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baglunch · Nov 13, 2003, 11:07 AM

I just updated to 10.3.1, and disaster struck. I have 2 firewire400 drives (wiebetech ox911), under panther (10.3) there were no issues or problems. After the update i plugged in the drives, and *BAM* macos reported unreadable drive formats. In the first aid disk utility it's reporting bad b-tree node info on one drive and bad catalog information on the other. I'm so angry, as these drives contain(ed) my archive of the past 4+ years of video footage, and past 5+ years of photos which are now unrecoverable (300+ gb of data). I'm going to try to buy some other disk utility to see if they can repair them, but from what i read, they don't work either.

gorickey · Nov 13, 2003, 11:13 AM

DiskWarrior will hopefully correct this...

Have you tried plugging in the drives on another machine with 10.3 or 10.2.8 still on it?

theolein · Nov 13, 2003, 11:27 AM

I feel for you. That bug in Panther has to be one of Apple's worst, up there with the 10.2.8 bug and the iTunes desaster. The reason I haven't yet upgraded to Panther is because of the Firewire disk sitting next to my computer. I'm loath to lose all that data by accident.

I wish there was a way to make sure that the data didn't get lost, such as write protection on the drives, but as it is I'm just going to have to burn the most critical stuff to CD and then hope for the best.

bstone · Nov 13, 2003, 11:38 AM

To the tune of "If You're Happy and you know it"

If you can't afford to lose it, back it up ::clap clap::
If you can't afford to lose it, back it up ::clap clap::
If you can't afford to lose it and you really need it bad, if you can't afford to lose it back it up ::clap clap::

gorickey · Nov 13, 2003, 11:40 AM

Originally posted by bstone:
To the tune of "If You're Happy and you know it"

If you can't afford to lose it, back it up ::clap clap::
If you can't afford to lose it, back it up ::clap clap::
If you can't afford to lose it and you really need it bad, if you can't afford to lose it back it up ::clap clap::

Hahahahahaha....that was awesome....

baglunch · Nov 13, 2003, 11:41 AM

it may not matter, but i'm using a 17" pb.

Does apple have any kind of QA or QC department? if so, they should be fired and outsouced somewhere else. seriously.

dialo · Nov 13, 2003, 11:43 AM

Originally posted by bstone:
To the tune of "If You're Happy and you know it"

If you can't afford to lose it, back it up ::clap clap::
If you can't afford to lose it, back it up ::clap clap::
If you can't afford to lose it and you really need it bad, if you can't afford to lose it back it up ::clap clap::

Yeah, that's nice and all, but my 1/2TB of data sitting on firewire drives is exactly why I'm not going to be moving to panther anytime soon. What, am I supposed to burn 80-90 DVDs?

baglunch · Nov 13, 2003, 11:58 AM

Originally posted by dialo:
Yeah, that's nice and all, but my 1/2TB of data sitting on firewire drives is exactly why I'm not going to be moving to panther anytime soon. What, am I supposed to burn 80-90 DVDs?

My thoughts exactly, I still have another 400gb's of data untouched (and will remain so). Some of my single files are larger that a DVD, it's not a good option for me either. I'm going to start looking into a DLT or other tape option soon.

On a side note, I did try attaching it to a 10.8 mac at the house, no dice.

wadesworld · Nov 13, 2003, 12:09 PM

My thoughts exactly, I still have another 400gb's of data untouched (and will remain so). Some of my single files are larger that a DVD, it's not a good option for me either. I'm going to start looking into a DLT or other tape option soon.

There's simply no excuse for not having a backup of that much data that was that important. You could have a tape drive, other drives which are disconnected after backup, a PC server you copy all the data to, etc, etc.

Excuses as to why you couldn't do it are indicators that either it wasn't that important, or you were simply negligent.

And no, I'm not saying Apple doesn't deserve some blame. But it's not Apple's job to make sure your data is backed up. A simple power surge could have caused the same thing at any time.

