[waterbuck]

Hi-
My 8 month old 667 MHz TiBook had a serious hard-drive-or-possibly-a-bad-directory crash today and I am in the process of trying to figure out whether I should assume there is an underlying problem, even if I can get the thing work.

Right now a program called Drive10 is in a slow 1-3 hour process of attempting to "repair" what it identified as a directroy error, but the crash was so stunningly alarming that I am worried if there is an underlying issue to worry about.

Here is what happened:

1.computer working fine today in OSX.2.4 (I have run it in 9.2.2 without troubles in the past)
2. then some kind of OSX message came up saying in 10 different languages "you must shut your computer down now" and there was no way around it to save my work, etc.
3. I shut computer down
4. On restart, I get a blinking question mark alternating with a folder icon (looks like the image of a folder from OS9 incidentally).
5. With Applecare on phone we boot from OSX install disk. Using the disk utility from OSX install, we identify the hard drive but it shows only the size and make (IBM), not the name that I had assigned to it.
6. We ran the disk utility and in about 1 second it indicates directory and/or B-tree errors. We select "repair". In 1 second it says "repair completed" but re-running the utility identifies the same problem, and trying to restart computer produces same problem as was seen in step 4 above, ie blinkin question mark.
7. I take it to nearby Apple-authorized service provider. With DiskWarrior (OS9-compatible version), it can boot the computer but can't mount the hard drive at all. With NOrton, it can't mount the hard drive and I can't remember if it could start the computer. With Drive10 it finds the drive.
8. The Drive10 utility ran its whole series of diagnostic checks on power, drive control, heads, and all was okay but for Directory. It offered to "repair." We said "Repair" and right now, about 1 hour in, it is on step 500,000 of 1.3 million steps. I have no idea if it is actually repairing the directory or trying to recover data.

When Drive10 finishes, I will try to restart the computer and god-willing it will work. And I will do a full data backup, beyond the 4 week old back-up that I now feel stupid about not doing more often. If the computer can't reboot off its internal hard drive, then we'll send in to Apple for what is presumably a major failure of the hard drive, goodbye last few weeks of work.....

Questions
1. Why did this happen? Did I cause it? Yesterday I disconnected my camera without dragging it to the trash and got a "dont do that" scolding. Is that it? I almost dropped the computer today, slightly jarring it--but it worked fine initially after that, and it was not a bad bump

2. How should I judge whether there is an underlying more serious hard drive issue?

3. For a TiBook user with >15 MB of data (I give talks that have some photos and audio files in them, so I probably have 100-200 MB of "core,essential" data not including the iPhoto collection......what is the most convenient way to back up?

I have considered .Mac, but 15MB online is too little data...
I have considered an external hard drive
I have a friend suggesting that I get an old Mac with no screen, get an 80 MB harddrive in it, run the old Mac with Timbuktu and have it use retrospect to automatically back up my TiBook and an older WallStreet and my wife's dell every few days.

[schuey100]

OH MY GOD!! Exactly the same thing happened to me yesterday. It asked me to restart in various languages and the screen was grey. It just went back to the same screen everytime I did restart. The only thing I could do was reinstall OSX. I know that my Mac has worked fine since and there doesn't seem to be a serious side effect.

However, the problem started straight after I updated to 10.2.5. Now I'm still running 10.2.4 and will wait a while till trying the new update again.

[Mohammed Al-Sabah]

best thing to do


erase HD
make a partition
install OS


goood luck

[waterbuck]

Hi
I do hear you on the value of erasing the hard drive. We may yet get to that. I think that before I do that approach, I will try every step possible to rescue my data from the last few weeks (which I failed to back up these past few weeks).....

the challenge was that Drive 10 offered to rebuild my directory but it indicated that there would be perhaps 4 GB less data on the newly rebuilt directory. Since my real data (my writing, talks and academic work) is only 1 GB, I really can't tell if my data would be "safe" in accepting the rebuild proposed by Drive 10.

The latest, OSX-compatitible DiskWarrior software is not out just yet.

[Helvetica Neue]

You can still use the Os 9 Diskwarrior 2.1.1 on your 667 MHz TiBook.

It has saved a phucked harddrive for me on numerous occassions, and gives better results than Drive or Disk Doctor.

If you can start the machine up in firewire target disk mode, maybe you can try Data Rescue (check versiontracker) on it.

[mrmister]

Boot from an ext HD in OS9 and use DiskWarrior...if it sees the drive it can do its work.

It can fix almost anything, and after you've backed up everything you can make an assessment as to whether you need a new HD.

Sounds pretty bad, though.

For backups, I just have cheap, big HDs in external FW cases. Works for me...I have Retrospect scheduled to do backup sets to them, so if there's a big crash I lose a week of work, tops.

[Mastrap]

A couple of months back I dropped my iBook, while running, maybe 4 inches onto a table.

Two days later my drive died in mid-writing. Arrrgh. Thankfully I got it started up once more, amidst terrible grinding noises, to rescue the document I was working on. And I had done a full backup three days before.

I don't know just how badly your PB got jarred but you might want to have your drive checked out very carefully.

Best of luck.

[waterbuck]

thanks folks

Diskwarrior 2.1 could boot the machine but could not find the hard drive.

Booting the machine on a homemade BootCD (using the BootCD) program was possible but with a copy of Data Rescue on the same CD as the boot-up program, we could not find the Hard Drive.

we ran Drive10 twice; each time it found directory problems.

It is going back to Apple for AppleCare and I am hoping that they'll replace the hard drive. There was no major jarring of the machine, although I take to it work from home each day, so that movement itself could be jarring I guess (I think this is one of those random things, me).....

[mrmister]

They will replace it--that sounds like a hosed drive.

[zos]

Just to add my 2¢, I've had more kernel panics in 10.2.5 than ever before. The message you saw in gray with all the languages was a kernel panic as far as I can tell. I've been having one every day or two. This is on a stock 500mhz Pismo with only a trackball connected.

[waterbuck]

Hi-
I was in 10.2.4 when my little disaster hit. I have seen many posts on kernel panic in 10.2.5, as I have prowled the boards. I am in no position to know whether a certain incidence of kernel panics is to be expected when people update their operating systems and maybe different people have them happen each time; still it makes me feel a little cautious about putting in 10.2.5 when that computer comes back from Apple!

[Helvetica Neue]

If neither diskwarrior or data rescue could see the drive, it was a hardware failure indeed

Hope you'll manage to recover some of that data my friend...

[waterbuck]

Hi
My problems started with a kernel panic, followed by blinking question mark when I tried to boot. DiskWarrior could not even find my hard drive, and drive10 found it, tried to fix it repeatedly, but never settled down and said it was fixed.

In the end, it was some kind of hardware failure. My computer went back to Apple under Applecare and they replaced the hard drive. I lost all the contents of that drive which were, for the most part, backed up...

[CyberPet]

Maybe a very blonde question, but *could* it be possible that DiskWarrior coudln't see the drive because it didn't have the drivers for OS 9 installed?

I might be confused, but I thought that if you don't check that box when you format your drive it won't display OS X at all while in OS 9.

Just a thought anyway, so correct me if I'm wrong.

[waterbuck]

Hi Helvetica

I would guess that the drive was just shot, since the applecare folks put in a new one.

Prior to its demise, the drive had OS9 on it, but I don't know whether it had specific OS9 drivers so that it might be recognizable by Diskwarrior 2.2. From what I had seen at the alsoft (diskwarrior) website, a drive that had both OS9 and OSX on it in the first place was supposed to be amenable to being fixed by Diskwarrior 2.2, even though Diskwarrior 2.2 was not OSX-native.