MAC PRO HARD DRIVE won't boot

HARD DRIVE won't boot past APPLE ICON, grey spinning wheel on grey screen. Tried using install discs, no go past the icon.
Replace small battery inside? replace chips? Logic board replace as last resort. Can't take it away from work at this point to an apple tech.
Had just installed updates to snow leopard and was successful...but went to restart it...and this crap happened.
Thanks for any help.
MT1111
< Edited by Host >

I'll try that tomorrow. Thinking it could also be:
1) The PRAMM battery. found info on that they can wear out close to 5 years. This MAC PRO is close to that now. And I use a lot of power on it.
2) MAC PRO is plugged into a SURGE PROTECTOR, instead of right into the wall outlet.
3) Been doing a lot of FORCE QUITS and HARD BOOT -- unplugging it directly when it wouldn't shut down soon enough -- lately this past year.
I just assumed that this MAC PRO with the XEON QUAD CORE etc., was a heavy duty enough NLE,
that i wouldn't have these problems. It's not fully loaded with all the chips it can carry...and I don't have near enough external terabyte hard drives for storing video and audio files to edit. I've been storing wayyy too much
on the internal hard dives and just have to stop that.
I noticed these past few days that much of the LETTERING for hard drive icons and folders' titles
were starting to look in OVERLAPPING of the lettering. That was my first hint that something was up.

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High quality while inexpensive work perfectly. 4% hit (but then use 8 DIMMs and you get 17% boost too).
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I've had my MP just a few months, and like you I've filled the drive bays in no time.
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ChronoSync - This I use for everything else, work in progress & archives etc - During and towards the end of my jobs (I'm a photographer), I will use ChronoSync to perform perfectly synced Backups to external FW800 D2s and will soon be purchasing a NewerTech Voyager Q to facilitate the use of bare HDs for rotational backups.
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I'll try that tomorrow. Thinking it could also be:
1) The PRAMM battery. found info on that they can wear out close to 5 years. This MAC PRO is close to that now. And I use a lot of power on it.
2) MAC PRO is plugged into a SURGE PROTECTOR, instead of right into the wall outlet.
3) Been doing a lot of FORCE QUITS and HARD BOOT -- unplugging it directly when it wouldn't shut down soon enough -- lately this past year.
I just assumed that this MAC PRO with the XEON QUAD CORE etc., was a heavy duty enough NLE,
that i wouldn't have these problems. It's not fully loaded with all the chips it can carry...and I don't have near enough external terabyte hard drives for storing video and audio files to edit. I've been storing wayyy too much
on the internal hard dives and just have to stop that.
I noticed these past few days that much of the LETTERING for hard drive icons and folders' titles
were starting to look in OVERLAPPING of the lettering. That was my first hint that something was up.

Hello, I have a early 2008 Mac Pro and it won't boot even with SL DVD

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unplugged all peripherals
tried to force DVD boot holding C (checked disc for errors on SL iMac)
removed all HDDs and rebooted holding C, plus a combination of having some in/ some out.
removed first DVD-ROM and used second drive
removed second DVD-ROM and used first drive
held shift during startup
held option during startup
removed graphics card
put HDDs back in with GFX card out, plus combinations
put only the boot drive HDD in (not time machine or 3rd HDD)
put blank HDD in and booted DVD
put mac formatted (used iMac to format) HDD in and booted with DVD
used an G4 USB keyboard again for all of the above
All of this has not worked so I am stuck with what to do. It was all working fine a couple of days ago. At the time it randomly shut down I was trying to use Boot Camp to create a Windows 7 area, but I made sure it was using the 3rd HDD I had put in the machine a couple of days before so it shouldn't be interfering with normal operations. I had also formatted it to NTFS earlier but reformatted it on the Mac Pro to Mac OS Extended - I don't know if this is even relevant.
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Go to System Profile and look, does it say "MacPro3,1"?
That is 2008.
FBDIMM would be 800MHz. Did you use older slower 667MHz in yours?
You can but take a hit in performance.
Sounds like MacPro1,1.
Mac Pro (3.0GHz quad core (dual CPUs) 8GB 667 RAM)
In 2007 March an 8-core 3GHz did come out 2,1.
So just to be clear.
===========
It was all working fine a couple of days ago. At the time it randomly shut down I was trying to use Boot Camp to create a Windows 7 area,
Whenever you want to install Windows, remove all the drives other than the one Windows goes to. And if you use a dedicated drive YOU DO NOT NEED Boot Camp Assist, unless you use XP, which really is limited and crippled (one processor, 1.9GB RAM support).
And when it freezes, your only choice is to nuke (reformat) and restore or get out that backup CLONE you made before (ie, Step #1 in the Boot Camp Guide).
Sure that whole NTFS / MBR / GUID could be an issue, but you should just have a blank drive or clone.
No don't bother Apple, they seem to not have a good sense about Windows on Mac Pro anyway.
Other than zap pram from cold boot / tried booting with NO drives inside and just 10.6. DVD - should be fine.
You should be fine iwth Windows 7 DVD and one drive, or even XP.
Make sure you take your time and reconnect cards etc properly and any cables.
Booting from OS X DVDs may not work if there is a drive with a totally shot directory or partition table. Put them in FW case and turn on AFTER OS X is booted.
Why aren't people Cloning as a Backup Strategy
Carbon Copy Cloner 3.4.2
How To clone

