedTools ver 3.5
    Other CDs I have:
    OEM CDs for Power Mac G4:
    -Software Install, OS 9.2, CD vers 1
    -Software Install, OS 10.0.4, CD vers 1
    -Software Restore, OS 9.2 & 10.0.4 CDs vers 1, Discs 1-4 of 4.
    -OEM Apple Hardware Test; Power Mac G4, SW vers 1.2.1
    Applications on system Hard Drive that I don't have CDs for, that I rarely use, but I'd like to keep:
    -After Effects 5.0
    -QuickTime Player 6.0.2
    -Toast Audio Extractor 1.1
    -Toast Titanium 5.0.2
    Applications on system Hard Drive I use if my wife is busy on our Windows XP machine:
    -Photshop 6.0
    -Microsoft Word & Excel
    # of other Applications on System Hard Drive I either don't use or may be integral to the system: 260
    # of Control Panels:
    -Enabled: 34
    -Disabled: 0
    # of Extensions:
    -Enabled: 174
    -Disabled: 0
    note: a number of the applications and extensions are for AOL, Quickbooks, Microsoft Money and the like, as well as other things I don't use (Airport, USB printers, Networking, etc.)
    Smart things I did:
    -Regularly made backup copies of my FCP projects to the external drives.
    -Bought a copy of MacDrive so I can see what's on my External Drives on the XP machine.
    -Printed out System Profile before I installed upgrades.
    -Thoroughly searched this discussion board for and gathered as much info as I could before upgrading.
    Dumb things I did:
    -Made a copy, but not a clone, of my System Folder to one of the external drives when I first got it.
    -Didn't keep any sort of separate log of what's on the External Drives.
    -Never ran any sort of Disk Maintenance, even after one of the Externals crashed (DiskWarrior saved my butt on that).
    -Ignored some of the advice on this discussion board.
    Really dumb thing I did without even realizing it:
    Captured all media for a rush job onto my internal system Hard Drive, as well as storing and using massive jpgs for the same job on that same drive...
    Which led to painfully slow rendering times, and crashes caused by "Error: Out of Memory", which I interpreted as "Must buy more memory" and not "must make sure I'm not trying to edit media stored on system drive, especially with massive jpgs that I should reduce"
    RECENT UPGRADES:
    Here's what I did, and how I did it:
    Turned off system, disconnected all External FireWire Devices, disconnected Monitor, opened case, touched various metal parts of case and power supply to discharge any Static, unplugged power cable.
    -Installed 2 512MB sticks of "Lifetime" PC 133 SDRAM; total System RAM is now 1.5GB, all 3 DIMM slots now occupied.
    -Installed 1 Maxtor "DiamondMax" Ultra ATA/133 100GB Hard Drive (8 MB buffer) as "Slave" (no jumper) in top of U-Carrier above System Hard Drive; attached to middle of original Apple ribbon cable, attached available power plug.
    Taped spare jumper to inside of empty drive bay, noting origin and date. Did NOT push PMU button. Carefully closed case. Reconnected Monitor, did NOT reconnect any FireWire devices. Powered System on, but did NOT perform PRAM reset.
    I don't remember the exact order of what happened next, but I think: System booted up normally, a window popped up saying a new drive had been found, would I like to intitialize it?, which I did as Mac OS extended, and then named. If I was instructed to restart, I did so, otherwise did not. Clicked on "about this Mac" and saw that it now showed 1.5GB RAM. I then went about moving Media/Render files off the System drive (and one of the Externals) onto the Internal Drive, with a combination of FCP's Media Manager, and dragging from the Finder. After files had copied, dragged Media/Render files from System Drive to Trash. Opened FCP project, had FCP re-link to new locations of missing files. Saved, closed, and re-opened project, set Capture/Scratch disc to new internal Drive. At some point I changed FCP's Memory Allocation from whatever it was to 512000KB Minimum, and 900000KB Prefered (and I hope I got all those zeroes right). Did NOT restart after changing Memory Allocation, unless a window popped up instructing me to do so, in which case I did. Re-opened my project, rendered a few thing at a noticeably increased speed, saved everything, emptied the Trash, shut everything down, and called it a night as it was 4:30 am.
