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badtz · Sep 10, 2004, 02:22 AM

After all this time, I thought OS X could never die.

But it did. I'm still not sure what happened, but thank goodness I backup nightly (well, the essentials only [documents, photos, etc.] not the actual OS)

After this experience (and about a week's downtime) I've learned that I have to add my preferences onto my backup routine. I managed to scrape up some of my old preference files, but it seems a lot of programs I'll have to re-do the settings, which won't be fun

Anywho ... if you're wondering what happened ....

OS X froze.

When I re-booted, everything booted up fine, but NOT the finder. There was no way what so ever to run the finder. Though, my HD was still in tact, since I can run other programs (like safari) and do a "save as" and I can see my HD's contents.

ODD.

So I ran DW3/TTP4, both detected a lot of errors and fixed them.

But now ... I couldn't even boot up far in the boot sequence. It would just stop at the grey apple logo page with the action animation going, but it never goes anywhere.

Luckily, I have a firewire disc that had an older version of OS X on it, and I was able to boot off onto that drive. After booting up on that, I saw all of my files on my primary disc scrambled, and most of my user preferences hosed. Probably from DW3/TTP4 trying to fix the errors.

On the bright side .... I was experiencing freezes w/OS X [look at the freeze thread, mouse moves but the OS doesn't do anything] .... and hopefully now with a format, that problem will go away

oh well.

bookofjames · Sep 10, 2004, 02:27 AM

wow, i'm sorry u had to go thru that.

hmm.. maybe i should backup my stuff also... anyone have a backup tool to recommend?

badtz · Sep 10, 2004, 02:32 AM

... I used Deja Vu [for it's simplicity].

I only had backups of the documents/pictures/music/safari bookmarks/pixadex icon preferences.

The other stuff [OS X] was not backed up, since that can be easily installed, and i didn't want to waste space on my firewire disk.

One thing I'll definitely add onto my routine is making backups of my user preferences.

............ Maybe all of those random freezes on OS X caused files to corrupt, and over time, something like this could happen?

OT: I had journaling turned on also.

LORL · Sep 10, 2004, 08:34 AM

I defentitly think what screwed you was the DW3 and the other tool. I have heard that you should stick to the Mac OS X tools, or if you use another one, don't load up on them too heavy, as they end up screwing a lot of stuff up when used in cunjuction with eachother.

Oh well, sorry man.

cambro · Sep 10, 2004, 08:43 AM

If you were experiencing a bunch of freezes before OS X died then something was wrong with your install to begin with. Without using third party apps that mess with system-level files like kernel extensions and what not, it's hard to imagine how this would have happened. Or maybe something in NVRAM or PRAM was really hosed?

On another note, it's too bad that the system can't back up it's own preference files and automatically detected screwed up ones. I doubt that this was the cause of your problem, but it seems lots of similar sorts of screw-ups can ultimately be traced back to faulty pref files.

wunderkind · Sep 10, 2004, 10:12 AM

When using DiskWarrior it is important to preview a newly rebuilt directory before replacing an old one. If you don't, you may lose many files/folders - in case problems with the disk are serious enough.

badtz · Sep 10, 2004, 12:00 PM

Originally posted by cambro:
If you were experiencing a bunch of freezes before OS X died then something was wrong with your install to begin with.

There was nothing wrong with the OS X install, as the freezes didn't occur until the end of it's life.

My problem [still unresolved by apple] is the same as indicated here ....

http://forums.macnn.com/showthread.p...hreadid=199524

I only used DW3/TTP4 after trying to use the apple tools.

Thorin · Sep 10, 2004, 12:18 PM

I'm looking at doing a clean install of panther soon. I've backed up my entire home directory. Where are all my preferences stored if I wanted to back those up? I'm also concerned about my iTunes library. I've backed up all my music files, but I'd like to retain my library with all my star ratings, number of times playd etc. Where can I back that up, and how would I restore it once I've reinstalled iTunes.

SS3 GokouX · Sep 10, 2004, 12:51 PM

Your preferences are stored in ~/Library/Preferences/

You can iTunes Library files by going to iTunes' preferences, under the Advanced tab. In side your iTunes Music folder location should be a folder labeled "iTunes." In there should be two files, iTunes Music Library.xml and iTunes 4 Music Library. Those two contain your ratings, play counts, and pretty much everything else not stored in the ID3 tags.

rjenkinson · Sep 10, 2004, 01:01 PM

Originally posted by Thorin:
I've backed up all my music files, but I'd like to retain my library with all my star ratings, number of times playd etc. Where can I back that up, and how would I restore it once I've reinstalled iTunes.

just back up these two files:
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes 4 Music Library
~/Music/iTunes/iTunes Music Library.xml

once you've re-installed itunes, copy those files back to your home folder.

