[KellyHogan]

So you may have remembered my problems the other day with Preview and a couple of apps taking ages to launch and hogging the system. I couldn't figure out what was wrong.

So today I decided to reboot OSX so I could get a nice fresh system. Problem. First thing I got a kernal panic booting up even before the OSX logo appeared. The same thing on each subsequent attempt to boot.

My only choice was to boot of an OS9 CD. After that I noticed that the HD was not mounted. Using OS9's utilities I managed to initialise the HD. Hooray!!! I lost all my data! Great. This OSX is the most advanced OS in the world. And iMac 800 is so modern.

So now I have to zero all data and restore my Mac. I've lost my digital photos, my Word documents, my settings, my apps, all the Version Tracker stuff that I still had to back up. I can't believe there is no built in utility to prevent such a loss of data when the OS can be so fragile.

Luckily I have my Ti-Book otherwise I wouldn't be posting this even. And this is the computer I keep my hardest work on!

[motti]

Did you try holding down command-s while booting? and the type fsck -y? In column view, it took very long for the next column to appear, after fsck -y, it was fast like on a fresh install.
Hmm, that probably doesn't help you a lot now, I wouldn't have initialised the hd without first putting it in another computer and trying to save the documents...

[Guy Incognito]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>So you may have remembered my problems the other day with Preview and a couple of apps taking ages to launch and hogging the system. I couldn't figure out what was wrong.

So today I decided to reboot OSX so I could get a nice fresh system. Problem. First thing I got a kernal panic booting up even before the OSX logo appeared. The same thing on each subsequent attempt to boot.

My only choice was to boot of an OS9 CD. After that I noticed that the HD was not mounted. Using OS9's utilities I managed to initialise the HD. Hooray!!! I lost all my data! Great. This OSX is the most advanced OS in the world. And iMac 800 is so modern.

So now I have to zero all data and restore my Mac. I've lost my digital photos, my Word documents, my settings, my apps, all the Version Tracker stuff that I still had to back up. I can't believe there is no built in utility to prevent such a loss of data when the OS can be so fragile.

Luckily I have my Ti-Book otherwise I wouldn't be posting this even. And this is the computer I keep my hardest work on!</STRONG>

Hmmm...it might be too late to tell you that you should backup your files...even if you're running the world's most advanced OS.

[cutterjohn]

initializing a drive will tend to zero all data. you should have known this, and I believe that it warns you as well.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by cutterjohn:
<STRONG>initializing a drive will tend to zero all data. you should have known this, and I believe that it warns you as well.</STRONG>

There was no other route. Without the hard disc mounted the data could not be backed up anyway. Also, the data is not zero'd until you check the 'zero all data' option. But there is still no app to retrieve data before you zero the drive. The data is still there but unseen.

Also, the apologists should know that such a thing can happen at any time. Should we back up every day?

Apple technical support was with me during the process by the way. Even they laughed when I joked that the most advanced OS did not have a utility for protecting or retrieving data. They said my problem probably came from installing too many freeware and shareware programs which caused a corruption somewhere. So to all you Version Tracker addicts - careful. Its not really the most advanced OS.

[KaptainKaya]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>

There was no other route. Without the hard disc mounted the data could not be backed up anyway. Also, the data is not zero'd until you check the 'zero all data' option. But there is still no app to retrieve data before you zero the drive. The data is still there but unseen.

Also, the apologists should know that such a thing can happen at any time. Should we back up every day?

Apple technical support was with me during the process by the way. Even they laughed when I joked that the most advanced OS did not have a utility for protecting or retrieving data. They said my problem probably came from installing too many freeware and shareware programs which caused a corruption somewhere. So to all you Version Tracker addicts - careful. Its not really the most advanced OS.</STRONG>

Web site admins back up each day, why shouldn't the basic user?

I'm not sure that freeware and shareware is a problem unless those installers ask for an Admin password and install something in the System or the Library folder.

[macaddled]

Hmm, same thing happened to me recently. Except, I got all my data back. I did have backups so it wouldn't have been that big a deal, just a pain...

But... from your post you make it sound like all you did was boot from the 9 CD. What did Norton tell you? Tech Tool? Disk warrior? anything?

If you're not running these types of programs before you initialize, and you don't back up, all I can tell from this thread is that you're not working on anything very important. At least you seem to feel that way.

Edit to add some sympathy: Look, it does suck to lose data, but the only way I learned was ... the hard way.

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: macaddled ]

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by KaptainKaya:
<STRONG>

Web site admins back up each day, why shouldn't the basic user?

