Okay this post is kinda long, but it's full of details that maybe could help someone help me out.
I keep around my old 400 MHz G4 to run my small webserver. Aside from a little sluggishness in some apps (Photoshop is about the biggest app I use on it), the webserver runs fine. There are two hard drives inside it, my main 80 GB Maxtor drive (that has everything) and a spare 20 GB Maxtor drive (that only has a bare-boned 10.3(.2?) install and Disk Warrior 3.0.2, in case the 80 GB dies on me).
Two days ago while browsing my site from my G5 I noticed that some files seemed to be corrupt; trying to view certain images would download the image but show a blank screen in Safari and Windows IE. Certain web pages showed random text from what seemed to be various files on my hard drive. A couple pages had half gibberish, I saw my username a few times, several references about "shadow hashes" and part of a plist file. The very same pages showed up blank in Windows IE.
This was a new type of error to me, it almost looked like a ram or virtual memory dump was being sent out across the net instead of my normal webserver's files. It certainly didn't look like any Apache error I've ever seen (and I certainly don't pretend to be an expert).
I ftp'ed in using Transmit and all the files were still there, same modification dates, same file sizes. I tried re-uploading some of the non-working files and the new copies worked fine.
I did this for about 10 images before Transmit kept having errors, such as: "file not found" or "could not delete file." I tried disconnecting/reconnecting, this helped a couple times, but eventually it refused to work at all. I think there was a short period of time I couldn't connect to the G4 at all, but a few minutes later it came back online, but the same errors were still there.
I tried using Chicken of the VNC to see if anything looked funny in the Finder, but it just refused to work (which I've only had half-luck with VNC anyway, so this was somewhat normal).
I tried ssh'ing into the machine. I ran top, no odd process names, no odd processor usage. I tried cd'ing to my webserver directory (/Library/WebServer/), then ls. ls didn't work, it said something about incompatible or unexpected binary file (I don't remember the exact wording). I tried a few other commands with the same result, softwareupdate, kill, even sudo didn't work.
Once I saw sudo not working, I knew there was something serious going on. I decided to vent my frustration by posting an entry to my blog on said G4 (using ecto and MovableType). ecto never got past "posting entry ####." I ended up quitting it, though I didn't have much expectations of it working anyway.
Today I moved all my things from my dorm apartment to my home where the problem G4 was (finals are over, thank god), thinking that I would be able to better solve the issue in person rather than remotely. I turned on the G4's monitor, the only thing running was the Finder, which had the spinning color cursor. I tried force quitting the Finder from the Dock, nothing happened. Hitting command-option-escape for the Force Quit dialog did nothing as well. I tried launching TextEdit and Terminal from the Dock. They bounced and bounced but never launched. I tried bringing up the sleep/restart/shut down dialog (control-eject), nothing.
I hit the restart button on the front, thinking that that could be the last time I saw the familiar Finder interface on that machine. Only to be greeting by the ever-lovable flashing System Folder icon that brings nostalgia of my OS 9 days and woes. If the G4 couldn't find a System folder on the main 80 GB drive, it should have found one on the 20 GB drive, right?
I put in my Panther install disc. Disk Utility only saw the Panther disc and my 20 GB. I changed the startup disk to the 20 GB. Reboot. Yet it still booted off the Panther CD. I restarted again, took out the Panther disc, and hit the power button on the front to shut it off.
I gave up, went out for a couple hours, came back, turned it on, and it booted off of the 20 GB. The Finder didn't see the main drive. I started up Disk Warrior. Waited about 15 minutes before it finished "scanning for drives." It saw the 20 GB, but the 80 GB is listed as "Unknown Disk" and "Directory cannot be rebuilt, the disk format is unsupported." At one point in the drive's life it was an HFS+ Journaled drive. I'm not going to guess as to what format it is pretending to be now. The S.M.A.R.T. status is fine... no, you are not "fine," Liar.
I just launched Disk Utility, and it is now showing both drives, the first entry (74.5 GB MAXTOR etc,. etc.) shows up, just below it is the correct volume name, but greyed out. I'm about to try to verify the disk now.
Okay that was quick, it failed almost immediately. A sheet popped up saying it failed due to "The underlying task reported failure on exit." Um, right. Underneath in the text box it says the same thing in bold red text, with an error code of -9972.
I honestly don't have too much of an issue reformatting the problematic G4, as my G5 has copies of almost everything (pictures, music, documents, in fact, my G5 probably has more up-to-date iLife files anyway). The only thing I do care about is my MySQL database that has all my MovableType/blog entries. My G5 has an outdated copy of the database (from the end of the last Summer). The only copies of of my blog are the flat HTML files from my blog's archives. I really don't want to have to copy and paste four or five months' worth of entries, but it looks like that's all I can do now.
And right now Disk Warrior is just giving me the spinning color cursor of doom. I'm about to force quit it and try DW again. I'm hoping that if Disk Utility managed to salvage the volume's name, then perhaps DW could salvage a wee bit more a second time around.
Aside from Disk Utility and Disk Warrior, I don't know what else I could try to do to save this thing. Any other suggestions would greatly appreciated...
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