Disk Utility Not Seeing any Hard Disk

[gre9del]

Hello there, Im mighty frustrated at the moment and I hope someone can help. I have a decent history installing OSX on various machines, dells, VMware etc but this one is stumping me. I have a Compaq f560us with the following specs:

Processor Brand: AMD

Processor Class: Mobile Sempron Processor

Processor Number: 3500+

Processor Speed: 1.8 GHz

Front Side Bus: 1.6 GHz

Mobile Technology: Other

L2 Cache Size: 512 KB

Memory Type: DDR2-SDRAM

Installed Memory: 512 MB

Maximum Memory: 2 GB

Memory Slots Total: 2

Memory Slots Available: 1

Total Hard Drive Capacity: 80 GB

Drive Controllers: SATA-150

Rotational Speed: 5400 RPM

Optical Drives: Double Layer DVD+/-RW SuperMulti Drive:

 

My problem is this: I don't care whether it's a dual boot or OSX only install Im not planning on using vista on this laptop unless its perhaps in emulation or something. What happens is that I get to the disk utility to create my format and my hard drive is not displayed. The only disk is the install dvd for osx. I am using Mac OS X 10.4.8 [JaS AMD-Intel-SSE2-SSE3 with PPF1 & PPF2] but ive also tried uphuck_10.4.9_v1.4i_r2.iso. Im not sure whats going on and im getting kind of miffed. Ive also tried the method describes here using diskpart: http://coolblog.profit42.com/2007/04/14/os...r-no-dual-boot/.

 

So yeah, if anyone can shed any light it would be much appreciated. Thank you!

[BJMoose]

What controller does this computer use? JMicron controllers have been known to cause disks not to be found.

[borisbadenov]

yep. ou might also need to patch the dvd with the appropriate kext. Just for example; when I went to install Leopard on my test rig, I needed to replace the IOATAFamily kext so the installer would find my IDE hard drive. You need to find how your hard drive is connected to your mobo and see if there is a proper kext out there for it and if so, swap it

[gre9del]

Thanks for the suggestions, I'll try to figure out what controller it uses. I know it's sata-150 but that's it. How would I figure out what controller it might be using to find the appropriat kext? and then where should I look for it? Thank you for your help!

[gre9del]

Ok, since it uses the nforce chipset drivers according to the Compaq support page on this laptop im assuming it uses the nforce SATA controller. Does anyone have experience in getting the nforce sata controller to work with the disk utility? Thanks!

[gre9del]

What controller does this computer use? JMicron controllers have been known to cause disks not to be found.

 

yep. ou might also need to patch the dvd with the appropriate kext. Just for example; when I went to install Leopard on my test rig, I needed to replace the IOATAFamily kext so the installer would find my IDE hard drive. You need to find how your hard drive is connected to your mobo and see if there is a proper kext out there for it and if so, swap it

 

 

Hi, thanks for both of your replies to my topic earlier, im sorry to bother you but I had a quick question that I thought you could help with. I have tracked the problem to the fact that this compaq I picked up is using the nforce sata controller and there are compatability issues with it and OSX. I wanted to send you a message to see if you knew where the most up-to-date information on the Nforce sata problem and any fixes might be? The only threads that I have seen are from 2006 or 2005, nothing more current.

 

Any help would be much appreciated.

Thanks!