No HDDs in Disk Utility in Installer

[pixelshaded]

This is the laptop I currently own.

http://www.ocztechnology.com/produc...book-small_intel-ati_crossfire_edition-small_

Specifically configured with 2 ATI Mobile 3870s, Core 2 x9100, 4GB Ram, 1 Sata DVD Drive, 2 Sata Hard Drives. Uses intel PM45 Chipset + ICH9M.

I know this hardware doesn't quite fit your boot cd, but Ive had the best luck with yours. Ive tried empire efi, boot132, and every version of your boot loader, and Ive only been able to get to the installer with the following iso's and config:

I used Transmac to put the Mac OSX DVD onto a flash drive since I have "waiting on root device" errors with every boot loader. I currently only have one SATA HDD installed. All in AHCI. I can boot with your ati, ativ2, and intel iso images. So thats very exciting considering I spent the last week staring at darwin errors (and almost giving up).

So my current issue is that once in the installer, there are no hard drives in the list or in the disk utility. I checked the profiler and it shows an unknown AHCI driver for the SATA drives. So Im guessing that the root of my problem. So Im also guessing that I could probably fix this with the proper kexts, probably ICH9 stuff.

So....any ideas? And can add the kexts to the boot loader without having a mac? And thank you so much for your time. I thought there was no hope but Im seeing some light at the end of the tunnel finally.

 

[tonymacx86]

As your chipset is not P55-based, the install method will differ. It is a Intel® PM45 Chipset + ICH9M. You could try my USB Method, which is pretty universal, although you will need to find /Extra files for your chipset.

There are established methods on these boards- I suggest taking a look at this guide- it's made with your chipset in mind.

http://www.infinitemac.com/f57/guide-4- ... for-t4183/

Or try Prasys' Empire EFI Boot CD. It's known to work on a variety of different mobos. Good luck!

 

[pixelshaded]

thanks tony but sadly I dont have a mac to follow this guide

 

[pixelshaded]

well, did some more troubleshooting.

Mac installer can see my e-sata drive. It shows it as disk0s1 so it thinks the e-sata is disk0 even though I have 2 HDDs that should be disk0 and disk1. None of the SATA drives show in the tree.

I dont have very many options in my BIOS. The only way to put it in AHCI mode is to turn RAID to enabled. My bios then shows the drives as PCI SCSI hard drives instead of SATA drives. This could be a part of the problem sadly. Seems to be a catch 22. But turning off AHCI doesnt fix the installer not seeing my drives so argggg. Sadface!

 

[pixelshaded]

just a heads up. I did some research on my bios and it seems fairly clear that there isnt enough support to get macosx working (at least SATA wise). The only way to get access to the correct options would be to actually edit the BIOS which looks like risky business. But, not all is lost. Because none of my SATA drives can be seen by mac, I have to use USB for all my disks (HDD, CD/DVD Drive, etc). I was lucky enough to have all these external disks. So yay, macosx is installed and booting. Now for the fun part of getting everything to work correctly.

 

[wlp5]

You could try installing on one of your externals and then if you can see your sata drives from within osx, clone the drive to that.

 

[pixelshaded]

thats a good idea. thanks.