what's wrong with my Mac?
 

I recently bought two IBM 120GB harddrives, and when I installed one my computer couldn't recognize it. It wouldn't boot up at all. I just got a blinking question mark on the screen. So I tried installing the other one to see if the first drive was defective, and got the same thing. The strange thing is, I had previously installed a 200GB Western Digital drive the exact same way, and the computer recognized it right off. (I had to take the Western Digital drive back because my computer could only use about 130GB.) What gives? I have a 500 Mhz dual processor by they way, operating on OS 9.2.

Disk Utility
 

I have had this problem with my Fire Wire drives.

Try using Disk Utility to format the drives first.

Your Hard Drve > Applications > Utilites > Disk Utility

On the left side, you should see your drives names and the new drives (prob. named IMB Somthing).

Select the NEW drives. Choose format.

Boom.

New Drive.

Make sure the jumper settings are correct either set to slave or master drives.Some brands ship with different preset settings.

Thanks for the info. I, err...., don't know what a jumper setting is. Where do I check it? As far as using utilities goes, I can't get that far. The computer won't boot up at all with the drive installed. A friend of mine says that must mean that I've introduced the new drive into the wrong order in the chain, but I don't understand why that wasn't a problem with the Western Digital drive. Initially, that drive wasn't recognized either until I formatted it with utilities, and then it worked great.

Marco,
Most all ATA/EIDE drives are set to be a Master and they'll be preformatted for a PC, if formatted at all. On the top of the drive there should be a small picture showing the jumper settings. You will need to remove or move a small jumper to set the drive to Slave as Matt has said. You can probably use tweezers to do this (Obviously BEFORE you install the drive and certainly with no power to it. Also watch your static electricity -- ground yourself before touching the drive.)
If all else fails, get a PC Geek friend to help you. Installing a drive on a Mac is the same as on a PC.

Then once you can get the Mac to boot, use the HardDisk Utility to format the new drive.

Good Luck,

Run the Apple system profiler to see if the drives are listed on a PCI bus. If you can see the hardware there, then you just have to mount and format the disks.

If you don't see the drives on a PCI bus, then something else is amiss.

The master/slave issue depends on whether the drives are connected to exisitng bus, or via a PCI card. You can get up to three hard drives on the ATA bus that comes in the computer -- more than this and you need an additional interrface PCI card.

Did you remove a hard disk with your system on it? That would explain the question mark.

Marco,

Just in case you need more explanation...if you look at the pins on the drive that plug into the cable, there will be one or two little plastic covers connecting some of the plugs. This is what Michael is talking about...they're called "jumpers" and you have to set them correctly for the disk to work properly.

If you have no idea what to do, probably best to get a PC friend to help as suggested. If you want to try it yourself, go to the web site for the maker of the HD and they usually will have photos or diagrams showing you how to set the jumpers.

Thanks everyone. In response to an earlier question: No, I didn't remove the original harddrive.

If you have not done surgery on your computer, there is one more option you can try, especially if you do not feel comfortable opening it up.

1. Insert the OS X CD into the drive and get the computer to reboot. (I know you can not boot now, but having power on the Mac will let you open the drive.)

2. While it reboots (after the "bong") press and hold the "C" key.

2a. If the there is no "bong" the monitor will flicker (you hope)...

3. When you boot from your OS X CD, you can again use DISK UTILITY (located under the Apple Menu) to reassign / reformat your drives.

4. BE VERY CARFUL! IN THIS MODE YOU CAN ***ERASE YOUR MAIN DRIVE!!!*** MAKE SURE YOU HAVE THE CORRECT DRIVE SELECTED BEFORE REFORMATING!

Reboot and see what happens.

Thanks all! Love this forum.