[Waragainstsleep]

Hi all,

I had a disk go down on the weekend. The 640GB main boot drive from my MBP. It froze up while watching a flash video when I plugged a memory stick in and upon reboot I got the grey scrollbar (this used to be reserved for firmware updates but now seems to indicate that FSCK is running during boot in some cases at least) and it would get so far across then hang.

Lucky for me I have other machines available so first I booted from a Snow Leopard retail DVD image on a firewire drive to run fsck. This ran for a bit but then hung and got no further. Consistently. I then tried booting single user and running fsck internally with the same consistent results.

I then hooked my MBP in target mode to my MacBook and the disk didn't mount. I found this odd since it was trying to boot every time and not struggling to find it at all. It turns out that upon boot or connection of the faulty disk, Snow Leopard runs fsck on it in the background and it was getting stuck again. I found if I force quitted (Friend of mine coined the term 'quat' for past tense) the fsck process, then I would get the "Mac OS X cannot repair this disk, copy your data and erase it" message but the disk would then mount.

All my files seemed to be intact so I copied a few that weren't backed up to be safe and ran Diskwarrior on it. DW found 346,188 overlapped files within an hour before slowing down to find one more every hour or so. (It turns out there were ~650,000 files on the disk so this would have taken a while.
I tried this once or twice more with the same results before spotting a 'speed reduced, lack of memory' error. The MacBook has only 2GB RAM and only 1.5GB free on its own boot drive (Yes I know this will give you nightmares Allen ) so I tried again on my Mac Mini which has more free disk space on it and is running SL Server. Same result. Still slowed to a crawl after 346,190 files.

Since I could persuade the disk to mount I figured I'd try cloning it with CCC but this insists on unmounting and remounting which it failed to achieve every single time so I revealed the hidden files in the Finder and copied the entire contents of the disk to a fresh formatted 1TB USB drive.

My 1TB clone is bootable and I repaired permissions once before booting and once when booted from it as I know Finder copies can screw these up. It seems to work well enough but it occasionally bitches about CHUD extensions not being installed correctly (I can fix that without much bother) but I thought I'd run DW over the clone just to make sure it was in as good a shape as possible and it will not replace the directory despite finding errors. I tried disabling journaling on the drive with no change.

So my question is this: Should I clone the copy back to the new disk with CCC and then try running DW to make sure everything is tip-top, or would I be better off doing a clean install of SL onto the new disk and migrating from my clone? I'm tending towards the latter myself but interested to hear opinions.

Thanks,

War

[CharlesS]

I think nuking and restoring is really the only option, since overlapped files usually means you'd have heavy data loss even if you did manage to repair the directory. The only thing that gives me pause is the fact that you've got a clone instead of a versioned backup scheme (such as Time Machine). The cloning software may well have overwritten the good data on the clone with bad data from sometime after the corruption happened but before you noticed it. If that's the case, you may be up the proverbial creek.

[Waragainstsleep]

I made the clone after the disk went all screwy. I saved every last file without issue just by copying manually from the Finder and the random sample I have checked have all been fine. No data loss that I can see. I'm going to try a clean install and migrate. See how I get on. I have most of the important files backed up anyway, just wanted to rescue some of the settings and prefs (I have a lot of VPN connections for example) just because having a quick go at saving them is quicker than setting them again from scratch.

My backup strategy is not what it should be purely because every disk I have is stuffed full of data already. Haven't really had the cash to burn on a 2TB TM backup drive though I got a tax rebate so I might invest some of that now. The screwy disk in question is a 640GB drive. It had about 627GB of data on it. Including the OS etc.

[OreoCookie]

@Waragainstsleep
The question is: how much is the data worth to you?

You should not overwrite a working clone with possibly faulty data, potentially losing all your data. Exactly that is the problem of cloning as a backup method: you hose your existing backup before creating a new one. Instead, just get another external drive and move the data there. Yes, it costs money, but typically, the data contained on the drive is worth much more than the $80-120 that an external drive costs.

It sounds as if your main drive may have hardware problems anyway and may be in need of replacement. Before figuring that out, however, I'd try to copy your data.

Another piece of advice: do not use Disk Warrior to fix the drive, you should use Data Rescue instead. Data Rescue does not try to fix a directory structure, it tries to extract the data and write it onto another disk. By definition, Data Rescue cannot make things worse -- unlike Disk Warrior.

[P]

I would buy a new disk at this point. On a modern OS, directories don't just go kaplooie when you look at them the wrong way (or have a browser start writing its webcache all over the directory...), so there is something seriously wrong with that drive. The fact that it was 98% full is also cause for concern. Buy a new drive first, then reinstall the OS and your apps onto it, then copy the data from your cloned drive. The old 640 GB drive should be introduced to the business end of a power drill. Or an axe.

[Waragainstsleep]

I guess I'm not being clear here. I don't use cloning as a backup method. I just save whatever files are irreplaceable to external storage. Its mostly just my extensive iTunes video library. I have already rescued all my data, I wouldn't generally use DW otherwise though I have used its preview feature to copy data off before now.

My drive failed, so I copied all the data off it. I want to try and replicate the failed drive if I can because its a pain to rebuild all my settings if I don't have to. I can live with it if it doesn't work, but I'd prefer not to at the moment.

I managed to get all my data off the faulty drive onto an external. CCC wouldn't work so I just manually copied all files (including hidden) to the other drive. I now have a bootable clone just with one or two issues regarding a couple of kext files and their permissions.

I thought the fault with the disk was just the directory so I was going to wipe it clean, install Snow Leopard, then migrate from my pseudo-clone but it turns out this disk is FUBAR and won't even erase. New plan is to buy a new disk to use while this one is getting swapped out under warranty and probably an external for TM backup. Its now a question whether I buy another big 2.5" HDD and do a straight clone, or whether I splash out a little bit on a 120GB Vertex 2 and put the 640GB warranty replacement in my optibay when it comes back from WD. Either way I'm still going to try an migrate my apps and most of my user data from my pseudo-clone.

[OreoCookie]

Ah, yes, I was indeed a bit confused.
My advice is to get a 2 TB external harddrive in any case. Clone onto that first and once you get another harddrive for your MacBook Pro, clone back. Then use the new 2 TB drive for Time Machine. (A backup drive should be a lot larger than the data volume it needs to store!)

Since you've indicated you're strapped for cash and you need to decide between a new SSD and a backup drive, I definitely advise for getting a proper backup drive and against getting the new toy.

You mention several other machines in your sig, can you use one of them in the meantime or do you need to go out and buy a new 2.5" drive right away?

[Waragainstsleep]

Yeah. My old G4 tower doesn't get a lot of use these days but it does still work in a pinch. My MacBook sits on my coffee table running torrents mostly. The Xserves are too noisy to stand but I also have a Mac Mini running SL Server. That said I dug out an old 100GB SATA disk that looks like it came out of my MacBook about 3 years ago and I'm running the Pro on that right now.