After three macs and four operating systems I am deeply embarrassed to have to ask this question.

Last night I put a SATA drive in my G-5. When I boot up I get a messege that says I have installed a new storage device. the messege gives me three choices- initialize, ignore, or eject. Of course I hit initialize. Disk utilities opens up, and the drive shows up in the left hand column, but the only utility open to me is information, which informs me that the drive has read write capabiliy...ect, nothing else works. The drive doesn't show on my desk top, can't save to it ect...
I spent about two hours tooling around in panther trying to figure it out. Came up empty. Didn't do my physics homework, or work in FCP like I was supposed to either.
Any ideas? (about the drive, I mean, I've got the physics howmework covered)
Michael

When you click on the drive in the Disk Utility application, you should have 5 tabs shown (First Aid, Erase, Partition, RAID and Restore). Click on the Erase tab and choose Mac OS Extended and then format. If you want to format your drive, choose that tab first.

If it does not show up in Disk Utility you probably have it's jumpers set wrong. Check you jumpers on other drives and post back how they are set.

Your quick response is very much appreciated.
I'm at work now, but I'll try that as soon as I get home. I bet it works. I looked at that erase button last night, and balked. Erase just seems so danm permanent!

I've only installed two other hard drives (one on my g-4 in 10.1 and one on my g-3 in 9.2) and I can't remember having any issues like this- that may just be bad memory though, it's been quite awhile. I went through the users manual for the g-5 and the little brochure that came with Panther, and there was nothing in either one.
Whatever happend to documentation?


Thanks again,
Michael

Let me know how it works out.

<<<-you probably have it's jumpers set wrong->>>

There are no settings on SATA drives, they are supposed to auto negotiate ID's



I'm also interested in hearing about your problems because I just ordered a G5 and an extra 250gb SATA drive.

Mark

SATA drives do have jumpers, but it's not supposed to matter what they are set to (Master, Slave, etc.). I overlooked his mention of SATA in his post, thanks for the correction, Mark.

Is that I am a big dummy.

Jeff,
Your solution worked just fine. Took all of 15 seconds. I obviosly need to spend a little time exploring Panther. Alas, life seems to be an endless cycle of software/hardware buying followed by the further purchase of instructional material.

Thanks for your help,
Michael