I'm not sure that freeware and shareware is a problem unless those installers ask for an Admin password and install something in the System or the Library folder.</STRONG>

Admins back up massive systems on to other HDs or tape drives. Most of them dont touch OSX. A basic user should not have to back up their files daily and there should be an app to recover data from non-zero'd HDs onto CD. There is a very basic and easy way to do this. The system recovery CD should load an app that can recover data and then record them onto CD-RW by loading the Disc Burner software and extensions into memory. If I can think of that in a minute then surely a multi-billion dollar company should be able to too.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by macaddled:
<STRONG>Hmm, same thing happened to me recently. Except, I got all my data back. I did have backups so it wouldn't have been that big a deal, just a pain...

But... from your post you make it sound like all you did was boot from the 9 CD. What did Norton tell you? Tech Tool? Disk warrior? anything?

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: macaddled ]</STRONG>

There is no way I am going to invest one extra penny when it costs enough to own a Mac. If the OS can kernal panic before it even starts up then only one company should provide an answer to that and the company is Banana...sorry, Apple.

[JKT]

Why didn't you boot from the OSX disk (instead of the OS9 disk) and run Disk Utility? And then (assuming you could see the disk) re-run the OSX installer?

As you have a TiBook, did you try FireWire target disk mode to see if you could access the hard disk that way?

After the event and no help now, I guess... but just in case it happens again there were other things you could have tried before initialising.

[siegzdad]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG> Should we back up every day?
</STRONG>

Yes.

[JellyBeen]

Granted hindsight is 20/20 but I'm willing to bet Disk Warrior could have saved your drive.
I've had similar incidents in the past where all the top repair apps would report failure...but DW would plow through and find all the Directory corruption...and re-mount my drive..
Like I said its too late for all that now..

[zerologic]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>There is no way I am going to invest one extra penny when it costs enough to own a Mac. If the OS can kernal panic before it even starts up then only one company should provide an answer to that and the company is Banana...sorry, Apple.</STRONG>

Being angry at Apple for your apparent lack of responsibility is, to say the least, humorous. If banana can arrange to make your data safe (not!) then maybe you should buy a banana.

I'm no hero but I have my systems backed up to DDS3 daily. All of my personal machines and my colocated server. I only back up the important files (not applications annd such) so the process nets about 70mb a day.

0

[Xeo]

I agree. You should have tried Target Disk mode. You also should have tried Disk utility or something else before just initializing the data.

I'm sorry you lost your data but you sure didn't try very hard to keep it. I would be more sympathetic except you come here, start bitching about OS X being the "world's most advanced operating system and this happened" and calling people apologists when they you should have backups.

And honestly, how could you be so worried about spending "one extra penny" when you seem to buy a new Mac every 6 months. Put off one of those purchases and buy some utilities so you can fix your problem next time instead of just giving up.

Look, I'm sorry I'm being an asshole when you're upset because something bad happened. But you're pissing me off with the temper tantrum your throwing.

[pdjr]

I once echoed your sentinent until it happened to me and I started backing up every day. Since that day over 10 years ago, I've never lost anything. They say that it only takes 20 or so times before something becomes a habit. Start now, and it won't be long before backing up is a routine for you too. Once you get in the habit, if the unforeseen happens, you will only lose up to day's work maximum.

Also, Norton is often unable to mount a drive that other tools can. Next time this happens, try another utility (Disk Utility on the OSX CD included) before initializing your drive.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by zerologic:
<STRONG>

Being angry at Apple for your apparent lack of responsibility is, to say the least, humorous.

0</STRONG>

MY LACK of responsibility? I don't think you understand the situation at all if I am to blame. The OS kernal panics before it even boots. Do you understand the seriousness of that to normal consumers out there? The OS is supposed to be protected from apps doing damage to it (in theory). 99.9% of consumers do not want to back up to CD on a daily basis or buy disk utilities for an OS that claims to be the most advanced. Consumers would back up to CD regularly if there was proper support for CD packet writing but there isn't.

So there is no proper CDRW function and the OS can crash before it boots. To blame users for that is stupid and apologist. I use my iMac for internet browsing, chatting, email and using Word and Photoshop. Hardly something that should force me to have to think about backing up data every day or buy extra utilities.

Then I have my Ti-Book. I do all my serious work on this. I've had no problems but will be backing up at least once a week now. My experience proves how erratic OSX is. It seems to behave in a completely unpredictable way and some its problems are completely impossible to trace. A killer crash booting up and for reasons completely unknown.

I'm still zeroing the iMac as I write. After reinstalling OSX I'll be able to give more info. It could be a RAM problem and thus not Apple's fault. We'll see.

BTW, Apple technical support said that OSX can do that when several peripherals are added to the system. Again, it's an iMac. It's a consumer computer. The only peripherals I added were USB ones.

[boots]

I backup all my files (not the whole system) on a regular (every two or three days) basis. Backing up the base system does seem rediculous for the common user, but even "the worlds most advanced OS" isn't bullet proof. The unix machines I've worked on have minor problems all the time...they can become major on reboot is something funny happens to the kernal...so all user data gets backet up periodically (sometimes daily). Even on the big systems.

