Member Avatar for FaceLeg

Hi,

December last year I had two 2.5" HDD's fail, the original Seagate and a replacement Toshiba. I sent the first to a data recovery company, who told me the plate damage was so bad there was no chance of recovery. I didn't bother sending the second, but as the noises were the same I assume similar damage.

Instead of buying another HDD just to watch it burn, I have waited until I could afford to upgrade to an SSD - in the hope that it not having heads, the same issue won't arise (maybe it'll fail in a different but equally spectacular way?).

I purchased a new A-Data 32GB (ASE1032GSAMPL) drive, and have installed it in my MB. Yes I know A-Data isn't the greatest brand. I'm still a student and can't afford anything gold-plated.

When I run DU from the Leopard install DVD, the drive is not displayed - only the DVD itself is shown in DU.

I realise now that I should have done more research on this issue before buying, but I've been quite busy and had a one-track mind: get the **** MB going so I can finally finish my Cocoa projects!

Is it possible that this SSD is not backward compatible with SATA? Does anyone have any ideas on getting this working? Any ideas at all? I'm at the point where I'll seriously consider anything, including voodoo.

Thanks people!

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  • Latest Post Latest Post by dienthoaitot

Dani AI

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— When an added 2.5" SSD does not appear in Disk Utility on the Leopard DVD, treat it as a detection problem first (not a formatting problem). The quickest, non-destructive checks are done from the DVD’s Terminal and System Profiler so the physical link can be verified before repartitioning or reinstalling.

Open Utilities -> Terminal on the installer DVD and run:

diskutil list
system_profiler SPSerialATADataType
sudo dmesg | tail -n 100

If diskutil list shows a disk node (for example /dev/disk1) but Disk Utility shows nothing, the drive simply lacks a usable partition map — initialize it with a GUID partition table and HFS+ (example, replace disk identifier first):
diskutil eraseDisk JHFS+ "Macintosh HD" GPT /dev/diskX
If system_profiler reports an SATA device and link speed, the Mac is talking to the drive and initialization is the next step.

If none of those commands show the drive, move to hardware isolation: power down and reseat the drive and connector, try the SSD in a USB-to-SATA enclosure on another computer, or put a known-good HDD back in the Mac to confirm the Mac’s bay/cable works. If the SSD is visible externally but not in the Mac, the laptop’s SATA cable or connector (or its firmware/firmware negotiation) is the likely culprit. If the SSD is not visible anywhere, pursue vendor support/firmware update or an RMA.

When the drive is detected and the goal is to boot OS X on an Intel Mac, use a GUID partition table and Mac OS Extended (Journaled). Handle the drive and connectors carefully (ESD risk) and avoid forcing partitions on the wrong device — always confirm the disk identifier shown by diskutil list before erasing.

Member Avatar for dienthoaitot

Hi,

I am new member. I am glad to meet you.


Thanks


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