Chosen Solution
I purchased a used g5 and wanted to make it a backup computer. I installed 2 2tb WD harddrives. The top bay worked just fine and I was able to format it and install the OS, the bottom bay cannot see drives (I’ve tried multiple different drives in this bay). Could it be the SATA connection–it looks like it’s just a cable that snaps into the logic board? If this is something I could replace it might save this computer.
Since the top drive is known to be working, eliminate any drive questions by moving it to the lower bay. If it now fails, you know it’s probably the cabling or the logic board connections. It you can’t feel it running, it’s the power cable. If it is running look at the data cable.