I learned the hard way when Iomega had the quality assurance problem with their zipdisks in (around) 98-98(?). Everyone in our group lost data on their zip disks 'cause the spindle in one drive messed up the hub of one disk which misaligned the spindle of another drive which.... Point is that if it's important, it should be stored in a couple of places. Regardless of operating system.

Really important data gets stored in mutiple locations too. After a major fire gutted out labs, people started mailing copies of their dissertation chapters to their parents in case something else happened....That's a bit of overkill, but natural disasters can also wipe out data that isn't backed up...sounds like juanvaldes and cheerios have recently had a similar scare.


Sorry to hear about the data loss, Kelly, but it doesn't sound like you tried too hard to get the data back. I wouldn't be suprised if you just had a catalogue that caused the panic....disk first aid would have fixed that pretty quickly. Next time, you'll know.

PS I like the Jackichanistan thing.

[KaptainKaya]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>

Admins back up massive systems on to other HDs or tape drives. Most of them dont touch OSX. A basic user should not have to back up their files daily and there should be an app to recover data from non-zero'd HDs onto CD. There is a very basic and easy way to do this. The system recovery CD should load an app that can recover data and then record them onto CD-RW by loading the Disc Burner software and extensions into memory. If I can think of that in a minute then surely a multi-billion dollar company should be able to too.</STRONG>

Um, yeah they should. Its common sense in todays world. Even my mom backs up everyday, and she still runs OS 9 from what I can recall.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by Xeo:
<STRONG>I agree. You should have tried Target Disk mode. You also should have tried Disk utility or something else before just initializing the data.
.</STRONG>

I tried both. Don't have a firewire cable for both Macs to connect with. Disk Utility couldn't mount the disk because after verifying I got the message that there were unrepairable errors on the volume.

[xi_hyperon]

Backing up daily or even weekly is not a big deal. You don't need to back up everything. Just back up your apps and docs once, then do regular backups of things you've worked on that day or week. Not a big deal. And no, I'm not apologizing for Apple. I'd do backups regardless of what OS I use. Either live and learn- or make yourself another opportunity to whine later.

[Xeo]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>My experience proves how erratic OSX is. It seems to behave in a completely unpredictable way and some its problems are completely impossible to trace. A killer crash booting up and for reasons completely unknown.</STRONG>

Maybe unknown, but you said yourself, "So you may have remembered my problems the other day with Preview and a couple of apps taking ages to launch and hogging the system. I couldn't figure out what was wrong." That could have been your red flag to save your data. You weren't having the best of luck anyway. To say that it came out of the blue is not exactly true.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by boots:
<STRONG>
Sorry to hear about the data loss, Kelly, but it doesn't sound like you tried too hard to get the data back. I wouldn't be suprised if you just had a catalogue that caused the panic....disk first aid would have fixed that pretty quickly. Next time, you'll know.

PS I like the Jackichanistan thing.</STRONG>

For the last time I HAD AN APPLE ENGINEER WITH ME!!!!

-We verified the disk with Disk First Aid.
-We tried to repair the disk. There were errors that could not be repaired.
-The disk was unmountable.
-There were no built in apps supplied with the OS to retrieve files.
-It is OSX's fault this happened.
-This is a consumer machine and I use it for very basic tasks.

Now look at those points and add things up honestly. A typical consumer is going to switch on his consumer iMac one day and that will happen to him because of OSX and not because it was his fault. He will lose his data. FULL STOP.

OSX's back up methods are not appealing enough for consumers to even bother. Look at CD rewriting. If you want to back up a single folder with a few important files in them you have to burn a whole session which then mounts as a volume on the desktop. It's just not friendly or appealing. If there was proper packet writing then the CD could be used just like a floppy and thus one can imagine consumers backing up files all the time.

[hyperizer]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>MY LACK of responsibility? I don't think you understand the situation at all if I am to blame. The OS kernal panics before it even boots.</STRONG>

I realize it feels terrible to lose data, so in the future if this happens and you don't own a disk utility, you should call Apple or take the computer to your nearest Apple-authorized service center. Initializing your drive is the last thing you should ever do, since it effectively erases everything. Even running Disk First Aid from that OS 9 CD you booted would have been a better first step.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by Xeo:
<STRONG>Maybe unknown, but you said yourself, "So you may have remembered my problems the other day with Preview and a couple of apps taking ages to launch and hogging the system. I couldn't figure out what was wrong." That could have been your red flag to save your data. You weren't having the best of luck anyway. To say that it came out of the blue is not exactly true.</STRONG>

True and not true. It is true when talking about myself. I should have been wiser and procrastinated. But if I were a complete newbie who bought an iMac to do accounting and office work and then one morning found a Mac that crashed before booting you can imagine how angry Mr. Consumer would be. If I didn't use Preview or Photoshop I would have had no clue there were errors occuring as the rest of the system seemed fine.

