[wizumwalt]

I've got a Ti Powerbook G4 running Tiger and something went wrong where even disk warrior no longer fixes it, it won't boot. I have a few hundred Mb of a 40Gb hard drive that are free and I'm wondering if I can install Tiger on it again w/o deleting my user data.

Anyone have ideas?

[Cold Warrior]

Archive Install is quick and easy and will preserve data. Alternatively you could put your Powerbook in firewire target disk mode, back up your data to an external firewire drive, then perform a clean Tiger installation.

[wizumwalt]

Would I need another mac to connect via firewire too (it's my only mac)? Or could I connect it to a linux box?

Also, I inserted the Tiger CD and at the point where it should have shown an install target, there was no install target. I didn't have a drive to select as the target. What does that mean?

[Cold Warrior]

any non-Mac with firewire and firewire drivers will work. However, the machine needs to be able to read HFS+, which is your Mac's hard drive format.

[AKcrab]

I think your hard drive is toast.

[Gavin]

Target disk mode makes it act just like any external firewire disk drive, so it might work fine with linux. The linux box would need to be able to read HFS+, you may have to install a module for that. Also it may do funny things to the file permissions when you copy the file over but that's the least you your problems.

No install target is bad news I think. The disk may be fried. Have a look at it with Disk Utility - after booting from the CD fish around for it in the menus. The good news is that you may still be able to read files from a half fried drive in target disk mode, I've done that before.

I would try to recover / copy / backup the files first before you fiddle with the OS.

Good luck - have fun.

[Spheric Harlot]

Originally Posted by wizumwalt 

I've got a Ti Powerbook G4 running Tiger and something went wrong where even disk warrior no longer fixes it, it won't boot. I have a few hundred Mb of a 40Gb hard drive that are free and I'm wondering if I can install Tiger on it again w/o deleting my user data.

Anyone have ideas?

There is not much you can do if you have only a few hundred MB free - in fact, that's most likely why your system is toast in the first place (that warning about your startup disk almost being full? Yeah, that one you clicked away - it's important.).

Boot into target disk mode, save what you can, and nuke and pave.

[wizumwalt]

Originally Posted by Spheric Harlot 

Boot into target disk mode, save what you can, and nuke and pave.

Don't think I understand, there is no target disk to select. And I missing something?

[Spheric Harlot]

Restart your Powerbook and hold down the "T" key.

This will turn the Powerbook into an external Firewire hard drive that can be accessed from any computer that has a Firewire port and is able to read the Mac disk format.

This mode is called "Target Disk Mode".

Recover any data you can using this mode and reformat the disk and reinstall the system.


Make sure to NEVER let the disk get so full ever again.

[AKcrab]

Originally Posted by wizumwalt 

Also, I inserted the Tiger CD and at the point where it should have shown an install target, there was no install target. I didn't have a drive to select as the target. What does that mean?

Originally Posted by wizumwalt 

Don't think I understand, there is no target disk to select. And I missing something?

It means that without another computer, the ability to run Disk Warrior (which may complain of lack of drive space and fail anyway, even if it sees the drive), and without the ability to run something like Data Rescue II (which probably won't see the drive either), more than likely you're screwed.

Good luck!