[alphasubzero949]

To make a long story short, when 10.3.7 came out, I simply wanted to re-create my eDrive with a fresh copy of 10.3.7 and all other patches (hadn't updated it since 10.3.4). I ran the volume structures test beforehand on my main volume to ensure that there were no problems. The test passed with no problems. After clicking remove eDrive, my main volume disappeared! Clicking on the "Create eDrive" button sent the machine into a kernel panic. When I rebooted, my main volume was gone.

The next day I purchased a copy of DiskWarrior as a last resort (desperate) measure. DiskWarrior saw that my main volume was indeed there, but couldn't repair it since the volume structures was far too damaged. 60 GB of my music, movies, pictures, and important documents (including my thesis) GONE. Fortunately, I made backups of my home root level folders a few days before.


I just finished getting my "house" back in order (re-installed all apps, put back all of my documents, prefs, etc.). I only lost about 20 songs from the iTMS, but I burned them to audio CDs. I guess this post should serve as a reminder to everyone to make frequent backups because you never know. I trusted TechTool to my hard drive. Not anymore.


And if you think this was some isolated thing? Several months ago TechTool hosed my hard drive in an attempt to build an eDrive (first time). Originally I thought that it was indeed my hard drive and perhaps a damaged directory. For it to happen twice? I'm done with TTP.


I got nowhere with their tech support and now I regret plucking down $99 for that piece of malware. At the time, it was the only utility compatible with Panther. I should have waited for DiskWarrior (I have a copy of v.2.1, but unfortunately, like all newer Macs, it cannot boot into OS 9).


Running 10.3.7, 1.25 GB RAM, 60 GB HD
15" Al PB G4

[[APi]TheMan]

Yikes... I only really trust Apple's disk utility. If there are any problems it can't repair I seriously try to get data off and then reformat... Tech Tool and Norton are bad news these last few years. DiskWarrior has saved my bacon a few times, though

[tooki]

DiskWarrior is really the only completely trustworthy disk utility that does more than Disk First Aid.

I've never seen DFA cause damage, and I've never seen DiskWarrior cause damage, either.

tooki

[yukon]

Tech Tool Pro has caused me no problems, other than crashing during the file integrity scan a few versions back (just checks finder info etc, it's fixed now). But I haven't used the eDrive feature, it seemed somewhat hacky to me......making a "special" partition out of the boot drive, making it a boot drive itself, being able to "turn it off", it just semed like a partition magic kinda thing but even more hacky.

Be sure to check the SMART status of the drive, do a surface scan first, just to make sure this isn't an effect of drive problems. Seagate says it has trouble on their drives with interpreting the SMART status however. Then, stop using the feature you already knew to be broken ;-). Seriously, make a boot CD, make a small real partition, or simply don't use TechTool4 on your boot partition. It's been fine for disk maintenance, optimization, testing, journaling, and all the testing here.

DW is a good application, but it doesn't do all drive maintenance or diagnosis (and drives _will_ fail in time), but it is awesome nonetheless. DFA is standard, but sometimes it'll simply say "It's too broken to fix", which really isn't helpful.

[alphasubzero949]

Yeah, I suspect that the reason my drive's directory structure was wiped out (both times) has something to do with the way TTP is writing the eDrive "partition" to the directory structure. TTP's hard disk diagnostics are nice, but DW can still access the SMART routines. On my HD, SMART checked out fine. I've always trusted DW on my other laptops as they have pulled my cajones out of the fire before (hard drives that wouldn't mount), but it's too bad that it couldn't come through for me this time.

Replacing 60 GB worth of backups is not fun. I wish I had a SuperDrive instead of feeding CD after CD of my stuff.

I also notice that I'm not alone with this problem, although I'm not sure if this issue is still fairly isolated. Either way, isolated or not, when a disk repair utility that is supposed to help "protect" your hard drive ends up corrupting it, clearly something is wrong.

[Person Man]

Originally posted by alphasubzero949:
Replacing 60 GB worth of backups is not fun. I wish I had a SuperDrive instead of feeding CD after CD of my stuff.

You'd need 15 DVDs to hold all that (8 if you use Toast with a Dual-Layer DVD+R drive and discs). It's still better that 75 CDs, but seriously, if you have that much data to back up, you should get an external hard drive for your routine backups. Not to say that you shouldn't do periodic DVD or CD backups as well (once a month or every three months, say).

I know it's more expensive, but that's just in short-term costs, as I see it. I use my Firewire drive all the time. Especially when doing things that have the potential to radically change my system. Like major system updates. I have never had any problems with them, but I know that if I do, I have a bootable backup of my previous system that I made just before applying the update. If there are any problems, it only takes a half hour to restore my system, instead of spending a half day reinstalling from scratch and then reentering serial numbers, etc.

If I used TTP's eDrive, I would make a backup to my external hard drive before doing it, and then backup again before updating said drive. Very quick and painless. If you use SuperDuper, you can make a full backup once, and then subsequent backups will only back up what has changed since last backup (which is a real time saver).

For $30-$50 more than the cost of a DVD burner, you can have a FireWire drive that holds 80GB, and is so much more convenient. And you also would save on media costs.

Just my 2 cents.

[yukon]

Agreed, the practice of backing up to CDR is about 5 years out of date. CDs are unreliable for archival purposes, and that can be a big problem if you just tar everything up and segment it, one CD dead and you're finished. Not sure how much more reliable DVD is, CDRW is much worse than CD in my experiance. Unless you just backup to one CD or so, your documents that are irreplacable, that's all that really needs to be backed up.

Better to back up to an external drive. After 5 or so backups, you'll be saving money, saving time, and the reliability is much higher. Don't see tape backup much on the desktop anymore.

Take it from me, the cost of CDR versus HD per gigabyte, you're better with the HD, would have saved me cash. A quick calculation shows quality CDR at 85c per gb, the HD at 75c, and the HD is reliable Seagate 160gb

[Person Man]

Originally posted by yukon:
CDs are unreliable for archival purposes

Not if you use Mitsui Gold CD-R's. They make medical grade archival CDs for hospitals, etc. You can get them from here, though they're pretty expensive compared to your usual garden variety 19 cent dealies you get at MallWart's or Sham's Club (Or Beast Buy or Circuit Sh*tty)

[yukon]

That increases the cost even more without increasing speed or convenience. I used to use Kodac's Gold, then they went to Gold & Silver....I haven't used those as much. I prefer Memorex now as I haven't seen a coaster in about 150 of those, not sure who manufactures them anymore, but they recently moved to a blue dye.

Still, CDs can still be easily damaged, and do gradually degrade, the "Lasts 100 Years!" kinda claims won't stand up. Better to stick with a HD and upgrade that when necessary, you're actually likely to keep bit-perfect copies of your documents that way.

There aren't many tests of CD reliability other than manufacturer's inflated claims (using accelerated aging, etc), and anecdotal....there was one on /. , imaging of how CDs were oxidizing or something. Anecdotal, I've never had a HD outright fail on me, always had more than sufficient warning when they were having trouble, each had 4 or so years of constant use. However I have a conciderable stack of coasters, not a whole lot of gold ones in there though, maybe 5.