I wasn't angry. I laughed about it. I lost one very important file (all my wages, working hours, etc) but the rest I can easily just create or download again.

[boots]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>

For the last time I HAD AN APPLE ENGINEER WITH ME!!!!

-We verified the disk with Disk First Aid.
-We tried to repair the disk. There were errors that could not be repaired.
-The disk was unmountable.
-There were no built in apps supplied with the OS to retrieve files.
-It is OSX's fault this happened.
-This is a consumer machine and I use it for very basic tasks.

Now look at those points and add things up honestly. A typical consumer is going to switch on his consumer iMac one day and that will happen to him because of OSX and not because it was his fault. He will lose his data. FULL STOP.

OSX's back up methods are not appealing enough for consumers to even bother. Look at CD rewriting. If you want to back up a single folder with a few important files in them you have to burn a whole session which then mounts as a volume on the desktop. It's just not friendly or appealing. If there was proper packet writing then the CD could be used just like a floppy and thus one can imagine consumers backing up files all the time.</STRONG>

Yeah, you said you had apple support with you, but you didn't give much in terms of what you tried. Don't be such a confrontational ass.

As for the "consumer won't back up" you're full of it. Things that aren't updated regularly get burned to CD's now by even the least experience users. My father-in-law archives all of his digital photo's. It saves hard disk space, so it's advantageous to archive.

All of my "frequently changing docs" can fit on one zip disk. I understand that your needs may be different, but the average consumer won't have any more to actually back up than I do.

I am sorry you lost data. That sucks. And it does (now that you've given more details) sound like you did what you should have to try to recover. But that happens occasionally with EVERY OS. Even the heavy hitting Unix variants. It's a fact of life.

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: boots ]

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: boots ]

[Millennium]

Kelly, you should have been backing up. Plain and simple; there's no way around that. In that aspect, you have no one to blame but yourself for the actual data loss that occurred.

Because, you see, I have had exactly the same problems as you describe here. And there is a way to fix the drive without initializing it. Even though there are problems that cannot be repaired by OS9's DFA, once you've run it you should then be able to then boot into OSX and repair the drive from there. You can also use DiskWarrior (my app of choice for this kind of thing); it'll repair the drive on the OS9 side, so you don't have to run Disk Utility in OSX.

Or, to put it another way: if you don't back up at least every week (and preferably every day), then not having a good disk-repair utility is foolish in the extreme. It's Apple's fault (if anyone's) that this problem occured, but you bought the data-loss aspect of it on yourself.

OSX's back up methods are not appealing enough for consumers to even bother. Look at CD rewriting. If you want to back up a single folder with a few important files in them you have to burn a whole session which then mounts as a volume on the desktop. It's just not friendly or appealing. If there was proper packet writing then the CD could be used just like a floppy and thus one can imagine consumers backing up files all the time.

Apple is not completely to blame for this one. Packet-writing is a nonstandard thing, which not all burners support. While it would be nice if Apple were able to support it, I don't think they can be blamed for opting not to use something which the vast majority of Mac users can't even do due to hardware limitations.

I agree with the others here. It's a shame that this happened. Apple does need to ake HFS+ more robust (there's a project going on to add softupdates to it; that should help immensely). But you had plenty of warning to back your stuff up.

You complain about OSX being "so fragile". But from everything I can gather, this is the first time you've ever had this problem, and OSX has been out for a year. While it's not good that this happened at all, the fact that it took very nearly a full year for it to happen is pretty darn good.

[Gene Jockey]

Well, I'm sorry you lost your data. You've already been yelled at enough times about the backup thing, so I'll spare you that...

But, I had a good story today from my SysAdmin about the "rock solid" nature of Unix. Seems some guy from our Geology department was not closing his CDRWs after burning satellite data to them. Also seems that when an unclosed CDRW is inserted into an Ultra10 running Solaris8, the volume manager goes nuts and forces you to reboot the machine. If Sun is to be believed, Solaris runs half of the internet , and even it gets f*cked up by simple things. So, the take home message: sh*t happens to everyone. Hopefully you'll have backups when you get dumped on next time.

Good luck,

--J

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by boots:
<STRONG>

I am sorry you lost data. That sucks. And it does (now that you've given more details) sound like you did what you should have to try to recover. But that happens occasionally with EVERY OS. Even the heavy hitting Unix variants. It's a fact of life.

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: boots ]

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: boots ]</STRONG>

A fact of life that could be remidied with two simple things:

1. Proper CD rewriting so that backing up would not require a) copy data to a virtuak disk, then b) burn the disk c) mount the disk as a volume, d) erase the volume on the CD or create another one each time you update the same files.

