[CarpetFluff]

O.k so I'm dumb and I didn't back up all my data.

For some reason one of my hard drives gave up the ghost this afternoon after a strange problem where I was trying to mount a Powerbook in Disk Target mode. It wouldn't work and my powermac was throwing up errors, after that one of the drives started making a repeated clicking sound.

I have Drive 10 (I bought it to help fix a problem with another drive a month ago, which it couldn't fix either) but it can't see the drive on the bus, I remember having a similar problem years ago with a much older Powermac where the drive was clicking alarmingly and Norton fixed it, but that was under OS 9.

Is there any hope for this drive at all? any suggestions? Pretty please with bells on!

[CharlesS]

You can get DiskWarrior. If anything will be able to fix it, DW will. In the future you'll probably end up running DW before Drive10 or Norton, because it's a better utility than those (Norton has screwed up my hard drive on more than one occasion as well).

Unfortunately, the current version is OS 9 only, so you'll have to reboot in 9 to run it. It's kind of a shame to buy it now, since the OS X version is imminent, but if your drive is hosed, you probably want to get it fixed right away, which means getting DiskWarrior now.

If even DW can't save your drive, there's also Data Rescue, which is really, really good at recovering files from hosed disks, so you can hopefully at least get your data back, but since it doesn't actually repair the disk, you'd still have to reformat.

[deharlow]

I had my PowerBook G4 drive fail the other day, machine would not boot and the drive would not mount. So I hooked it up to my tower (the DVD is not working either) and put it in target disk mode (hold down the T key during boot). I bought DiskWarrior and then let it run for 13+hrs (yes 13+hrs, the AppleCare rep said it might take 24hrs so I felt lucky) and after DiskWarrior was done my data was back (well most of it 300 or so damaged files that I am still sort through).

So get DiskWarrior as it would be your best hope beside DriveSavers recovery service.

Daniel

[CarpetFluff]

Thanks guys, I'll check out DW for future reference. However after a lot of research into this drive's particular probelm I've decided it's dead.

Apparently there are 3 basic things that can go wrong with a drive.

Some kind of data corruption problem
A logic failure
A Mechanical failure

If it's the first you can usually repair it using a utility of some kind, a problem on the disk can produce a clicking noise if the boot sector is damaged.

A logic failure is damage to the circuit board on the outside of the drive.

A mechanical failure is when the internal mechanism fails usually leading to destruction of the disk, this is also often accompanied by a clicking. you can tell if it's mechanical failure by unplugging the data cable and leaving the power lead connected.

The clicking associated with data corruption will not occur when it is only connected to the power because it's caused by the computer continually scanning for the boot sector, when connected to power alone the drive should just spin silently.

In the case of my drive though, it continues to click with the data cable detatched and it's therefore supposedly KAPUT!

I can't get anything in OS 9 to recognise it either and it prevents the other drive on the bus from being recognised also.

It's now a rather ugly expensive paperweight :o(

So now i'm looking for a place to buy a cheap 80-120Gb hard drive, anyone know a place in Muncie Indiana I can get one? as that's where I'm going next week!

thanks again!

[forkies]

Funny, after using Drive 10 I figured it was meant to make money, and it was the best Micromat could do.

Diskwarrior has saved many hard drives I thought were lost.

[[APi]TheMan]

DiskWarrior rules. Whether it be in OS9 or the new OSX, it is awesome. DiskWarrior 2.x (in OS9) recently fixed some pretty gnarly harddrive problems on my Pismo, I think it was reparing for 27 hours or so...

Once DiskWarrior had fixed my OSX partition (booted to another partition running OS9 and DW 2) I could boot into X and fire up DiskWarrior 3 to fix my FireWire drive. I ended up with about 400 rescued items but the repair time was a lot quicker.

DiskWarrior++

[xyber233]

Heh, have you tried using Norton? It seems that you have it. I don't like installing Norton on my hard drive but the CD has saved me a few times.

[Big Mac]

Originally posted by CharlesS:

Unfortunately, the current version is OS 9 only, so you'll have to reboot in 9 to run it. It's kind of a shame to buy it now, since the OS X version is imminent, but if your drive is hosed, you probably want to get it fixed right away, which means getting DiskWarrior now.

Since most will be rebooting with the Disk Warrior CD anyway, it won't make a difference. The current version of Disk Warrior repairs OS X volumes perfectly well, even though its CD boots into OS 9. The only reason to wait for the OS X version would be if one needed to repair the newest machines (which don't boot OS 9, of course) or if one wished to use Diskwarrior with a secondary OS X boot disk.

Btw, CharlesS, is there any possiblity that you could post some instructions for BootCD? The MacFixIt instructions no longer exist (at least for non-members).

[Cipher13]

Drive 10 blows.

DiskWarrior is awesome.

[CharlesS]

Originally posted by Big Mac:
Btw, CharlesS, is there any possiblity that you could post some instructions for BootCD? The MacFixIt instructions no longer exist (at least for non-members).

There's an "Instructions (English).rtf" file that comes on BootCD's disk image...