Wade

wadesworld · Nov 13, 2003, 12:13 PM

Yeah, that's nice and all, but my 1/2TB of data sitting on firewire drives is exactly why I'm not going to be moving to panther anytime soon. What, am I supposed to burn 80-90 DVDs?

If the data is THAT important, then yes, that's exactly what you're supposed to do.

What, you think you can't suffer data loss under 10.2? Newsflash: you could lose that data at any moment. It could be gone in the blink of an eye, whether you're on 10.3, 10.2, OS 9, a PC, Linux, Solaris or any other system.

If the data is that important, I'd get to burning those 80-90 DVD's right now.

Wade

dialo · Nov 13, 2003, 12:17 PM

Originally posted by wadesworld:

What, you think you can't suffer data loss under 10.2? Newsflash: you could lose that data at any moment. It could be gone in the blink of an eye, whether you're on 10.3, 10.2, OS 9, a PC, Linux, Solaris or any other system.

Well, really, wilbur? Thanks for letting me know! Hey, maybe you can let me know where the on switch is while you're at it.

The difference is that I'm willing to accept a drive failure, I'm not willing to accept a simple OS upgrade wiping out hundreds of GBs of data just because of someone can't manage their department correctly.

The fact is that a sane person has to take risks. It's a waste to spend hundreds of dollars (hell, it would cost about a grand for that much wouldn't it?) just to back up data thats not used for making money. That doesn't mean it's not important, though.

msuper69 · Nov 13, 2003, 12:18 PM

Good Lord man, get a good tape drive. With that much important, non-recreatable data, you must have multiple (and tested) backups, with some copies stored offsite.

I hope you are able to recover from this problem.

Good luck.

baglunch · Nov 13, 2003, 12:31 PM

Originally posted by dialo:
Well, really, wilbur? Thanks for letting me know! Hey, maybe you can let me know where the on switch is while you're at it.

The difference is that I'm willing to accept a drive failure, I'm not willing to accept a simple OS upgrade wiping out hundreds of GBs of data just because of someone can't manage their department correctly.

My thought exactly, I'm ok with a drive failure, which is why i have my primary work drive striped to minimize that loss. But an OS/application issue is inexcusable for a production application. I would understand the "use at your own risk" idea with a non commercial freeware product, but not a commercial one. I mean, this is one of the many reasons I switched to MACOS in the first place.

Sure backups would be nice, but weren't a consideration since the video footage was part of a live project, I usually backup the final project. The photos lost were recently moved over from the PC environment, so backup was also not possible.

Regardless of whatever condescending backup preaching people would like to imply, lack of backups wasn't the point of this thread, it was to point out the problem I experienced in (and possible introduced in) 10.3.1 that I personally did not have in 10.3.0. An issue which supposedly doesn't exist for OX911 chipsets (only OX922).

baglunch · Nov 13, 2003, 12:37 PM

Originally posted by msuper69:
Good Lord man, get a good tape drive. With that much important, non-recreatable data, you must have multiple (and tested) backups, with some copies stored offsite.

I hope you are able to recover from this problem.

Good luck.

All the video footage is recoverable from my original tapes which I archive seperately (400+ tapes) they just have to relogged.

The photos (30,000+) however are a loss, (semi) fortunately they were all vacation, holiday, wedding, and personal photos shot digitally. All of the work based photos are on negatives and can be run through a drum scanner again.

Cadaver · Nov 13, 2003, 06:20 PM

Try Disk Warrior... should help. May take a while with that much data.

Interesting that 10.3 or 10.3.1 would do this; there are very few reports of data loss on FW400 drives. Both Apple and Oxford Technologies deny any OX911 chipset problem.

I had a similar issue in Jaguar (10.2.6) when a FireWire drive was unmounted improperly (OK, I knocked out the power cord). Disk Warrior was required to get the drive to mount again.