(this puts Apples 'Everything is Easier on a Mac' campaign to shame)

2. A utility with Disk First Aid that can read a hard discs contents and back them up to a CD. But then First Aid could not even mount the disk.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by boots:
<STRONG>

I am sorry you lost data. That sucks. And it does (now that you've given more details) sound like you did what you should have to try to recover. But that happens occasionally with EVERY OS. Even the heavy hitting Unix variants. It's a fact of life.

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: boots ]

[ 03-22-2002: Message edited by: boots ]</STRONG>

A fact of life that could be remidied with two simple things:

1. Proper CD rewriting so that backing up would not require a) copy data to a virtuak disk, then b) burn the disk c) mount the disk as a volume, d) erase the volume on the CD or create another one each time you update the same files.

(this puts Apples 'Everything is Easier on a Mac' campaign to shame)

2. A utility with Disk First Aid that can read a hard discs contents and back them up to a CD. But then First Aid could not even mount the disk.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by Millennium:
<STRONG>
Apple is not completely to blame for this one. Packet-writing is a nonstandard thing, which not all burners support. While it would be nice if Apple were able to support it, I don't think they can be blamed for opting not to use something which the vast majority of Mac users can't even do due to hardware limitations.

You complain about OSX being "so fragile". But from everything I can gather, this is the first time you've ever had this problem, and OSX has been out for a year. While it's not good that this happened at all, the fact that it took very nearly a full year for it to happen is pretty darn good.</STRONG>

Firslty I don't know of any model CDRW that does not support packet writing. They all do.

Secondly, this is the first time ANY OS has crashed so badly before boot up and I've used just about all the OSes since the Dragon 32. This was a computer used for simple consumer things. I'm no longer a power user as I have a different job now. My important files were just jpgs and Word docs. The machine is three weeks old. Hardly an excuse for it to crash so badly. How can it be excused in any way at all?

[Adam Betts]

Kelly, are you a male or female?

If your female then I completely understand your frustration with OS X because they usually have period day.

Also somehow the topic of your thread sound so much like ShyWizard. Are you guys related in any way?

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by Adam Betts:
<STRONG>Kelly, are you a male or female?

If your female then I completely understand your frustration with OS X because they usually have period day.

Also somehow the topic of your thread sound so much like ShyWizard. Are you guys related in any way?</STRONG>

I'm not female or Shywizard. There are quite a few people who criticize OSX and few people who stand by it no matter what. I think the former easily outnumber the latter otherwise this forum would be very empty.

[Kickaha]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>

I tried both. Don't have a firewire cable for both Macs to connect with.</STRONG>

So you're saying that your data wasn't worth the $10 to buy a cable?

Sorry Kelly, but I've been in your position... and the steps you took weren't even remotely adequate.

1) No backups. You can complain that your *preferred* back up solution isn't supported, but that's still no excuse for not backing up *at all*. Heck, mirror the files to your other computer once a week. Eats disk space, but in this age of 20GB drives being the low end, it's hard to fill one up, unless you're doing video work.

2) No data recovery system. Disk Utility is great for 99% of the small things that can happen to your drive, but won't work for that last 1%. But guess what... generally those 99% of things are the errors that accumulate into causing something in that last 1%. If you start having suspicious drive problems, do what the tech notes on Apple's site (where common sense would indicate you should go check) say, and boot holding down Cmd-S, then follow the directions on the screen. If you *do* have problems, whining that you're not going to spend 'one penny more' to go purchase a beefier disk recovery system is just asinine. You expect Apple to provide *everything* possible? Right.

3) You can't have tried Target Disk mode if you don't have a FireWire cable to hook up the computers. 'Nuff said.

As a counterexample, I had a drive go bad two years ago, when running MacOS X Server 1.0 Beta3... because I was screwing around with the partition map headers manually (Bad user, no biscuit.) No amount of disk utilities available at the time (it was a UFS drive) or Unix guru-ness were able to recover it over the course of a week. Luckily I had two backups - unluckily, the Zip disk had the Click O' Death. The final backup, a SCSI Sun workstation drive (bulletproof drives, I tell ya) worked fine. I backed up all the non-critical data first (d'oh), then realized it was 10pm and I hadn't had lunch, so I decided to continue the recovery the next morning. The drive head crashed in the middle of the night. (So much for bulletproof... okay, so it was a 6yr old drive.) I promptly sent it off to a data recovery service, at an expected cost of $800... but they reported that it was a total loss, the head had physically damaged the media surface nearly 100%.

Was it important data? You tell me - it was eight months of dissertation work.

Obviously, yours wasn't important if you couldn't be bothered to buy a $10 cable.

As for the kernel panic on boot... again, do what the documentation says: Cmd-V at boot to see where it dies. Unplug all peripherals to see if it's one of them. Etc.

I can almost guarantee you what the problem was: you had incremental disk errors that, most likely, could have been fixed at any time if you'd bothered. These eventually corrupted the code for a kernel extension for one of your peripherals. When that peripheral was detected at boot, the code was loaded, and *boom*. It's possible that it could have corrupted something more basic even, in which case a simple reinstall of the OS, no formatting needed, would have fixed it.