    A few hours later, I plugged the MiniDV and an External Drive into the FW ports and powered up the System. It was behaving extremely sluggishly. I would click on something, the pointer would turn into a wristwatch (sometimes with the minute-hand moving, sometimes not) and like an actual minute later, what I'd clicked on would open. All three drives were on the desktop, still had their files, and "About this Mac" still showed 1.5GB total Memory. So I powered down, disconnected the FW devices, waited a bit, and powered back up. Same sluggish response. I tried to open my FCP project file, and instead got a Window that said something to the effect of "The Application associated with this document could not be found". I think I tried to open FCP from the Applications folder on the System Drive and got the same message (I'd only had 3 hours sleep, no coffee, my client had died, and his family was coming for whatever I had in a few hours).
    LAME ATTEMPTS AT PROBLEM SOLVING THAT HAVE MADE THINGS WORSE
    Panic had set in, which never solves anything, so I don't remember what order I performed which tasks, between searching for clues in this forum, and convincing myself that that would be faster than trying to compose a question, waiting for a response, etc.
    The first two things I did, and I can't remember which I did first (both from Keyboard Commands during Restart):
    Rebuild Desktop
    PRAM Reset
    Neither of those solved the problem, so I continued.
    I tried restarting without extensions.
    I would get errors that said something like "Not Enough Memory to Open Finder".
    I tried booting from Disc 1 of the Software Restore Disk, which only wanted to destroy my data.
    I tried booting from the OS 10 disk, with the same result.
    I was finally able to boot from the OS 9.2 Software Install Disk, and actually saw both internal drives on the desktop, and the 1.5GB RAM in About this Mac. I tried to allocate more memory to Finder, but was informed that "Cannot Perform Requested Operation. This operation requires versions above 8.0".
    I think at this point I decided that I must have too many extensions, and started disabling ones I thought irrelevent to my cause (mostly anything that said "AOL", "Airport", "Ethernet", "Printer", "Modem", "Speakable", and a couple things called "Open TPT".
    It gets worse. Then I decided to turn off some "unnecessary" things via the control panels, but somehow managed to disable the control panels themselves: AppleTalk, DialAssist, File Sharing, Modem, Mouse (as I saw that Microsoft Mouse was among the others), Remote Access, Speech, USB Printer Sharing, and possibly TCP/IP.
    That certainly didn't help anything (though upon restarting from the OS 9.2 Disc I was able to see the extensions and control panels in their respective "Disabled" folders in the System Folder). But I still wasn't able to get more Memory to Finder.
    So, I decided a few more PRAM resets might help, which succeeded in making both Internal Hard Drives disappear. I tried booting up from the DiskWarrior disc, but even the Mighty DiskWarrior couldn't find the drives. I performed the longer, in depth version of the Apple Hardware Tools tests, which reported that everything's fine (including the new RAM), but made no mention of the Hard Drives at all. The deadline having long passed, I shut the system down. I read through more posts and tech articles, etc.
    I searched my External drives with MacDrive on my XP, and found the drive that has the copy of my System Folder (which shows all extensions and control panels as enabled); not sure if the Quicksilver will boot from that, I don't know what the Keyboard command for booting from a FireWire drive is (if there is one) and the drive itself only has 900MB of free space.
    I can't find any reference to Internal ATA drives anywhere in the MacDrive documentation; if it was possible I'd put them into the XP, get the files off the Mac drives, reformat them and install OS9 from the Discs.
    This is where I am now:
    The Quick Silver is still powered down. I removed the Microsft mouse and replaced it with the OEM Apple mouse. I opened the case, and removed the PRAM/Backup battery (manufacture date: July 2001). Couldn't find my voltmeter, so took the bat to Radio Shack and bought a new one. Had the Radio Shack guy test the old one: it showed 3.69 volts still. Have not installed the new battery yet. The case is still open, waiting for any advice any of you might have to offer.
