Wont recognize internal Hard Drive

About a month ago, I ran CleanSweep on my wife's Powerbook G4. Big mistake! I started having all sorts of problems that hadn't occurred before that. I had to format the drive and reinstall Mac OSX Leopard. Last week we setup the Powersaving settings for the computer to stay awake because in the middle of watching movies on our Apple TV, the computer would go to sleep and the movie would stop playing. The next day I woke the screen from sleeping, but the screensaver was frozen. I had to do a hard reset (hold down the power button). When I tried to startup the computer, the startup disc was not found. I booted from the CD, but didnt think to fix permissions, or verify disk. I decided to restore her from Timemachine. We had an appointment to go to, so I left the restore running. When we got back I noticed that the restore froze at 36.9gb. I had to do another hard reset. I then decided that it needed a clean reformat, and complete Leopard install. I had to go to work so I left the install running. When I got home I noticed that the computer was asleep. I thought the install was complete. It wasn't! I couldn't wake the computer up, so I had to do another hard reset. Now its the weekend, and I can devote full attention to the install, but the computer wont bootup from the Leopard CD. It dosent recognize its own hard drive, so during the bootup the apple appears, then a caution sign (circle with a line in the middle) I just sits there after that with the gear turning under the caution sign.
Here are some things that I know its not.
Crashed Hard drive - My MacBook Pro recognizes the harddrive when I firewire over to the Powerbook via the disk utility , It can even format it and write to it.
PMU Reset - Tried that
Bad Leopard Disc - Ran the Disc on my PowerBook when it was Firewired to my MacBook Pro.
Optical drive on the Powerbook - The Macbook Pro can boot from the Leopard CD when it is in the Powerbook, and firewired over.
Hard Drive Cable - Same as first issue. The MacBook recognizes the Hard Drive so, if the cable was damaged, this would not be the case.
Has anyone experienced this, and can anyone help?

Oh, I also formated the hard drive from my MBP. I wrote 0's on the entire drive. I don't mind doing any formating because I have a TimeMachine backup.

Similar Messages

So I formatted a brand new hard drive to MAC OS (Journal), I then could save on the hard drive. Not two days later Im back at square one, the program wont recognize the hard drive again.

So, hard to beleive, but I am having some trouble with Final Cut Pro X.
This last week I formatted a brand new hard drive to MAC OS (Journal),
so that I could save on that hard drive.
Well it went great.
I saved my project on there and copied a few others over as to free up space on my Laptop.
Then, not two days later Im back at square one,
the program wont recognize the hard drive.
It wont even open the events up off my hard drive,
as to jog the program into reqcognizing the scratch disk (which worked twice before).
What happened?
How do I get the program to re-recongize my newly formatted hard drive?
Please help!

The name of the drive, or the name of some folders inside the drive, may fool FCP X into believing it is a camera.
Also, you should not use the drive for time machine backups.

Will not recognize internal hard drive

I have a strange problem with a 2009 MacBookPro. It started acting "strange" for the user over the past few months. By "strange" I mean it would freeze, or fail to boot, or sometimes even restart without any reason. Now, it gets even stranger. Tried the standard things, RAM reseat, replace, check for loose connectors etc. It would fail to boot when the hard drive was connected internally. Then it would give a kernal panic and fail to even recognize a hard drive as being installed. Did a PRam reset, SMC reset and even the power off/control key to try to reset the open firmware. No sucess with anything. This is a suystem with an internal battery.
Yet, when using this exact same hard drive on an external USB drive connection, it would boot fine. Next tried it in Terminal mode to boot up another MBP. Failed to boot. When the 2nd MBP was booted from its internal drive and the suspect machine was plugged in as a Firewire (Terminal mode on "strange" computer) an External Firewire Drive appeared on the desktop, then a few seconds later, an identical copy of the first Ext FW drive appeared. This went on with evenbtually six copies of the one single Terminal booted hard drive appearing on the desktop of the second computer. None of the six drives would open or even allow any indiccation of what they contained.
Tried to partition the hard drive when it was put back into the internal slot but it would not unmount and failed to partition. The same thinmg happened when trying to erase it. Connected the hard drive via USB to a Windows 7 machine and used it to erase both the Recovery and Main partitions from the ard drive. Both were erased but the EFI partition could not be erased or cleaned. Put this same hard drive, as an external USB, into a very old XP machine and there the EFI partition was removed when a "Clean" command was sent via command line.
I then took the, now totally erased hard drive, and put it back into the computer as an internal drive and booted the computer from a 10.8 USB stick so I could partition the now empty hard drive. The drive was not even recognized as being present. Did the same thing, but using the USB external connection for that same hard drive. It partitioned and then formatted with 10.8.1 (what was on the USB stick). After the OS was installed, the computer would boot using this newly created OS when connected as an external USB drive. Put the drive back in as the internal drive. Got a Kernal Panic. Forced shutdown and retried. Noi kernal Panic but drive was not even recognized. Pulled the drive from internal and put it back into the external USB and tried booting. System would not recognize the drive as even being present.
I then erased and cleaned the drive in the XP machine again and then, using the USB connection on the second computer reinstalled 10.8 from the USB. When I tried the now newly created software again, the same thing happened as listed above. 2nd machine booted fine on the drive as a USB, "Strange" machine booted fine using the drive as an external USB, Kernal Panicked then would not be recognized in the "Strange" machine.
It appears that when the drive is connected internally. it not only does not have the OS software recognized but will rewrite something in the drive that makes it impossible to be recognized by any Apple. My first thought was that the EFI partition was corrupted somehow so that was why I tried cleaning the EFI partition along with the other two partitions. But even with a new EFI and other partitions, the drive was not useable once it was used to try to boot as an internal drive in the suspect computer.
Now here I am dropping into speculation mode. My guess is that something in the very basic ROM (Pram?) that recognizes a hard drive is in the internal slot and tries to get to the EFI instead fails and in the process it screws up the EFI (or maybe even an address table?) in the hard drive. If it recognizes that there is no internal hard drive, it will happily boot from either a USB stick, a USB connected external hard drive or a Firewire/Terminal mode computer connected to it.
Sounds like a motherboard problem but I am wondering if it is possible to "flash" the very basic ROM that is at the start of the process back to factory default or maybe just replace the chip if it is the same one used as part of the Firmware password protection system.
Anyone have any other ideas or thoughts about possible solutions or at least a way to definitely identify what the problem's cause?