I'm sorry that you got an Apple tech that apparently wasn't very knowledgable, but if you're going to gripe about anything, gripe about that.

[DannyVTim]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>

A fact of life that could be remidied with two simple things:

1. Proper CD rewriting so that backing up would not require a) copy data to a virtuak disk, then b) burn the disk c) mount the disk as a volume, d) erase the volume on the CD or create another one each time you update the same files.

(this puts Apples 'Everything is Easier on a Mac' campaign to shame)

2. A utility with Disk First Aid that can read a hard discs contents and back them up to a CD. But then First Aid could not even mount the disk.</STRONG>

I think you have strayed off the topic.

Yes, consumer or not one should back up. How often is up to the individual. When one reaches a point where they don’t want to loose what they have added since their last backup, it is time to backup.

OS X is an advanced OS. The most advanced is a marketing tag line not a reality. So, take you poke at Apple but don’t actually expect it to be the most advanced OS.

No it shouldn’t have happened, but what caused it is unknown and will never be known. IE could have written over files or a bug in the OS could have been the problem. Saying it’s the OS fault is an assumption not a surety. It would have been nice if you could have discovered what actually happened. You never figured out the problem and cleared the disk, so we’ll never know and speculating will not serve any purpose.

As far as the kernel panics are concerned, if it happened early in the boot process, it sounds like a bad kernel extension or OS files were corrupt. Fsck ing your disk would have caught the later and that is your responsibility. It’s not a hard task to do a little maintenance even for a consumer. IF it was a kernel extension, then it’s that software makers problem.

[fulmer]

I've seen hard drives made unmountable b/c of drive corruption. the situation has been the same as what you describe. however, using a third-party disk utility (disk warrior or norton disk doctor 6.x), I've always been able to repair the disk, thereby making it mountable and fully functional. You simply gave up too quick.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by Kickaha:
<STRONG>

So you're saying that your data wasn't worth the $10 to buy a cable?

Sorry Kelly, but I've been in your position... and the steps you took weren't even remotely adequate.

I'm sorry that you got an Apple tech that apparently wasn't very knowledgable, but if you're going to gripe about anything, gripe about that.</STRONG>

Again, you are ignoring the most important points.

1. This computer is three weeks old. How many computers crash completely and lose data after three weeks.

2. Backing up onto CD is not quite a neat process on the MAc. If I only had ONE IMPORTANT file on my disk I would have to burn a whole session just for one file. That means a volume mounts on to the desktop in the most ugly way each time I have to back up that one single file. So after backing it up 21 times (the three weeks) I would have 21 CDs mounting the desktop. Either that or I have to erase the CD each time I back up. A bit stupid.

3. The most advanced OS in the world crashed completely within three weeks of very fair use. I hardly did anything apart from use simple consumer apps.

4. It's a consumer machine. How many consumers are you appealing to:

a)buy a firewire cable even if they dont have another Mac to use in target mode.
b)go through that irksome back up process mentioned above.
c)buy all manners of disk utilities when it is the OS's duty to fix a problem that it, not the consumer, created.

Again, I can't believe these points are being completely ignored. We are talking about a computer that is THREE WEEKS OLD and has been used in the most basic way. This is not rocket science. There is no need for a consumer machine to be bought alongside firewire cables, tens of CDs, disk utilities, etc within the first three weeks of use.

[Jim Paradise]

Kelly, I had a friend last year whose new G4 had a faulty hardrive... we were copying some files over to his computer during an OS X install and found some odd errors even after reformatting. He took his comp in and the problem was with his hardrive (and on top of that the problems he was having they'd never even seen before). It could be a hardrive problem... maybe not... I don't know.

[Eug]

I've had OS 9 crap out on me in 1 week, and various versions of Windows do the same also in very short periods of time. So what's your point?

I understand that you didn't get the best Apple tech person, and that can be problematic for the newbie, but it sounds like you might have known already to try the target mode. That you didn't invest in the $15 in the firewire cable seems strange to me, although it's true that it's easy to criticize in retrospect.

Now about backing up. Should one do it every day? You bet. I in fact back up EVERY important file I create, when I create it. That of course doesn't mean I backup my entire hard drive daily (or even monthly), but it does mean I'll hopefully never lose anything important. For commercial software, I also have CD-R backups of every piece of software I buy.

It's sux to lose your data, but in this case I don't think you can solely blame Apple.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by Eug:
<STRONG>I've had OS 9 crap out on me in 1 week, and various versions of Windows do the same also in very short periods of time. So what's your point?

I.</STRONG>

Yes, WIndows 95 used to last about 6-8 weeks before needing a good reinstall. But it took only an hour and that was 1996 and not 2002.

I am having another problem now. I got off the phone and started zeroing the HD five hours ago, when I started this thread. The progress bar is only about ten percent and its taking ages just to zero the drive. Is it even working?

