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SSD not mounting in Power Mac G5, how to fix it?

My friend is trying to install an OWC 120GB Mercury Electra 6G SSD into their Power Mac G5 but it will not mount. We've formatted it as Apple Partition Map but the drive does not show up at all. I believe this model Power Mac (7,3 Early 2005) has SATA II, and from what I've read, this model SSD is backward compatible with SATA I-III. I've tried both bays and I've still had no luck. Is this drive just not going to work or am I missing something? Thanks in advance for any help! I'm running OS X 10.4.11

Best Answered by

iBoysoft author Jenny Zeng

Jenny Zeng

Answered on Wednesday, August 30, 2023

If you're trying to upgrade the SSD on your Power Mac G5 but find it not showing up at all, you need to ensure you've got the right SSD.

The new drive you installed is a SATA III OWC Mercury Electra 6G SSD, which works best with computers featuring SATA III. Although most modern Macs produced in 2011 and later support SATA III technology, your Power Mac G5 supports only SATA I.

I know you've checked the product description and thought it would work fine as it's backward compatible with SATA I and II. But it will most likely not even be recognized by your Power Mac G5s's chipset. It's known that the G5 is extremely picky about SATA III drives and it's best to avoid them completely.

So, you should stick to a SATA I or II SSD, such as the OWC Mercury Electra 3G SSD model. Besides, check if your SATA III 6G SSD has a jumper. If it does, you can use it to run the SATA III drive on your SATA I Power Mac with SATA II speed.

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