Answer has been found. The internal drive SATA cable was replaced and the system is now working correctly.

Macbook Won't Recognize Internal Hard Drive

When my Macbook starts up I either get a grey screen or a flashing folder with question mark. It will not recognize the internal hard drive. After researching, I'ved tried everything out there. Opening in safe mode, reseting NVRAM, booting from Lion install USB flash drive. The internal hard drive just will not show up anywhere, even in disk utility. Answers I've found:
1. A key is stuck pressed down
Slap the keyboard a bit to dislogde any keys
2. Test Internal HD
Test by taking to genius bar and they will test HD for you
or test yourself by getting SATA cable to USB and connect to another Macbook. (Make sure you get the right cable, mine is SATA3 to USB 2.0).
3. If Internal HD is Dead
Buy new Internal HD (Solid State or SATA) - Crucial seems to be the best website. Note, you'll most likely have to do a fresh install of your operating system.
Installation tutorials are online, it's really easy.
4. If internal hard drive is not dead, then it could be a bad SATA cable.
I recomend getting someone else to replace this although there are tutorials online.
5. Top Case may need replacing (see #1) Not very likely, but very easy to do yourself, you can find them online around $120
I'll have an update tomorrow. Oh, and a screw is also stripped so it may take awhile to get out.
My specs: Macbook 2.16Ghz Part No.MB158LL/A (Black)

When a hard drive fails to appear in Disk Utility that usually means the drive has failed. I really don't understand the purpose of the rest of your post. I don't even know what the question is, but I'm guessing you want to know if the drive should be replaced. The answer would be, "Yes."

Pavilion G7 wont recognize new hard drive

My old samsung 640 gig hard drive was failing in my G7laptop I bought in 2012. I bought a replacement 500 gig drive that was similar as the old one. After installing it and trying to run the HP supplied recovery discs it wont recognize the new drive. It starts to boot from the disc and then about 2 minutes later a a little window pops up that says no HDD installed and then shuts off. I boot into BIOS and try to run a HDD scan and it says no HDD installed. To troubleshoot to make sure the motherboard or SATA cable isn't bad I reinstalled my old HDD and was able to go into the HP UEFI and scan the old hard drive so that can't be the problem if it can recognize my old drive . I tried calling tech support and all I get is them trying to sell me a HP supplied drive which I don't need because in my technical mind there should be no difference in the drives. They are both SATA 3 and therefore compatible. Please help!

Thanks mbutler1981. Advance Format drives shouldn't be a problem for this computer, it is older one that you can run into issues with.
So basically you are trying to get the drive to be recognized by the BIOS. First verify the physical connections are solid, and in place.
The next thing to do when the new drive is connected is to perform a hard reset: Performing a Hard Reset or Forced Reset
If you are unable to see the drive in the BIOS, verify that you have the latest version of BIOS using this for guidance:
Update the BIOS. If it is lower than version F.26 then you can update it: HP Notebook System BIOS Update (AMD Processors) Version F.26
If you are still having problems with this drive in this computer, the problem is either the drive itself, or a compatibility issue. The manufacturer of the drive might be able to confirm the final diagnosis.
TwoPointOh
I work on behalf of HP
Please click “Accept as Solution ” if you feel my post solved your issue, it will help others find the solution.
Click the “Kudos, Thumbs Up" on the bottom to say “Thanks” for helping!