[Don Pickett]

So let's summarize:

I did something stupid and, rather than try various ways to recover my drive, I nuked it, and now it's Apple's fault.

Waaah.

I had to fe-format my OS X drive once, but I borrowed a friend's CD burner and backed everything up, first. There are about eight ways you could have saved you data.

[Colddiver2]

ABOUT FAILURES
When you buy a new machine, it is when you start to use it that you will most likely experience failures due to faulty hardware. As annoying as that can be, there is not much that can be done against it. As far as hardware failures are concerned, Apple does not have the worst track record on this.

APPLE ENGINEER & OTHER TECH SUPPORT EXPERTS
I have yet to meet a tech support expert who really know what he is doing. For most hard drive failures, one of these will solve the problem:
1. Reboot with a CD and run a disk repair utility
2. On Mac OS X, command-s at startup and fsck

When the software cannot repair the drive but the drive still mounts:
1. Boot with a CD and backup your data
2. Reformat

When the drive is totally hosed, you replace it, you install a fresh system and you install the drive in an external case (borrow one from these tech support geniuses) and try to get your data (I tried that once and it worked).

PREVENTIVES MEASURES
1. Keep your boot partition separate from your data. When the OS gets screwed, you can always do a clean install and reformat the faulty partition without losing anything (especially true with OS X).
2. Back up your data periodically (everyday is a bit too much for me - I do it every week).
3. Periodically inspect your drive with a disk repair utility (I also do that every week).

ABOUT NEWBIES WITH MAC OS X
One of the major problem with most newbie (I don't mean any offense here) is that when a problem occurs, they don't always know how to solve it. This is normal, of course, but a hard drive failure is a hard drive failure, no matter what your OS is. It can often be repaired but it will require knowledge and imagination (i.e. problem-solving skills). If you don't possess these, you will have to suffer the consequences (no matter which OS you use).

As an example, I know someone who reinstall the OS (not a clean install btw) each time something looks suspicious. Last time, he messed with the startup disk control panel was totally confused when his machine booted in OS 9 instead of X. His solution: reinstall OS X!

WHO IS RESPONSIBLE
1. Apple is responsible for selling you a computer with a faulty hard drive (if indeed this was the case);
2. You (and probably that tech support guy, obviously) are responsible for loosing your data (you are the one who did reformat the drive in the end).

Now that you have a fresh install, your should partition your drive, reformat and reinstall everything. You will find much information here on partition schemes and on how to move your home folder to another partition.

Colddiver

[me]

Usually some combination of Disk First Aid, Diskwarrior, and Norton can fix any problem - even if the drive won't mount. Unfortunately no tool can recover all hardware problems - like bad blocks. If its a problem of bad blocks, its really not yours or Apple's fault.

As for being the most advanced OS, I've been loss of data happen to people on every popular platform. I'll be the first to admit HFS+ isn't the most advanced file system on earth, hopefully this is something Apple is working on.

[NeilCharter]

The same thing happened with my bosses Mac. He was running OS 9 had a bad crash. I tried Disk Doctor and managed to get the drive mounted again, but it would boot from the drive even after the repair.

Although I had no way to back up the drive on that machine (Beige G3), I wasn't prepared to wipe the drive. Instead I put it in another machine and copied the data that way.

Your biggest mistake was wiping the drive before you had recovered the data. That was terrible advice from Apple. Did they know you had important data on that drive.

My usual protocol would be to try Disk Doctor or Warrior (the latter have had good reviews from other people on this forum).
Get the disk mounted if you can - and from my experience I always have been able to.
Copy your data. Check to see if the files are actually readable.

Only then wipe the drive.

Other alternatives would be to see if you could reinstall OS 9 or X on the drive (may not be possible until the drive can be mounted), so that you can back up your data. Then wipe the drive cos there was something definitely wrong.

As far as regularly backing up - always a good idea - even if you just use a firewire HD to copy over your files. However you do have two CDRW drives (one in the iMac and one external) so you do have the capability to back up. Dantz will probably be releasing Retrospect for X soon that will allow you to automate your backups. And hopefully I'm not breaking any rules by saying that the beta version is pretty darn good.

Last thing - you have seemed to be having an inordinate number of problems with OS X and Macs. I remember that you had a Dual G4 that caused you problems and then you switched to an iMac. Your experience is highly unusual and I wonder if there is a common reason for your problems.

So can you off the top of your head remember what apps and utilities you had installed on the machine?

Final thing - even though Kelly is not female - the comment that someone made about time of the month was really unnecessary. Not really going to help foster discussion is it?

Neil

Oh BTW I switched my bosses mac to OS X cos in my opinion it is more reliable!

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by NeilCharter:
<STRONG>
Your biggest mistake was wiping the drive before you had recovered the data. That was terrible advice from Apple. Did they know you had important data on that drive.