MacBook pro hard drive, moving external boot to internal

Hi, everyone!
Please pardon my ignorance, I'm not a regular Apple user, except for my iPad.
I'm currently in Malawi helping missionaries with computer issues and other technical things. One of the missionaries purchased a MacBook pro and had it shipped over here but when he received it the hard drive was bad. He tried to fix it himself and ripped the data cable in the process. A guy in a computer shop here took his new drive and installed it in an enclosure and installed OSX on it. I brought over a new data cable and we are trying to boot from it internally now, but all I get is the Apple logo with the spinning logo beneath it. It does that for about 30 seconds or so the stops there. I tried to boot while holding down the option key and choosing that drive but I get the same result.
Is there something else I need to do to get this to boot? Or is this not possible?
Thanks in advance!
Rick

You, or someone else is going to have to take that ailing drive out of the computer. Your best bet is to take LowLuster's advice, take the drive out and connect it to the working mac and see what you can rescue.
It is not a good idea to keep trying to use a drive that is on its last legs. Just hope it will work one more time when it is correctly hooked up to the good Mac.

Mac Pro 1.1 won't boot.

So I got this tower from a friend because he said it was defective and I thought I could do something with it. He kept the hard drive so I got one from a recent Imac (640gig with OSX 10.6.5 installed).
I know already that there is a problem with the video card as there are some colored shapes all over when starting it. I hear the Apple chime and the little spinning circle goes on forever or the dark curtain comes down and tells me to restart the computer.
I'm unable to boot from install disk (dark curtain comes down).
I am however able to safe boot (not sure what to do with that).
Could all this be because of the video card?? I'm willing to eventually change the video card but want to make sure that the computer will work properly. I don't want to dish out 200$ and then be told that I need a new logic board.
Thanks in advance for helping out,
Adam

two thoughts:
the hard drive if pulled from an older Mac is most likely not formatted to be acceptable to that intel mac pro. Example, if the hard drive was pulled from a G5 tower then that hard drive must be reformatted.
Secondly, the "dark curtain" means something is not compatible with the Mac Pro. If the video card is a third party add-in then suspect it. Also any third party add-in can cause a kernel panic such as an optical drive, incompatible ram. Maybe you need to review or interview the previous owner. Ask the proper questions and tart from there.
Take that Mac pro back to its original state as best you can then do the evaluation.

Mac Pro Hard Drive Problems

Okay heres my problem-
The other day I started up my mac pro and got the blinking folder with the question mark on it. After about an hour of resetting the PRAM, and booting up several times from the Mac OS X disk and running the disk utility only to find my boot drive not there, I gave up. The next day I started up my Mac from the CD and ran the disk utility and my hard drive was there! I verified the disk and the hard drive is working normally, but I will still only be able to boot onto it about 50% of the time. Any suggestions?

Just want to make sure this is correct:
When I run Disk Utility it shows my boot drive as:
Mount Point: /.
Format: Mac OS Extended (Journaled)
The reason I ask this is because my second hard drive shows the mount point as /Volumes/Video so I don't know which is the correct one.

Mac Pro Hard Drive Setup

Hi,
I am waiting delivery of a mac pro dual quad 2.8 and I am getting a 500GB option in bay 1
I am ordering 2 x Samsung (finger crossed) F1 1TB drives (Bay 2 and Bay 3).
My main use will be for producing music which will therefore run plug-ins instruments, effects, work with audio files...
*Would a setup like this be ok?*
*_Setup A_*
500GB Drive 1 = System and other applications (e.g. Logic Pro, virtual insrtuments, other apps)
1TB Drive 2 = Audio library (Samples, sounds from virtual instruments many GBs large, etc... )
1TB Drive 2 = all sort of stuff from scratch disk to personal family files like photos, movies, music, etc...)
Will then use external Hard Drive to back up stuff I don't want to lose
*_Setup B_*
500GB Drive 1 = System (too large for just system)
1TB Drive 2 = Applications
1TB Drive 3 = Data (audio files, audio library, personal photos-movies-music, etc...)
*_Other option?_*
If I want to have a dual but with Windows XP... will I be able to just add another Drive (Internal/External) for a d*ual boot start up?*
Thanks for any help
Message was edited by: TC_MACPRO
Message was edited by: TC_MACPRO