G5 DP 2.0 wont recognize new hard drive

I just installed a new Western Digital 750GB SATA hard drive into my G5 DP2.0 tower and it wont recognize it at all. Ive checked and double checked the connections and I can verify that the drive is powering up but the system profiler wont even see it, and neither will disk utility or my Tiger installation DVD. Did I just get unlucky and get a bad drive or am I completely missing something here?
Message was edited by: iGhost

Hi iGhost-
They don't make it too easy do they?
I found this regarding jumper settings: Western Digital Support.
A bit ambiguous but I am fairly certain you want that jumper enabled. In that drawing they call it OPT1
Luck-
-DaddyPaycheck

DV8000 Hard drive issue - wont recognize the hard drives

This is my first post so please let me know if I do anything wrong!
Ok so the other day I was working on my dv8000 when it just powered down. I turned it back on and instead of booting properly it told me that it could not find the operating system. Knowing that the machine had two drives in it, I swapped the primary with the secondary and still got the same result. I then went out and bought an external drive bay and attached the primary hard drive to my desktop. The drive was bad and kept cycling the heads. I have now bought a brand new hard drive and the laptop is currently configued with the new drive in the primary slot and the other original hard dirve that I checked and is good in the second slot. Here is my problem - when I go into the bios the computer recognizes the two hard drives for boot options but when I try to load XP from a cd to the laptop, it tells me that there are no hard drives installed... what am I missing? I have checked the drive for errors via the bios and the test come back passed. I thought about formating the drives but the the bios does not have a format feature in it that I can tell. for all intense and purposes, the bios sees the drives but the operating system does not. Any ideas>
Please help as this is my business machine and I cant keep borrowing my wifes laptop, she thinks I am gonna break that one too!
Thank you.
This question was solved.
View Solution.

That did it! I had to turn off the Native Sata Drive support in the Bios! now the machine is up and running. HP has told me that I need to purchase a replacement drive from them as the replacement drive that I bought from my local store does not have the HP restore partition on it. I can still access the original drive and I do see that it does still have the HP restore partition on it. is there a way to just create a partition on the new drive and copy the files across?
Message Edited by mobileDJ1 on 11-19-2009 07:31 PM

LR 4 wont recognize 2nd hard drive in the source during import??

I run 2 hard drives in my PC. One drive is for programs only. The second and larger is for photos/music. When I go to import the source pane ont he left will not recognize the B: drive, Only the C: drive and it will even recognize my M: drive with is my external. Im not sure what to do at this point to add the B: drive to the souce. Thank you

Sometimes it helps if you put one "dummy" picture on a drive via Win Explorer. So, try this first and see if your drive shows up.
If this doesn't help:
Letter B is not a good choice for a drive on a PC. This is because of ol-old times when drive letters A and B were reserved for the 6.25" disk (A) and floppy drive (B).
That's why the first drive in today's PCs is still named (lettered) C.
And, I don't know maybe Lr does not recognize drive letters A and B. So rename your drive B to drive D.
You do this in Windows Control Panel >System and Security >Administrative Tools >Computer managaement >Disk Management. In the lower window where it shows your drives, highlight the drive in question then go >Action >All Tasks >Change Drive Letter and Path.
For more info open <Help> in your Control Panel and type <drive letter> into the search box.

My mac wont recognize my hard drive

i have an WD 320 gb hard drive that i have been using in connection with my mac book for about 2 years and for the past 3 days it will no longer connect with my computer. this hard drive holds all my music and information, how the **** do i get it to work again?
my computer doesnt recognize or register that its there. how can i make them connect and troubleshoot?

Have you tried rebooting your computer? Do you hear the hard drive spin up when you connect it? Do you have another computer you could connect the drive to?
~Lyssa

Computer wont recognize second hard drive in target disk mode

I've had trouble installing Leopard on my iMac (read this for full details: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1196525&tstart=0)
Long story short, I tried to hook up the iMac to my computer, starting it (the iMac) up in Target Disk Mode, in order to save some files before restoring the hd, but my computer wont recognize the iMac hd when it's connected. Is there any way to save these very important files?

Because the drive might not be the only thing that isn't working, it could be your logic board or something else. Removing the drive will isolate it and allow you to see whether your data is recoverable without having to worry about what else is failing on the iMac.

