Hard Drive not visible during install.

I recently tried to turn on my G4 and got just a white screen. So I assumed it was the hard drive. I installed a new Hard drive. Put in my Leopard disk and the drive is not visible. I went into Disk Utility to format it, if needed. It was not visible there either.
Out of suspicion, I plugged in the old HD into a different mac via USB and my data is there and visible.
What could the problem be? I went back and double checked all of the cables.

I know it's a pain to take out just to test, however, did you plug the new drive into the other system via USB to see if it's recognized also?
Usually in this situation, it's a cable problem. Either a cable is not seated completely, or in rarer cases, there's a problem with a cable itself. Since the old drive is visible to the other system, you may have another issue going on, like a logic board problem. I'd want to run the Apple hardware test. On the gray OS X system CDs that came with your system, find the one that says 'AHT Version x.x', insert it, reboot, and choose the extended test when prompted. Either of the TechTool programs can do similar testing.
By the way, your sig says you have Snow Leopard 10.6.3 installed, which is impossible on a Powerbook. Leopard 10.5.8 is the last operating system release available today for Powerbooks.

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Hi,
Whether the hard disk is recognized in BIOS?
Connect it to another computer to see if it could be recognzied incase the cause is the disk itself. Also please check if it is really a RAID instead of a single hard disk - a single disk should be recognized directly while RAID cannot be recognized until
a suitable driver is installed.
Please remember to mark the replies as answers if they help and un-mark them if they provide no help. If you have feedback for TechNet Support, contact [email protected]

External hard drive not visible on Mac Mini

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Hard Drive not detected during installation

Hello everyone,
I am brand new to this Mac Forum, and I am hoping you can assist a colleague of mine who has a Hardware issue with his Mac.
It is a Power Mac G4 and one day he started having issues booting into the MacOS, but after several re-boots it would be okay, and then it didn't want to know at all, so he asked me to take a look at it.
My knowledge of Mac's is fairly basic, but I am familiarish with the Hardware, so I tried installing the Drive on another I.D.E. Cable and channel, re-seated the Memory, but it made no difference. So I assumed it was a dead Hard Drive?
However, he purchased a 120Gb WD (previous one being an 80Gb I.B.M.Deskstar), and I went around to his office to install it - same problem?!
Basically the installation gets as far as agreeing to the Licence Agreement, then we get the dialogue box where you select the destination for the Hard Drive, but there's nothing in there.
My guess is a faulty Motherboard, yet the CD Drive is still detected, obviously, for the boot to take place from the installation disk!?
Is there any BIOS I can access to make sure the Mac is detecting the Hard Drive properly?
Please help if you can, it would be much appreciated.
Cheers,
Nathan.

Hello again,
Thanks very much for your replies.
My colleague would be very reluctant to purchase a Controller Card for his Mac, particularly whilst I still have strong suspicious about the Motherboard.
I did follow the link in Rodney Cullings reply, but that isn't quite the issue.
It is a brand new Hard Drive, purchased from Jigsaw, and therefore I would assume unformattted; however we cannot use the Disk Utility to format it because there is no Hard Drive detected in the "Select a destination drive" in the first place!
Hence my question about the B.I.O.S., because in a situation like this on a P.C., the first thing I'd do (if Windows hadn't detected the Hard Drive) is check the B.I.O.S., because if it isn't in there, it's either Jumpers - which I've already tried - or a dead Hard Drive.
I have installed the newer drive in a P.C., and the B.I.O.S. did actually detect it.
So, any other ideas please people?
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Help unable to install OS X as hard drive not visible in internet recovery mode

Hi
I have a MacBook Pro
During use my screen froze and I had to force quit. Since then I have tried the following:
Turning on in safe mode
Internet recovery - no mac hd or partition recovery drive are visible in disk utility only OS X base system
Unable to install maverick as there's no disc visible to select
If I try to verify the start up disc is greyed out
Starting up with cmd r
Tried to reset PRAM
Start up disc does not display anything
ALL TO NO AVAIL, is the hard drive defunct or is there anything else I can try ?
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See this thread, this is 3rd regarding recovery/restore - as a starting point.
Obviously it is easier if you have a couple backups, a drive you can use, and don't mind erasing the internal drive.
It is a lot easier then. And it would be easier if you didn't have a notebook. This forum is not MacBook Pro but the tower or workstation.
https://discussions.apple.com/message/25145113?tstart=0#25145113

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I mac user for 2 years, have a Lacie 2big Thunderbolt external hard drive for my photo catalogue.
Always connected but with the old operating system had to manually switch on and off with blue light button. fine.
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I would start by doing a SMC reset, could take 2-3 attempts. If those do not work then restart in Safe Mode and check and if that does not work try different cables.
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Hard drive not visible

