Mac mini hd swap cant boot off disk?

Question

i changed my hardrive on my mini and tried to boot from the original tiger disk but it shows no hd..im new to mac but it would appear this is an easy fix,i did the utility at startup and everything passed any help would be greatly appreciated

Answer 1

There may be a defective cable to the hard disk drive, and/or the jumper pins
on the drive may be incorrectly set for the adaptation or application of that
drive to your computer; these are physical reasons why a new hard disk drive
may be invisible to the booted Installer's Disk Utility and therefore unable to
be formatted and readied for a proper installation of an OS to the hard drive.
{In the second screen after booting the computer from the Installer disc
(holding C key down after putting disc in optical drive bay) you should
note there is a Finder-like menu bar with drop down click-on menu items
that can launch them if selected; and Disk Utility is in there. You have to
use this utility's options to choose a drive to format. If it is not connected
properly to the hardware chassis or is otherwise defective, it won't be seen.}
Is your computer an Intel-based Mini or does it have a PowerPC (G4) CPU?
There is a difference in the type of hard disk drive utilized in the Intel-based
computers, generally speaking; these would be SATA (serial-ATA) and the
PowerPC G3/G4 models would use PATA/IDE (parallel-ATA) type drives.
The connection ends & other factors are different - they won't interchange.
And there are several specs of ATA drive, so a modern one should work OK.
The general upgrade or replacement of a hard drive is fairly straightforward
but something may have been missed, or a wire defective in the transition.
Changing internal hard disk - Mac Mini G4:
http://www.sterpin.net/uk/ddMacMiniuk.htm
How to upgrade RAM - How to upgrade/replace Hard Drive - in Mac Mini G4:
http://www.everymac.com/systems/apple/mac_mini/faq/mac-mini-g4-upgrade-processor -memory-hard-drive.html#drive
(I see now you've listed the Mini in the signature line, it is a PowerPC; by
using MacTracker, this is confirmed as a G4; so the drive would be ATA.)
If the connections and cable are OK, and the drive pins set properly for the
application or configuration the drive is supposed to work in, and it is the
correct type of drive; maybe there is something else amiss in this situation.
Hope for the best, plan for the worst...
Good luck & happy computing!
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