    Thank you all so much for your patience in perusing and pursuing this.
    Sincerely,
    Patterson
    Power Mac G4 Quicksilver 867   Mac OS 9.2.x   17" Studio Display, 512MB RAM

    Thank you Rodney and John,
    The jumpers are correct for both Maxtor Drives.
    Rodney, you are correct in that the initial problem (slow rendering/"out of Memory" crashes) was caused by my not realizing I'd stupidly captured several GBs of media to my system drive, and not checking which drives those files were on (as I'd assumed I'd put them on one of my external media drives) once that problem presented itself.
    Before I'd determined what I'd done, I bought the extra RAM. After I'd found the media files on the System Drive, and saw that my dedicated media drives were too full to easily move them, I decided to buy an additional Internal drive so that I could:
    -Move the Media onto it relatively quickly and finish my urgent project.
    -Juggle all my media into a more organized fashion for archiving (as most of my projects are on-going long-term affairs)
    -Wipe it, Partition it, and clone my System Drive onto it, as a spare bootable drive in case my OEM System Drive failed.
    Copying the Media files onto the New Drive and moving the System Drive's Media files into the Trash worked great: huge improvement in Rendering, etc.
    Before shutting down for the night I Emptied the Trash, and was pleased with the amount of space I'd freed up on the System Drive.
    My guess is that the System Drive was terribly fragmented, having been subjected to intense use over the past 5 years without any sort of Drive Maintainence, and deleting that massive amount from it in one shot caused my extreme system sluggishness upon Startup the next day.
    My subsequent lame attempts to solve the sluggishnes ultimately resulted in my losing access to both drives.
    Today, I replaced the Backup Battery, pushed the PMU, re-attached the AC, and Powered Up with the case open as per your suggestion.
    It was trying for a few minutes (the gray screen went black at one point, and then returned to gray) before presenting me with the flashing question mark.
    There was, however, a quiet but distinct "buzzing" sound that would alternate: 1 sec "buzz", one second silence, one second "buzz", one second silence, etc. coming from the drives, even after the "?" appeared.
    I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power Cables from the new "Slave" drive, and powered up again, with the exact same results.
    I powered down, removed the Ribbon and Power cables from the original "Master" drive, reinstalled the Jumper on the New Drive as "Master", plugged the End of the Ribbon and the Power cables into the New "Master" drive and powered up. The screen went to the "?" within 20 seconds instead of 4+ minutes, and no more "buzzing".
    I put the Apple Hardware Tools Disk in, ran the "long" test, and everything came out fine.
    I have to abandon this for now, but thanks again for your previous advice, and any more you may have!
    Cheers,
    Patterson

  • Can not shut down late 2011 MacBook Pro and turn it back on again without the hard drive disappearing?

    Ok, I have searched for months for an answer to this question to no avail, probably because no one has experienced it before. I am hoping however that you guys can help me figure this one out cause it is driving me nuts! Also, I am not entirely sure what section of the support I should put this under so if I stick it in the wrong place, I apologize.
    Right now my problem is very simple. When I turn off my laptop, and then try to turn it back on, my internal hard drive disappears... and I get the blinking folder with a question mark on it. I have figured out something interesting however. I have an install disk with Ubuntu Linux on it. If I boot into that first, then RESTART the laptop, not shut down and turn back on, it reads the internal hard drive just fine and I can boot as if there is nothing wrong.
    Second part to the problem... If I allow the laptop in either OSX or Windows to go to sleep (aka shut off the hard drive but the computer remains on), when I attempt to wake it up, I am greeted with the usual log in screen of whichever OS I am in, but is frozen and after a few seconds goes black and restarts the computer to find that... Surprise! The hard drive is gone
    I have tried every trick in the book that I can think of, but can not seem to come up with a solution to the problem... I know when the problem happened and if anyone thinks that that will help them figure this out I will type everything I did up till, including the crash that caused this, and my attempted fixes, but I have class right now so only if you guys want it I will type all that out.
    What I am currently running is:
    2011 MacBook Pro 13in screen
    4Gb of Ram
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