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idjeff · Jun 24, 2001, 05:36 AM

Hi all. I just replaced my malfunctioning Maxtor with a new Maxtor which is exhibiting the same problems. My machine is a Beige G3/300. The problem is that when I sleep the computer, and wake it up, I get a yellow dialogue box that says "There is a problem with the disk "Hardrive", data may have been lost." I had the same problem with the previous Maxtor. I've run disk doctor and it doesn't show that there is any problem. I'm thinking that there may some other piece of hardware inside the computer that might be having problems. Has anyone at all had similar problems?

petek · Jun 25, 2001, 12:31 PM

I had wake from sleep problems with a 40 GB Maxtor and a 45 GB IBM in my rev. A beige G3/466 when formatted with Drive Setup. In my case, it just wouldn't wake from sleep; I didn't get the disk problem dialog.

I found notes on XLR8YourMac and an Apple TIL which all said to use a third-party disk formatting utility instead of Drive Setup on large disks in beige G3s.

I reformatted with Hard Disk SpeedTools and haven't had any problems since.

[ 06-25-2001: Message edited by: petek ]

idjeff · Jun 25, 2001, 08:33 PM

Thanks Pete for the suggestion. I think that I left out another critical point though. When I have the problem that I mentioned before, sometimes when I restart the computer after the warning dialogue, all I get on the reboot screen is the flashing question mark. After a couple of more reboots, it usally recognizes the startup disk and boots normally. The original Maxtor ran for about 9 months before having the problems that I mentioned. This is why I thought that there could be other hardware at fault here.

Wooohooo, 100 posts!

petek · Jun 26, 2001, 01:26 PM

That's okay, I left something out, too: I had the same restart problem. It started out that it would happen only after a crash, but eventually got so that it would almost always fail to find the disk driver after any restart. A second forced restart would usually get it to mount.

Disk First Aid and Norton were unable to find anything wrong with the disk until finally it became unmountable. At that point Norton found problems with the boot block & driver on the Maxtor, but wasn't able to fix them.

There were a few threads on this type of failure on MacNN and MacFixIt fora awhile back, and alot of causes were suggested, from the size of the system partition to the amount of RAM in the computer!

In any case, since formatting with HD SpeedTools, I haven't had any disk mounting problems at all, so that'd be my recommendation.

idjeff · Jun 26, 2001, 04:38 PM

Thanks again Pete. Guess I'll run out and buy HD SpeedTools. Seems like the solution that I'm looking for.

Jun 28, 2001, 10:13 PM

Just developed the same problem with my 45G Maxtor on a beige G3 DT. HELP! How can I get this drive to mount? Techtool, Nortons, nothing will recognize it. How can I recover my Data?

petek · Jun 29, 2001, 04:57 PM

There was a post awhile back from someone who was able to get their drive to mount by pulling the battery on the motherboard for 10 minutes, re-installed it and was then able to mount the drive. I haven't tried it myself, but it's worth a try!

nonhuman · Jun 30, 2001, 12:12 AM

Is it just me or are the beige G3s really really prone to random hardware problems? Mine always crapped out at the most inoportune times and would have all sorts of weird hardware related crashed. Then the problems would just go away for no apparent reason and later new ones would start... Right now it's completely dead possibly forever. I think I'm gonna turn it into an LC II tower...

Jul 1, 2001, 02:34 PM

[My beige G3 has been very strange lately too. Things like seeing my Spressa firewire CDRW and now nothing. Toast 5.01 sees it ok but no burn. Frequent random crashes also. What gives?

Mac Write · Jul 3, 2001, 03:03 AM

I have a Beige G3 MT 266 Rev A.

I am petrified (to say the least) to replace the internal HD with a larger one (orginal plans for this computer was a 100GB HD in a few years).

At this point I am going to wait for the Internal to die before replacing it. Instead I am looking at an external Firewire HD. My last external (August 1997-July 1999 May be rest in peace), was a Lacie 4.3GB SCSI external with the Apple logo.

I am beyond parinold about getting a external HD I paid $550 for it (rather my 10 years of life savings paid for it

).

So what is a reliable long lasting brand? I like the 80GB Maxtor firewire, but Maxtor hmmm..

I did Tried to add 4MB Vram to the computer, and well it didn't see it. but I did add a OrangeMicro USB/Firewire PCI card, which has worked flawlessly.

It runs flawlessly under X and 9. I also have a Microsoft Intellimouse Optical, Epson 740 (switch from Serial to USB in March), and a Yamaha 16x10x40 Firewire cuase of the "?" of death in March (5 of them!).

Don't even ask about how I am going to find 256MB DIMMS for this computer.

SO which is a reliable brand? this 6GB is getting tight (10GB of MP3''s I ripped from my CD collevtion for one).

The downside to external not bootable

Bwa · Jul 3, 2001, 09:49 AM

Originally posted by Mac Write:
<STRONG>I have a Beige G3 MT 266 Rev A.

At this point I am going to wait for the Internal to die before replacing it. Instead I am looking at an external Firewire HD. My last external (August 1997-July 1999 May be rest in peace), was a Lacie 4.3GB SCSI external with the Apple logo.

...

Don't even ask about how I am going to find 256MB DIMMS for this computer.

</STRONG>

Hm, I bought a 1280 MB LaCie external drive in 1996 [$350] which is still running fine. I also replaced the drive in my biege G3 with a 13 gig Quantum drive. I've owned over 30 Quantum drives and never had one fail. Quantum and Maxtor recently merged though...

For reliability probably IBM drives are the best bet with what's on the market today. I don't know anything about Firewire drives, but I just spent a fortune a few months ago on a pair of 9 gig SCSI LaCie drives. The d2 enclosures are sturdy and seem quite excellent.

256 MB DIMMs -- I recommend Ramjet (ramjet.com). I've purchased ~4 GB of RAM from them over the past 2 years. I did once received a dead DIMM and they had a new one in my hand the next day. I tried Other World Computing, which is frequently recommended. They sent me a dead DIMM and took them SEVEN WEEKS to fix the problem. They shipped replacements to the wrong address, charged my credit card about four times....what a nightmare! I will never order from them again.

Anyway I've never had my G3 give me grief or problems...I've had plenty of problems with my iBook though (had to send it back to Apple two times).

Mac Write · Jul 3, 2001, 12:13 PM

Actually, I just spoke with Microwarehouse Canada, and for $152 USB ($227 CDN $268 after shipping and TAX), I can get a 256MB DIMM for my computer.

Very tempting. VERY. Oh I don't have any money BTW.

Would Mac OS X he faster on 416MB vs 160MB RAM?

BWA how much RAM is in your Beige and what config?

Bwa · Jul 3, 2001, 12:45 PM

Originally posted by Mac Write:
<STRONG>Actually, I just spoke with Microwarehouse Canada, and for $152 USB ($227 CDN $268 after shipping and TAX), I can get a 256MB DIMM for my computer.

Very tempting. VERY. Oh I don't have any money BTW.

Would Mac OS X he faster on 416MB vs 160MB RAM?

BWA how much RAM is in your Beige and what config?</STRONG>

I think Ramjet was selling 256 MB for US$80 last I checked.

My G3 has 640 MB of RAM.

OS X performs pretty well (for what it is) on my iBook with 192 MB of RAM. It's hard to make a judgement about the speed of it on the desktop G3 becuase I have an upgraded processor, so the cache is turned off when running OS X.

Really though, I think OS X is quite fast, but Aqua is the slow part. I think Aqua is awful but it would be a lot nicer if it was faster. I spend most of my time in CodeWarrior and text scrolling is just pathetic. I could keep writing for pages and pages about this, but I'll end it here.