-r.

Thorin · Sep 10, 2004, 01:24 PM

Thanks folks - just what I was after.

While we're at it, I have some very slight doubts about the integrity of the firewire drive I'm backing up to at the moment. Any tips on any utilities that would allow me to run some sort of test on it or something?

(It's a slightly long and boring story, but I got the drive for free from my Dad who can't remember why he stopped using it - I've just mucked around with it, throwing a few gigs of data at it, and had no problems so far.)

arjay · Sep 10, 2004, 10:19 PM

Originally posted by bookofjames:
wow, i'm sorry u had to go thru that.

hmm.. maybe i should backup my stuff also... anyone have a backup tool to recommend?

LaCie has a free backup program that works ok. Check their site for downloads. It's called SilverKeeper. Can't beat the price!

arjay

Betox · Sep 11, 2004, 11:12 AM

Wow!! The exact same thing happened to me!

Everything boot up fine except for the Finder. I also could open Safari and in the Save As window see the HD contents.

I had to reinstall everything.

I bought another HD (80GB) just to backup my entire disk every week with Carbon Copy Cloner.

Detrius · Sep 11, 2004, 12:27 PM

Originally posted by LORL:
I defentitly think what screwed you was the DW3 and the other tool. I have heard that you should stick to the Mac OS X tools, or if you use another one, don't load up on them too heavy, as they end up screwing a lot of stuff up when used in cunjuction with eachother....

DiskWarrior 3 is the best directory repair utility out there. About the only thing TechTool Pro 4 is safe and reliable for is checking your hard drive hardware.

I suspect that running the TTP4 directory structure repair utilities may have been what exacerbated your problems.

Starry Night · Sep 12, 2004, 01:24 AM

Originally posted by bookofjames:
wow, i'm sorry u had to go thru that.

hmm.. maybe i should backup my stuff also... anyone have a backup tool to recommend?

I recently set-up a backup routine. Bought an internal 160GB Seagate Barracuda HD from Outpost ($60 after rebate). Then bought an OWC Mercury Elite Pro Firewire Enclosuer from OWC (macsales.com, $70). Installing the Seagate into the enclosure was very easy.

Then, on the newly formatted Seagate, I used Carbon Copy Cloner to clone my current hard drive. It did a great job of making a fully bootable clone. Now I use Chronosync to nightly backup my entire Home folder. Works very well, and very fast.

I figure this is money well spent, if anything goes wrong, I'll always have a complete, updated copy of my hard drive to get me up and running quickly.

Also use Disk Warrior 3 every few months as regular maintenance and never had a problem with it.....

badtz · Sep 16, 2004, 01:47 AM

... so Panther is finally back up!

..... now it's time to customize many things again

Good thing my important data wasn't lost! [it's all about backing up!!!!]

............ Panther feels so much smoother and "clean" again .... [@ least for the next couple days]

Orion27 · Sep 16, 2004, 06:17 PM

Originally posted by Detrius:
DiskWarrior 3 is the best directory repair utility out there. About the only thing TechTool Pro 4 is safe and reliable for is checking your hard drive hardware.

I suspect that running the TTP4 directory structure repair utilities may have been what exacerbated your problems.

Detrius
I have been running TTP4 exclusively. I have run it numerous times from the desktop and across firewire from my powerbook. My only complaint is it is a tad slow. But I have never experienced a problem. Could you elaborate on your concerns or experience? I could run DW3 as well, sans update from my Jaguar partitition. Thanks for the input. Also, how does
"fsck" differ from DW or TTP4? Can anyone elaborate on fsck limitations as a repair tool?
My use of TTP4 in strictly limited to directory repair. I do not optimize my journaled Apple disks. I have on occasion used TTP4 to check the health of my HD. Are there any disccussions you can point us to on the subject?

Big Mac · Sep 16, 2004, 08:05 PM

fsck is just a simple Unix utility for checking and repairing disks. Disk First Aid probably uses fsck in the background to perform its checks, but I'm not totally sure if that is the case. Apple recommends using a third party utility in the event that Disk Utility does not fix the problem; it recommends using Disk Utility over fsck. (That may just be due to the fact that they don't want to expose people to single user mode unless it is necessary.)