Longtime reader, first time poster here.
Simple question... academic, really. I am already in the process of working around my problem, and it won't ever come up again... I think.
Two years ago, my digital audio-era G4 PowerMac started acting sluggish. Finally, it wouldn't boot. The original hard drive, which was running the operating system, had crashed. I installed a new hard drive, installed the operating system on that one, and managed to slowly, slowly, slowly copy all the critical files off the old one. I then reformatted that hard drive, and continued to use it. It seemed to me that there was just file corruption... not a systemic failure of the drive.
Flash forward to last Monday. My new 17 inch Mac Book Pro showed up. I spent the week on the new machine, occasionally going over to the old one to get files I needed (either over the network, or, for bigger files (like my music collection), via FireWire target disk mode.
Everything was going well. I now had every file I needed today on my new computer, but I left all the files I wanted to archive for future use, plus my digital photography collection, on the old computer.
The plan for this weekend was to:
1. Move everything on the old, old drive (the one that failed two years ago) to the newer drive.
2. Remove the newer drive from the G4 tower and place it in an empty USB2.0 enclosure that was on a UPS truck on the other side of the country.
3. Reformat the original drive, and reinstall OSX.
4. Sell the G4 on Craigslist or Ebay or something.
So, last night, I completed step 1. It was late, but I decided to go into Disk Utility and reformat the other drive.
While in Disk Utility, I noticed that S.M.A.R.T. (Self-Monitoring Analysis and Reporting Technology) indicated that the drive was about to fail. Oops. I guess that I am going to either sell the computer without a hard drive, or buy a cheap hard drive to sell it with (or buy myself a nice hard drive and sell the computer with the lesser older one).
Absentmindedly, since I was tired and it was late, I decided to reformat the old drive anyhow.
But it was taking forever, and I was tired.
So I aborted the reformat, despite Disk Utility's warning, figuring that if I toasted a secondary drive that was about to fail anyhow, big deal.
I was out most of the day today, and I didn't turn on the G4 until right before dinner tonight.
It was stuck on the gray scrolly of death.
After dinner, since nothing changed, I turned the computer off, and disconnected the old drive (to properly chronicle everything I did, I did accidently disconnect the newer drive in the process, but I reconnected it after getting the old one out, of course. I don't think this is relevent, but I'll mention it anyhow). Then, I tried turning the Mac on again, but the startup disc wouldn't mount.
Next, I started off the OSX CD, and ran Disc Utility. Every test I ran indicated that the drive that was fine last night had big problems, and every repair I tried revealed that "the underlying task reported failure on exit," so the repair couldn't be completed.
Google revealed that I was screwed.
So, I managed to mount the old G4 on my MacBookPro through FireWire Target Mode. Clearly, the hard drive is sick, since it is moving very slowly. I am copying as much stuff off as I can tonight.
Tomorrow, I'll get the rest, after I pick up a USB2.0 drive. My only other external drive is also a FW400 (without much room to spare), my FW800 doesn't get here until Thursday on a UPS truck, along with the empty USB2.0 enclosure I probably don't need now.
I am assuming the drive is fine; the data is corrupted somehow. But I could be wrong.
I have it all under control. but I just can't help but wonder...
At what step did I screw up?
(and yes, I know it could be worse, because so far it looks like data is intact.)
Glad my new Mac is here. Sad that the Mac that I have used daily since March, 2001, committed suicide.
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