'NEW" G4 WONT RECOGNIZE ADDED HARD DRIVES

Just got a new Mac and trying to transfer data from the old hard drives to the new machine.
My new G4 isnt recognizing the old disks when I hook them Up in the vacant bays. I have the jumper pins configured correctly, I am using the available connectors and power modules, but if I hook up any otehr drives than the start up disk, the machine wont even pwoer up. Tried reset button, changing disk positions, etc. Why isnt the computer starting when I add additional drives to the hardware cables?

This may help. Power Macintosh G3 and G4: IDE Master and Slave Support and Configuration
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=24342
 Cheers, Tom

Laptop wont recognize new hard drive...

Hello, my name is Moises and i have a hp pavilion dv6000 and my hard drive just died. I looked up some information and purchased a Samsung hd500ji 2.5 500gb and for some reason it's not listed on bios. I ran Ultimate BOOT CD to see what some of the programs detect it and yes it shows up.
Any feedback would be appreciated.

Shinitenshi wrote:
Hello, my name is Moises and i have a hp pavilion dv6000 and my hard drive just died. I looked up some information and purchased a Samsung hd500ji 2.5 500gb and for some reason it's not listed on bios. I ran Ultimate BOOT CD to see what some of the programs detect it and yes it shows up.
Any feedback would be appreciated.
Hi,
This laptop is a bit old and the new hard drive is probably not supported by the BIOS. The biggest hard drive for a Dv6000 laptop is 200GB 4200rpm or 160GB 5400rpm. I suggest to buy a 160GB 5400rpm one and also some external storage for data. As you can see your old hard drive died so use the hard drive in the laptop for system only and keep important data somewhere else...
Dv6-7000 /Full HD/Core i5-3360M/GF 650M/Corsair 8GB/Intel 7260AC/Samsung Pro 256GB
Testing - HP 15-p000
HP Touchpad provided by HP
Currently on Debian Wheeze
*Please, help other users with the same issue by marking your solved topics as "Accept as Solution"*

Ibook wont recognize new hard drive

I put in a new and bigger hard drive and combo drive into my G4 ibook. Combo seems to work fine, at least it is running the OSX dvd. But the new 100GB hard drive isn’t showing up in Disc Utility, so I can't format it. I took it apart again and checked all the connections. Still no good. I can feel the new HD spinning, so I know it is getting power. Any suggestions?

Unfortunately the sound still doesnt work....still mad about that but what can you do...
Have you tried resetting the PRAM? Since the speaker volume is stored in PRAM, resetting it may help.
Thanks for reminding us that you have to format a new hard drive.

Mac os x 10.8 wont recognize my hard drives

Hello all, i just got a Macpro 4,1 8 core and i wanted to install 10.8 on it, but no matter what i do, it doesnt recognized my hard drives when doing a fresh install, i go to the disk utility and they dont show up there, 10.6 and 10.7 have no problem detecting them. any idea?
cheers

Please tell us the details of the format of the drives.
They need to be GUID (partition table), Mac OS extended, journaled.

[Athlon64] BIOS WONT RECOGNIZE SATA HARD DRIVE

Hi. VIA kt8 Neo FSR 6702 64 bit AMD VT8237 chipset with Barracucuda (seagate) 80 g HD (sata).
I can not get Bios to recognize this hardrive. I suspect that I am missing a ata controller or the raid controller is messed up. Things I have tried. 1. flashing the bios 2. re-cableing everything 3. disconnecting every device but the sata HD. 4. running seagate tools which confirms that HD is not being recognized. 5. messing with jumper cables on the HD. 6. clearing cmos with the jumpers and removeing the battery.
I have a spare hardrive useing IDE and that works fine. I have a plextor dvd and that also works on the serial port. The history of this problems is that someone put this comp together for me and created a raid useing 2 hardrives. At the time I didnt know much (still dont) so I dont know what kind of array was set up. Since one of the hardrives was messed up, I decided to uninstall it and use just the one. Things were messed up but basicly the HD worked. Trying to fix the intermittent problems, I decided like a dummy to remove the raid drivers from the os. That was the onset of the problem.
I have used live update and have installed XP on the new HD that works, but I need my old hardrive. I beg you for a solution. Thank you

Thanks again for helping me. I have downloaded drivers for the sata controller and yes it was enabled in bios. I was able to add the desired HD to the new HD that currently is the master. The desired HD is now drive F. AT least I now have access to the drive but it is still not what I want. For some reason the desired drive wont be recognized if I make it the master. I want to boot from this drive but cant. I am just going to give up and leave it how it is. I have access to some of the info on the desired drive but cant find my email files and ect. Also there seems to be some strange things happening, (hanging, intermittent slow booting, and other system or file corruption) I have also had some memory errors. Perhaps you are right and I have a bad board. Thanks again for your help. Doc3128

Wont recognize internal Hard Drive

Similar Messages

Maybe you are looking for