</STRONG>

Again, we tried to recover the data. We couldn't because Apple's utils couldn't. Apple's system crashed because of no fault of my own. The guy who said I did something stupid can screw himself. I used the OS in the most basic way possible. A ten year old OS would have lasted longer.

As for other utils, again you guys are not reading. I HAD ONE SINGLE IMPORTANT FILE. I am not going to spend money on utils when I already pay for expensive Macs. If Apple is going to sell expensive underpowered computers that can crash in three weeks then it has the responsibility to create a better version of Disk Doctor.

To prove that this is Apple's responsibility, one only has to look at what I am going through at this moment. The HD cannot format properly and thus I cannot install any OS. My computer is a dud. It's a dodo. It's a die-Mac. Greart. One dead pixel and a dead HD in three weeks.

[Millennium]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>

A fact of life that could be remidied with two simple things:

1. Proper CD rewriting so that backing up would not require a) copy data to a virtuak disk, then b) burn the disk c) mount the disk as a volume, d) erase the volume on the CD or create another one each time you update the same files.

(this puts Apples 'Everything is Easier on a Mac' campaign to shame)</STRONG>

You know, I'm going to disagree, because your D) should not be an issue. Every backup expert out there will tell you that it's important to keep more than just the most recent backup, in case some. The current system actually makes this easier to do; one volume per day or week, and just zap the whole disc when you've filled it. In this aspect, Apple's system really is easier.

2. A utility with Disk First Aid that can read a hard discs contents and back them up to a CD. But then First Aid could not even mount the disk.

As for the backup utility, that's actually been confirmed: coming in 10.2. As for the DFA mount bug, it's an interesting problem, but again, I've noticed again that if DFA can read it once, the disc will then mount after a reboot, at least giving you time to back stuff up.

[NeilCharter]

I've never found Disk First Aid much use in repairing drives. So I've always had to rely on Norton, which usually allows me to get the machine up and running again, even if I have to reformat and reinstall later.

As for not wanting to spend the money on Disk repair software. That's your choice - it's your money and your time recreating files that you lost. Same goes for backup software.

Since your mac would have been under warranty Apple would have paid for you to take it to a repair shop. They may have been able to recover the data.

As I said - I would not have wipe the drive that quickly. Since you have another machine it wouldn't have been a big deal to wait for a while.

Saying that I get mine for free (naughty I know). So probably I wouldn't buy Norton etc. But then I do not have that much important stuff on my home computer. But I do have some form of backup - though not that up to date (for home anyway).

You may have a bad drive - it happens. But then something else could be the problem. I did ask if you could remember what was installed?

[Yoda's Erotic Piggyback]

Originally posted by KellyHogan:
<STRONG>
My only choice was to boot of an OS9 CD. After that I noticed that the HD was not mounted. Using OS9's utilities I managed to initialise the HD. Hooray!!! I lost all my data! Great. This OSX is the most advanced OS in the world. And iMac 800 is so modern.</STRONG>

How is even an advanced OS supposed to protect against idiots? What did you think would happen Einstein?

[boots]

If it can't format properly, it really does sound like a bad block or some other physical defect in the drive. Not an OS X problem. Have you tried to reinitialize (not a low level format) and verify using the DFA utility? If you have a bad hard drive it's probably a contractor's problem. (Are they still using IBM?) Used to be IBM fireball drives. I'm much more of a seagate or Falcon fan myself, but that's just user experience and personal preference. Anyway, it's a hardware failure that apple should happily replace (being less than a month old). Not an OS problem

Why do need to rezero anyway? I only do that when I get rid of a "trial" warez program...

Should there be a better disk utility? Maybe. I would prefere that they did, but that's hardly something that has changed in the upgrade to OS X. Disk first aid has ALWAYS been for the most basic of repairs. Come join us in the real world and borrow someone's copy of Diskwarrior.

I also think that having CD-R(or RW) as the standard removable media is a bad idea...For home use, people need a zip or floppy just for file exchange with friends. These are much better for backup. CD is better for archive. CD technology just doesn't seem to be where it needs to be for routine file transfer (IMO).

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by boots:
<STRONG>

Why do need to rezero anyway? I only do that when I get rid of a "trial" warez program...

</STRONG>

The technician told me to zero the drive properly for reasons known only to OSX. I didn't really want to. But now I see that I can't. I'm having enough problem as it is getting the computer to start from CD as all I get is a picture of a floppy. Can you believe Apple ingenuinity. They show me a picture of a floppy.

[KellyHogan]

Originally posted by NeilCharter:
<STRONG>
You may have a bad drive - it happens. But then something else could be the problem. I did ask if you could remember what was installed?</STRONG>

I've already mentioned the apps I used. Hardly anything complicated. Please don't skim read in the future and then read someone elses mocks in depth. I know we all need entertainment.