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Imac G5 does not boot after cloning

M

morrisroad

macrumors newbie
Original poster
Feb 12, 2011
13
0
Background
Imac G5
Have an 80 Gig Seagate drive that I am upgrading to a brand new 500G WD Caviar Black.
Partion: Apple Partion Map

What I have tried:

Clonging the disk:
Tried cloning with SuperDuper - old hd was cloned with no issues using USB to new drive
Tried cloning with Carbon Copy - old hd was cloned with no issues using USB to new drive
Tried recloning after initial clone did work when drive was installed in the machine
Used Disk Utility to only have start up files and boot done through USB with old drive in place.

In all cases above the blinking question mark folder appears after taking the old drive out, and installing the new drive in its place.

I have reset the PRAM - nothing

Tried booting by holding down the option to select drive- with new HD in, doesn't show up
Tried booting from USB holding down option - doesn't show up
Tried Booting from Install disk - drive doesn't show up as a start up drive, only CD shows up
Deleted the bootcache file on new drive - nothing

What's crazy about all of this is that with the old drive in the machine, the new drive is mounting without issue through USB. I can navigate folders, Utility indicates new drive is Ok. Old drive works fine, verifys Ok.

Any ideas would be helpful. :confused:
 
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Try doing this

Boot from the OS X installer DVD, Does Disk Utility see the entire drive there? Full 500 GB? Why not partition / format the Drive Make sure the drive has the apple partition map which is required for PPC macs and the Mac OS Extended Journaled as the file system.

Installed OS X onto the new drive, when it reboots plug in your drive your data is on and get the mac to run the Migrate Settings wizard it will copy all your data over anyway. Save you cloning
 
Tried booting from dvd to simply install the os, drive does not appear at all when it comes time to select the target for os installation.
 
where did you buy the leopard disc, hope you cannot see a hint of a scratch on it ? and second is your dvd drive even working as these have a tendency to fail or getting picky
mine in the iMac g5 i had was so picky it did really only read 1 out of 100 dvd's (i have a big collection), sometimes cleaning the lens helps a bit

may i ask why you want to boot from usb ?
usb is slow as molasses when booting on ppc if it is eventually even working at all and both carbon copy cloner and superdooper recommend to use a firewire external to create a bootdrive , i got clones made with usb , but not always , as it depends on the enclosure used too

read the whole article from start to end
http://hints.macworld.com/article.php?story=20060301112336384&lsrc=osxh
and follow the instruction from carbon copy cloner website
http://www.bombich.com/
 
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The disks I have for Leopard are new condition, super drive is new.
Tried Tiger Install disks and the HD drive appeared, installed then on restart the flashing question mark came up again.

I was using the USB to create the clone and also to test that it would boot, using the option feature. I have read that the Imac G5 won't boot that way so I abandoned that notion.

I think I am going to take the drive back and try a Seagate drive, which is what I currently have in the Imac. The drive I purchased is a WD Caviar Black 500 Gig 32 MB Sata III.
 
Just got a 1tb seagate hd. I asked about FireWire enclosure and f400 (which is the upper limit of firewire transfer on my imac g5) is going to provide nearly same (only 80 Mbits more) throughput as usb2.0. I would need to pay $90 for f800 and that's not worth it for me.

I am going start with the drive in and boot from cd. Install the os, then use migration assistant as suggested and see how this goes.
 
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http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=2058987 has some interesting information about SATA 1 & 2 and how you may need to set the jumper on a SATA 2 drive to 1.5 Gbits/s so that the drive is recognized if autonegotiation does not work. The specification bodies are not sorted yet so likely an area of this re-installation does not work.

Interesting note I found in the seagate drive manual..."It is usually not necessary to set any jumpers on the drive for proper operation; however, if you connect the drive and receive a “drive not detected” error, your SATAequipped motherboard or host adapter may use a chipset that does not support SATA speed autonegotiation.
 
morrisroad said:
The disks I have for Leopard are new condition
Click to expand...

that is plural your iMac came originally with tiger so the leopard dics 1 and 2 from a later 08 model do not work in your iMac from 07

and firewire400 is noticeable faster then usb2.0
to make a example and take it as cars , car 1 called usb2.0 top speed is 480 but the driver has no sense of direction an needs to ask for directions every couple hundred yards on the petrol station called cpu
while car 2 called firewire despite having only a topspeed of 400 , but the driver has good sense of direction and the best satellite navigation system money can buy , so does never need to stop or slow down

here in a site nice graphs comparing the two http://techreport.com/articles.x/12747/14
a firewire 400 enclosure is worth every cent , usb 2.0 is only good for keyboards or printers and other things where you dont need to tranfer data in larger quantities or if you just transfer some office doc's like letters
and you can really boot from a firewire drive, usb even in intel Mac's is just to slow for that
 
My reference was in response to a prior note referring to scratches on the DVD which was not the issue. Its mac box set and the install disks worked before. Good example, but still not worth it for me, the case is more than the drive and the drive is what I want to install in the machine.

Installed the Seagate drive, booted from disk, used disk utility to partition and then install the software. No issues.

Have reinstalled all my apps and running update. Rebooted several times with no issues in this process.

I did not to jump the drive down to 1.5.

Firewire is required by the migration assistant for mac to mac transfer.

I would be create if the imac was designed with an easily removable drive. I had this feature on a Dell Laptop and found it useful.

So it looks like the drive I had was bad. It would be good know if other people have experienced this with the WD black drives and also to determine if it a specific problem with these drives on imacs.

Seagate comes through on this one -
 
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morrisroad said:
if the imac was designed with an easily removable drive. I had this feature on a Dell Laptop and found it useful. -
Click to expand...

yes that would be great , but apple does not want customers to mess inside their consumer models , having said that its made really easy in the first generation iMac G5 where you just have 3 screws to turn a 6 times (screws have a stop ,so cant be lost ) and can lift the back and expose all internals without having the risk of damaging the display, but apple decided consumers are not trustworthy enough to open a computer so they made it more difficult in the later models and only allow you to change the ram really , as they expect you to go to the apple store to get everything else done
 
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