Welcome to the MacNN Forums.

jca · Oct 10, 2002, 10:08 PM

My Quicksilver dual 800 G4 suffered a internal 80gig hard drive failure (caused by a crash in OS X Jaguar and IE - thanks Microsoft). Anyway, the crash corrupted the drive badly - getting lots of Invalid Directory Counts and Orphaned Indirect Node errors. Attempts to repair via fsck, Disk Repair, and Norton have proved unsuccessful.

The problem is, the internal drive is preventing startup, even when booting from CD or external FireWire drive. (The drive prevents startup - OS X sticks at "waiting for local drives" and OS 9 just hangs.) I want to let DiskWarrior have a go at the drive - does anyone know what the startup key DiskWarrior uses to prevent drives from mounting at startup?

Anybody have suggestions for dealing with the drive? Need to recover it if possible - important data, no backup, blah blah.

Any help/suggestions/advice?

Thanks!

-jca

vasu · Oct 10, 2002, 11:58 PM

i had to repair a drive like that once. By that I mean, it'd hang the computer when I was booting off a CD and it was trying to get mounted.

What I had to do was unplug the drive and let the machine boot off the CD, and then plug it back in after it was loaded.

I think... It was a long time ago. I've also had to use hard disk toolkit to mount the drive.

-vasu

reader50 · Oct 11, 2002, 12:39 AM

To the best of my knowledge, IDE connectors are not rated for hot-swap. The only safe way I can think of is a Firewire or USB drive enclosure. Then plug the Firewire or USB enclosure in after the system has booted. That, or boot in Firewire Target Disk mode, and plug your Mac into another Mac to run the repairs.

If you have to hot-connect, I'd suggest hot-plugging the power connector to the drive, instead of the IDE cable. But an enclosure would be safe for your system, and I'm not at all sure even a drive power connector hot-connect would be safe.

Zimmerman · Oct 11, 2002, 12:27 PM

I cant recommend hot swapping, but how about just hooking up the power connector after the fact? Would that be all that risky? I mean, wouldn't it be about the same as switching on an external SCSI drive after the machine is booted? You should never connect the cables after a machine is up, but how about the power?

vasu · Oct 11, 2002, 01:22 PM

Yeah, hot plugging isn't the best solution, but I had no other choice in my situation. It was 2 am and I had a paper due the next morning.

slider · Oct 11, 2002, 02:28 PM

just has to say I loved the title of your post, put a smile on my face, thanks.

tooki · Oct 11, 2002, 02:34 PM

Originally posted by reader50:
To the best of my knowledge, IDE connectors are not rated for hot-swap. The only safe way I can think of is a Firewire or USB drive enclosure. Then plug the Firewire or USB enclosure in after the system has booted. That, or boot in Firewire Target Disk mode, and plug your Mac into another Mac to run the repairs.

If you have to hot-connect, I'd suggest hot-plugging the power connector to the drive, instead of the IDE cable. But an enclosure would be safe for your system, and I'm not at all sure even a drive power connector hot-connect would be safe.

An enclosure won't work. Mac OS 9-based disk utilities can only repair FireWire (including TDM) and USB disks that are mounted. So if you can't mount it, you can't fix it. If the drive is connected through its native interface, then a utility can see and repair the drive even if it cannot mount. (This is a common procedure, since FireWire disks suffer more corruption than IDE or SCSI disks, and so it's frequent to have to pull a drive from the enclosure and connect it directly to internal IDE to do repairs.) OS X seems to be better at seeing through a FireWire bridge, but since Disk Warrior isn't out for OS X yet, that's a moot point.

It is PERFECTLY safe to keep the drive's IDE connector connected, disconnect the power connector, power up the machine from CD, and then connect the power connector before launching Disk Warrior. I've had to do that a couple of times. (Alternatively, you could just let OS 9 sit there... usually, after like 20 minutes, it will give up and stop trying to mount it.)

tooki

boardsurfer · Oct 11, 2002, 06:12 PM

Does this help you at all?

Upon Start-up: Command + Option + Shift + Delete = Ignore internal hard disk for booting

From another thread in OSX General...

jca · Oct 11, 2002, 07:25 PM

Appreciate all the suggestions. Here's an update:

I let the drive timeout (as suggested) in OS 9, and eventually got DiskWarrior running via an external Firewire drive. It went through the drive, made it's "repaired version" directory, but during the "replace" stage, it gave up offering a "Disk Error" and said to try again.

I ran DW again and this time, tried copying a few files (which it suggested) from it's temporary "preview" version of the drive. (The step before the "replace" stage.) As before, disk copying is extermely slow, almost impling there could be some further hardware damage/problem outside the drive.

I haven't tried the "hot-swapping" yet. I'm about to run out to CompUSA to get a FireWire enclosure. I want to see if I can pull the drive up on my Powerbook so I get another chance at copying critical files before any risky internal hot-swapping.

Will update later.

Welcome more suggestions and thoughts.

Thanks!

-jca

tooki · Oct 12, 2002, 08:29 PM

Totally unnecessary. Nothing you can do from here on will give you any result other than what you already accomplished by letting OS 9 wait until it gives up trying to mount the disk. The FireWire case WILL NOT help, since, as I already made clear, no OS 9 based utility can repair a FireWire disk if it won't mount. Besides, powering up a drive that has the IDE cable connected WILL NOT cause damage.

If you are getting actual disk errors, it's rather unlikely that a crash caused it. More likely it was the reverse, that drive failure caused the OS to crash. Get what you can using DiskWarrior's preview mode, and then see if you can reformat the drive (and zero it; you want to make sure there is no mechanical failure). If reformatting fails, call Apple and get the drive replaced. If your Apple warranty has run out, then call the drive manufacturer instead.

tooki

jca · Oct 13, 2002, 06:56 AM

Tooki (and everyone else), thanks for all your advice. I did read your clear message before about OS 9 utils no-go on drives via firewire that won't mount. I still wanted to put the drive in an enclosure, even just to format it and see how it goes. (It won't be going back into the G4.)

Before I removed the drive, I tried copying everything via DW's preview mode. The copying would sometimes fail on certain files - at other times, it would go in short "bursts" of speed, and then hang for many minutes. (This didn't matter if I was copying large/many items, etc.) I hope the files I did get were not damaged. Would running DW (or Norton) on the newly copied data (on the backup drive) reveal any damage?

Anyway, installed the drive in the ADS Pyro kit Firewire enclosure. It won't mount, but Disk Utlitiy eventually sees it for formatting. Since it's a Western Digital 80gig, I'm unsure about jumper settings. (I can't even find where the LED cable should go. WD site seems to be down right now.)

You mentioned calling Apple/Manufacturer for warrenty replacement. My G4 (and the drive) are just over a year old by 2 months (!). Do you think I'll have much luck with Apple and/or WD? Any predictions?

-jca