Hard drive bays not working

[SoulTrain]

I have a 2008 MacPro 8-core (bought used from work). It came with 2 320GB WD hard drives, in bays 1 and 2. These two are working fine. I did have some trouble when I brought the machine home (got the "no bootable drive found message" on first boot). But I reseated the drives, reformatted, and finally managed to get Snow Leopard installed.

Anyway, I bought a new 1TB WD drive to put in bay 3. It didn't even show in Disk Utility. I moved it to bay 4, same thing. Finally I moved it to bay 2 (and moved that drive to bay 3), and it showed up, but the other drive (now moved to bay 3) didn't.

It seems like bays 3 and 4 are not functioning. Anyone ever seen this happen before? Any suggestions?

Thanks in advance.

 

[flatfoot]

The first thing I would do is check the SATA/power backplanes the drives plug into are ok by sight, i.e. compare the looks of the bad ones to those of the good ones. Maybe something has to be reseated.

Otherwise it would most probably be a real hardware problem.

 

[nanofrog]

You should also check the SFF-8087 end (aka iPass or MiniSAS) that plugs into the logic board (give it a wiggle, and see if the ports giving issues become available). Check the power ends as well (separate connections on the logic board, but go to the same custom cable that feeds each HDD bay).

Past this and what flatfoot mentioned, you've a significant issue (bad cable if you're lucky, bad logic board if you're not).

 

[SoulTrain]

Thanks for the advice. I unplugged/re-plugged the SATA harness connector on the logic board, as well as the hard drive power. The drive is recognized in bay 3 now.

Everything seems fine at this point.

 

[flatfoot]

Did you check bay 4, too? Just to make sure it works in case you might need it some day.

 

[nanofrog]

Thanks for the advice. I unplugged/re-plugged the SATA harness connector on the logic board, as well as the hard drive power. The drive is recognized in bay 3 now.

Everything seems fine at this point.

So far so good, but I'm with flatfoot on the need to check HDD bay 4 to be sure it's functioning properly as well.

 

[SoulTrain]

No, I didn't, but yeah, I will System is sitting to the side right now while my office is being painted. Hopefully I can check it out tonight.

And thanks for the reminder to finish my troubleshooting.

 

[nanofrog]

No, I didn't, but yeah, I will System is sitting to the side right now while my office is being painted. Hopefully I can check it out tonight.

And thanks for the reminder to finish my troubleshooting.

Hopefully, it will turn out fine (painting too).