This one stumped me many months ago, so I put the Powerbook on the shelf for a day when I had some free time to troubleshoot it.

Well I've got the time today, I was hoping someone else on here has run into this problem.

I have a Titanium Powerbook G4 800mhz laptop, a few months ago I replaced the hard drive with a nice large 120gig laptop drive. Worked like a champ for a month or so then it started making those nasty clicking noises and crashed often.

So no big deal, I'll get a replacement drive, put it in the laptop, and ship this 120 back for a replacement. Never could I have been more wrong...

Just like before I removed the old drive (120) and put in a nice formatted 40Gig, on reboot I left the OSX DVD in the drive for a fresh OS install. Except the DVD booted and saw no hard drive! Yep, nothing to install to.

I was stunned, so I swapped the drive back (40 out, 120 in), same thing, no drive.

Figuring my FoxConn IDE cable must have slipped and I tried again and again, and again.

Finally, short of giving up, I tried one more time with the 120, this time no OSX DVD, lo and behold it booted! but started clicking and crashed shortly thereafter.

Now, I wondering, sure it could be the controller/logic board, which would be a $$$ replacement, however, could there be some sort of openbios config I need to do to get it to "recognize" the new media?

I'm tired of the sad mac face and hoping you guys have some suggestions.

Thanks!

-A

well if its intermittent like that on more than one drive, it could either be damage to the cable itself or the controller. I would lean more toward the controller on the logic board if you are saying the problem is switching back and forth between the hard drive and the optical drive.