Cadaver · Nov 13, 2003, 06:21 PM

Oh, one more thing. With that much data, if you don't want to back it up to optical or tape media, consider a FireWire mirrored RAID. Then at least you can rebuild the RAID if the data becomes corrupted.

dialo · Nov 13, 2003, 06:53 PM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Both Apple and Oxford Technologies deny any OX911 chipset problem.

IIRC, the 10.3.1 read me mentions the 911 issue.

LightWaver-67 · Nov 13, 2003, 06:57 PM

Wait.. whoa... hold on one minute...

Some of you are actually saying that there are varying degrees of acceptance for data loss...?

I mean no disrespect, but I find that absurd. I currently have approximately 700GB of storage across 2-ATA internal drives and 5-External FireWire drives. One of those External drives is for redundant backup of important data.

Now... what I don't understand is... why you would feel "better" about losing your data to say; a virus, or a power spike or to a drive failure... but not to an inadvertant flaw to an OS Update. What's the difference...? The data is still gone, no matter what...?

Oh... and before you all bring it to my attention, I realize how vulnerable I was (am?) with my setup because my BackUp drive is also an external FireWire drive... so if I DID fall prey to this problem... I would have lost my original AND my backup.

I do not have the current funds to purchase any sort of DLT system. I MAY just try doing a monthly DVD backup spanning multiple DVDs if I can buy them cheap enough.

I guess I was one of the lucky ones...!

Evinyatar · Nov 13, 2003, 07:02 PM

Originally posted by Cadaver:
Oh, one more thing. With that much data, if you don't want to back it up to optical or tape media, consider a FireWire mirrored RAID. Then at least you can rebuild the RAID if the data becomes corrupted.

If MacOS X corrupts the filesystem on the RAID, you're equally screwed.

dialo · 07:24 PM

Originally posted by LightWaver-67:
Now... what I don't understand is... why you would feel "better" about losing your data to say; a virus, or a power spike or to a drive failure... but not to an inadvertant flaw to an OS Update. What's the difference...? The data is still gone, no matter what...?

Really, the only way I see my data getting lost is to a drive failure, which (knock on wood) are fairly infrequent with well made drives.

There is a HUGE difference between my data getting lost to chance and data getting lost to the **** up of the head of a department at apple in a major release of the most fundamental piece of software on my computer, the OS. One is chance that we all must risk, the other is avoidable human error.

More importantly, putting panther on your computer is like putting magnets all over the drive: it greatly increases the likelyhood that the drive will have major issues. If I can avoid this by simply leaving the disks on the table and not installing it, then I'll play it safe until I am sure panther works like it should.

I mean, I wouldn't trade in a car that works perfectly fine for one that is well-known to often accelerate into brick walls. That would just be stupid, even if the newer car has better climate control. Sure, the car I have now might also swerve into a brick wall (knock on wood again), but at least it's not a built in 'feature.'

I mean, if 5 of the chambers are empty, the chances are pretty good, right? Why not just put two more bullets in?

Oh, BTW: I updated the firmware and have 10.3.1 running on a brand new ibook (my main machine is a ghz powerbook). Guess, what. It can't read one of my firewire drives (a 125 GB one). It mounts, but it can't read it. None of my other macs have this problem, and I've never had this problem in the past. It mounts, but when I try to open it in the finder from the desktop, I get a spinning ball and the whole computer crashes. Thank god it's not really doing anything to the drive which works fine on every other machine.

LightWaver-67 · Nov 13, 2003, 07:45 PM

I guess I just don't understand the "VooDoo" behind this whole thing (not asking anyone to explain it, I don't think I WANT to know). Like I said, I guess I'm just lucky... none of my 5 External FireWire drives were affected either time.

Hmmmm...

dfiler · Nov 13, 2003, 07:54 PM

Originally posted by baglunch:
...these drives contain(ed) my archive of the past 4+ years of video footage, and past 5+ years of photos which are now unrecoverable (300+ gb of data). ...

Damn. That's a **** load of pron.