[chasg]

Hi All,

I put a new 18Gb drive into my pismo, transferred all of my data from old drive to new, booted up and all was well.

I shut down, and booted up again, and all I got was the initial smiling mac symbol (the one you get just when a bootable HD is recognized), but that's it, it stays there.

I booted from my Norton disc and Disk Doctor noted tons of "major" errors on the drive, and fixed them all. No dice, same freeze at startup. Ran Norton again and again, a bunch of "major" errors (fixed). Again, no startup.

Oh, I should note: when I start up with the Norton disc, I can see the 18Gb drive, I can even open files, I just can't boot from it.

Any ideas? I'd really like to just fix it and use it, but in any case I'd like to get the data off (it has about 11Gb on it), perhaps reinitialize and put the data back on.

Or is the drive dead?

Help?

[Damien]

1) Try resetting (zapping) your PRAM. Power up your machine while holding down the Command-Option-P-R keys. Let it chime three times and let up.

2) If you have a CD with DiskWarrior on it (most technicians carry one around religiously), boot from it and check your HD's catalog. DiskWarrior finds errors that Norton often doesn't...and DW won't just "patch" the catalog but entirely rebuild it.

3) Boot from your OS 9 install CD and install a new (clean) operating system.

------------------
Damien Barrett
http://www.mrbarrett.com

[This message has been edited by Damien (edited 07-01-2000).]

[chasg]

Thanks for the reply (sorry it took me so long to get back to the board on this, read on for why...)

I don't have diskwarrior, unfortunately. I did zap pram and installed a new system.

The problem got worse though. I had to use the machine so I took out the 18Gb drive and put the orginal 6Gb drive back in. Two days later, the _same thing_ happened to the 6Gb drive. I've been using this machine (with this 6Gb drive) for months, and I'm really suspicious that the same problem just happened to happen to the 6Gb drive.

Could there be something wrong with some other piece of hardware in this machine?

Be that as it may be, since the 6Gb drive refused to boot the machine, I had to reinitize the 18Gb drive and install the orginal drive image on it. Success, boot (I'm writing from the machine right now).

This does _not_ get me access to the orginal data on the 18Gb drive, of course, plus the 6Gb drive is in a box. All of my apps, email docs etc. I'm considering buying an external drive, firewire prob, installing a system on it, taking out the 18Gb drive, putting back in the 6Gb drive, booting from the firewire drive, moving the data off the 6Gb drive, wiping the 6Gb drive, installing the orginal HD image off the CD on to the 6Gb drive and moving the data back from the firewire drive on to the 6Gb (and subsequently the 18Gb drive, which I want to use instead of the 6Gb drive).

Can anyone see any problems with that possible solution? (I'm really worried that there is some other unknown problem with this machine, and that the internal drives will pooch again).

Sorry for the very very long post. I'd very much appreciate any replies.

Cheers,

Chas

[tedgrigg]

Try the following before you change out your hard drive. You probably tried all of this, but I have learned never to assume anything regardless of experience level. So please forgive the basics mentioned here.

1. Do a hard reset of your Powerbook. This is a deeper reset than zapping the PRAM.

2. Be sure to reselect the system volume as your star up disk in the Start up Disk control panel.

3. Use Apple's Drive Setup's latest version # 1.9.2 to update the driver. This problem sounds somewhat like a driver problem. Be sure to turn off and disable your Password Security Control Panel before attempting the update.

4. If you have not used Disk First Aid version #8.5.5, then run it after the driver update.

5. Run Hard Disk SpeedTools or Apple's Diver Setup to test your hard drive. In Drive Setup select the "Function" pull down menu and then check off the "Test dirve" listing.

6. If the test runs ok, check the health of your internal battery with a freeware version of Battery Checker 1.1. You can find this at the VersionTracker sight by doing a simple search.

7. Run Norton Utilities or Techtool Pro to correct any other problems. With Techtools, select the expert dialog box and select Volume Structures and check off "Rebuild". Of course, you can only run this from a startup volume other than your primary startup volume.

7. Now try to boot with your internal HD.

I also agree with the previous respondent that if you had the latest version of Disk Warrior, it might solve your problem where nothing else can.


------------------

The Professor

[chasg]

Thanks Professor for the great technical advice.

I've finally managed to get both drives back up: I copied the data from the 6Gb drive to a G4 with enough space (took ages!), wiped the 6Gb drive and copied the data back to it.

Then, I put the 18 back into the PB and copied the data again from the G4 to it.

Basically, all is well. I have Disk Warrior on order though :-)

Thanks again to all who helped,

Chas