Hello,
My Hard Drive I use for Time Machine does not show up anymore on my Desktop suddenly.
It is visible under disk utility but does not show up in finder , nor in /Volumes.
In disk utility it stays greyed out as being not activated
When tryin to activate it, it indicates I should repair the harddrive.
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I had recently "lost" my drive owing to a corrupted catalogue tree caused by a failing RAM chip. Had to boot up from an external drive, run diskwarrior to see the hd again, back up everything, then re-install the operating system.
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External hard drive not visible in disk utility or finder

Hi all,
I have had a good look through previous discussions and I can't seem to find an issue relevant to mine.
My external hard drive has 2 partitions (1 time machine back up, 1 general hard drive). The issue is that the HD is running when it is plugged in however it is not visible in either disk utility or finder.
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An update for anyone who can help me:
I have tried the external hard drive in other computers (mac and windows), each time I get the same problem above.
I have removed the HD from the enclosure and purchased a docking station for it (3.5" SATA). When I plug it in to the laptop it disconnects itself straight away before it is visible. With the windows computers it installs the drivers and says that the device is ready to use, then disconnects before it shows up.
As the HD is not visible there is no option to re-format or anything.
This is very frustrating as I was using the HD with no issues and it randomly disconnected and I have not been able to access since.
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Unplugging worked!!!
I have no idea what PRAM is but someone said that unplugging your computer resets it so, I thought I'd give unplugging a shot. So, I shut down my computer and unplugged it. I also unplugged the power on the HD. (because I wasn't sure which one they were talking about.)
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Hey, I'm trying.
WD website says:
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http://wdc.custhelp.com/app/answers/detail/a_id/1708/session/L2F2LzEvdGltZS8xMzc 3NDczNDE5L3NpZC9pWWl1a0h5bA%3D%3D

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Hi everyone,
My Wester Digital 2TB external hard drive has disappeared, so to speak, with all my photos. I work as a freelance photographer. Mostly on Lightroom 5.6
When I plug it in, with firewire, I can feel the disk rotating normally however it does not appear in finder or disk utility.
I've tried using a USB cable, restarting my mac, forced restart, changing firewire ports (HD has 2 ports), plugging the HD into a different laptop and nothing.
Ive also searched Finder prefrences and visibility is enabled.
I have no idea what could have caused this as I was using the HD the night before. I didnt pullout without properly ejecting. Maybe the HD is full or almost, but I dont think that would the cause of these troubles.
I'm using a late 2011 Macbook Pro OS X 10.9.4
Any suggestions??
Thanx

An update for anyone who can help me:
I have tried the external hard drive in other computers (mac and windows), each time I get the same problem above.
I have removed the HD from the enclosure and purchased a docking station for it (3.5" SATA). When I plug it in to the laptop it disconnects itself straight away before it is visible. With the windows computers it installs the drivers and says that the device is ready to use, then disconnects before it shows up.
As the HD is not visible there is no option to re-format or anything.
This is very frustrating as I was using the HD with no issues and it randomly disconnected and I have not been able to access since.
Thanks in advance for any help.
Bruce

External hard drive not visible in Finder, but is operating

iMac, 2 Gb RAM, Snow Leopard 10.6.4.
It has 4 external USB drives attached through a powered hub. All of a sudden, after about a year, one of them no longer shows up in ‘Finder’. However, all four drives have an icon on the desktop. The drive is visible and verifiable in ‘Disk Utility’. Double clicking the desktop icon opens the drive and I can copy a file from it. iTunes can see it. From a Macbook’s ‘Finder’, over WiFi, I can see and copy files to and from the drive. Finder Preferences shows nothing amiss. I’ve shut down and restarted the iMac several times with no change. The drive just does not show up in Finder on the host iMac.
Searching this forum has not helped. Any suggestions?
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Well, this is embarrassing. A suggestion from an older thread on Macrumors.com called "Hard Drive does not appear in Finder / Desktop", solved this problem. Simply drag the missing drive icon from the desktop to Finder! Perseverance and different search wording AND reading a lot of stuff pays off.
If other's problem is not solved with this fix, you might benefit from this 10.5-based thread. They also mention an Apple 10.5 fix. Both URL's below.
The op's problem was that the drive did not appear in Finder OR the desktop but was operational. There was a lot of in-depth information with this fix embedded.
Thanks for the interest and suggestions.
Max
http://forums.macrumors.com/archive/index.php/t-209905.html
http://support.apple.com/kb/TA25203?viewlocale=en_US

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See Pondini's TM FAQs.
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External Hard Drive not working after installing mavericks

After installing mavericks, I hooked up my external hard drive,
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Should I uninstall the ntfs software which is a few years
old and instal a newer version?
Looking for a solution which doesn't involve reformatting my nearly full
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I think I have version 10.8.6 of mavericks, not 10.9.

Hard Drive not visible during install.

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