Either configuration should work fine. It's really entirely up to you. However, I note in your proposed configuration that there's no provision for backups. Since your work is obviously valuable to you, then you need a backup plan. Unfortunately, given what you will have there's only room for one more drive which can have a maximum size of 1.5 TBs. Not large enough to back up 2.5 TBs of extant capacity. I suggest you give some thought to the backup plan. You could use external Firewire drives for backup. Or you could make use of the two additional SATA drives that can be installed outside of the four existing bays. Unfortunately, there's not much room in the Mac Pro to install the drives internally.
Basic Backup
Get an external Firewire drive at least equal in size to the internal hard drive and make (and maintain) a bootable clone/backup. You can make a bootable clone using the Restore option of Disk Utility. You can also make and maintain clones with good backup software. My personal recommendations are (order is not significant):
1. Retrospect Desktop (Commercial - not yet universal binary)
2. Synchronize! Pro X (Commercial)
3. Synk (Backup, Standard, or Pro)
4. Deja Vu (Shareware)
5. Carbon Copy Cloner (Donationware)
6. SuperDuper! (Commercial)
7. Intego Personal Backup (Commercial)
8. Data Backup (Commercial)
The following utilities can also be used for backup, but cannot create bootable clones:
1. Backup (requires a .Mac account with Apple both to get the software and to use it.)
2. Toast
3. Impression
4. arRSync
Apple's Backup is a full backup tool capable of also backing up across multiple media such as CD/DVD. However, it cannot create bootable backups. It is primarily an "archiving" utility as are the other two.
Impression and Toast are disk image based backups, only. Particularly useful if you need to backup to CD/DVD across multiple media.
Visit The XLab FAQs and read the FAQs on maintenance, optimization, virus protection, and backup and restore. Also read How to Back Up and Restore Your Files.
Although you can buy a complete FireWire drive system, you can also put one together if you are so inclined. It's relatively easy and only requires a Phillips head screwdriver (typically.) You can purchase hard drives separately. This gives you an opportunity to shop for the best prices on a hard drive of your choice. Reliable brands include Seagate, Hitachi, Western Digital, Toshiba, and Fujitsu. You can find reviews and benchmarks on many drives at Storage Review.
Enclosures for FireWire and USB are readily available. You can find only FireWire enclosures, only USB enclosures, and enclosures that feature multiple ports. I would stress getting enclosures that use the Oxford chipsets (911, 921, 922, for example.) You can find enclosures at places such as;
Cool Drives
OWC
WiebeTech
Firewire Direct
California Drives
NewEgg
All you need do is remove a case cover, mount the hard drive in the enclosure and connect the cables, then re-attach the case cover. Usually the only tool required is a small or medium Phillips screwdriver.

Mac Pro Hard Drive Setup Question

Mr. FedEx brought me my Mac Pro today and I'm getting ready to set it up. I'm migrating from a PowerBook G4 17 inch and got the Mac Pro 3.0 GHz, 8 GB RAM, and four 500 GB hard drives. I figure I should do a freash install of Aperture instead of using the Migration Wizard. The question for the night is, how should I handle the four hard drives? Out of the box I see four seperate hard drives labled Macintosh HD. For Aperture, should I use software raid across all four drives or only three leaving the OS drive by itselft for applications?
Mac Pro Mac OS X (10.4.7)

Sure you can... I got a Raid 0 on two 300Gb drives on my boot drive... They host the OS and my apps.
The trick is that its got to be a fresh install. You boot with your hardware giag disk and in the menu you have the disk utility. Create the RAID setup and then quit. You can now boot the disk with the OS install and it will recognize it as such.
Now - a few things to consider. Next version of OS X has Time Machine that that expects a volume (a disk, the whole disk) for it to work. So it would be cool if you find out about it and sort of prepare for it.
Having said that I would Raid0 two pairs and Raid1 the two. This is called Raid 1+0 or Raid 10. Its a good compromise but if drive 1 AND 3 fail then there is no backup. I would also get an external firewire disk (say 300Gb or 500Gb) and use it as a vault. But that is because I can't think of running the machine with a full backup of what I got, still not a perfect solution.
The way I got it is using Raid 0 on my OS and Apps (600Gb) with an external Firewire disk for backup. (no Raid 0 - so there is no statistical odds to beat)
Apeture has two drives. Two Firewire 800 (1Tb) drives, one the library and the other is the vault. The vault also stores the deleted images, so you will have to clean every now and then or it will grow faster than your library.
http://www.terraoptica.com

MAC PRO HARD DRIVE won't boot

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