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kilechki · Dec 12, 2007, 03:43 AM

So...

A few minutes after waking up, my 12" G4 PB (10.5.1) more or less crashed. It remained stuck in Exposé with the mouse still moving, only to give a KP after a few minutes.

I rebooted: it remained stuck at the grey starting screen with the Apple and the rotating thing. Since there was no HD noise even after a few minutes and a few attempts, I rebooted from 10.5 install disc.

From there, I could see the drive in Disc Utility: it was unmounted and could not be mounted ("an error has occured"). I tried to repair it but no error could get found, though the test would not completely end: nothing happened after the green line (Volume seems to be OK). Still impossible to mount.

Since I have a TM backup, I thought I should just erase the drive and reinstall.
But clicking on erase just gave me an error message at first try, and then remained stuck at "preparing erasing" at second try, with the beachball.

It's been stuck like this for the last 20 minutes.

Question is : what I can try next? Could it be that the disk is dead? But then how come the Utility Disc tells me it's okay?

Thanks a lot for your help

cms · Dec 12, 2007, 04:10 AM

Certainly sounds like a failing drive to me. Unfortunately, Disk Utility is so unreliable it probably wouldn't even notice if your laptop was on fire.

Cold Warrior · Dec 12, 2007, 06:17 AM

run the hardware test

if you think your DVD drive is failing, you can use an external DVD/CD drive to boot from, or try putting your Mac in firewire target disk mode and connecting it to another working Mac to run diagnostics.

kilechki · Dec 12, 2007, 06:23 AM

Well, I was thinking Disk Utility was reliable but you are probably right. "Volume is OK" but still nothing to do. I wonder what DiskWarrior could do but the present version is supposed to be not so friendly with 10.5.

I reinstalled OS X on an external hard drive. Restored my Time Machine backup.

And everything now runs smoothly.

I never thought TM could be useful so quickly.

kilechki · Dec 12, 2007, 07:54 AM

I've lost the hardware test disc, unfortunately...

Booting from a partition gave me the same result as from the CD.
What's weird is that SMART reporter can see the drive and says it's okay.

Big Mac · Dec 12, 2007, 08:02 AM

SMART only reports on some types of failures.

AKcrab · Dec 12, 2007, 12:59 PM

Originally Posted by kilechki

I wonder what DiskWarrior could do but the present version is supposed to be not so friendly with 10.5.

We've been using DW on leopard machines without issue.

Person Man · Dec 12, 2007, 01:20 PM

If the drive is not mounting on it's own and erasing it isn't working very well, the drive is likely failing, regardless of what Disk Utility is telling you, and other utilities will probably not help much, either.

If you manage to get the drive working again, you'd be living on borrowed time. Get a new drive.

kilechki · Dec 13, 2007, 03:00 AM

Thanks... I now get an in/out error when trying to erase the drive.

The PowerBook already had a dead screen since the beginning of the year, I was using an external display. Now it's the drive, I get an external drive.

This is becoming a delocalized PowerBook.

kilechki · Dec 13, 2007, 03:02 AM

Oh, and I'm very impressed with Time Machine.

Only problem is that, once restored, the system claims the same backup than before, but it also considers there is a whole new system and so everything get backed up again. Filling all the drive immediately and deleting any previous backup instance.