[RayLuczak]

Hello:

I have Mac OS X 10.3.7 which hasn't caused me problems with my external firewire drive (which I've been using for 4 years now without a single problem) on my MDD G4 (1.25 DP) tower. However, it has consistently refused to mount on the desktop even though I've run my DiskWarrior which says it's there, but it won't rebuild the directory at all. :-( I've also run the OS 9 version of DiskWarrior in the OS 9 environment, which didn't work at all. It didn't even list the "missing" firewire hard drive there. Then I decided to run DiskWarrior on a G5 tower in OS X 10.3.7, and it was the same thing--it would recognize the firewire drive but couldn't rebuild. I refuse to initialize or reformat the data on that hard drive--it is simply not an option.

Several questions come to mind ....

- My DiskWarrior CD was for Jaguar (10.2.3), so I'm wondering whether I should upgrade to DiskWarrior for Panther?

- I don't have a copy of TechTool Pro 4. Should I buy a copy of the program and run that? I haven't gotten a copy of TTP since I went OS X. Never had the need for TTP before, you know?

- My G4 has the first two internal hard drives installed. I haven't bought a card to enable me to install two more internal hard drives, so if I wanted to install two more, I could. Do you think that the problem might be in the Oxford 911 bridge set of my external firewire hard drive? And would I lose data off the external hard drive if I took it out of its firewire enclosure and installed it on the G4 in drive bay #3 via the second ATA card (which I believe costs $90)? I believe that external firewire drives have their jumpers set to "master" instead of "slave" (or is it the other way around) so this option worries me a bit. Would the second card require that I set up one master and one slave internal hard drives for bay #3 and #4? If my external hard drive is a master and if I need to make it a slave drive, would I lose the data?

I don't have a lot of money ($100 is the most I can afford at the moment), but I sure need to have the data on the external hard drive back.

Please advise what I can do to save the external hard drive.

Thanks ever so much!

Sincerely,

Raymond Luczak

[RayLuczak]

Hello:

I forgot to mention one more question.

- If I am unable to run the external hard drive, is there a way I could transfer the data from the 80 GB hard drive onto a larger external (or internal) hard drive? If so, how can this be accomplished?

Thanks again for your patience. Macnn Forums are the best!

Raymond

[RayLuczak]

Sorry, but I should add that I *did* run Disk Utility, under which the external firewire drive didn't show up. :-(

Raymond

[MrForgetable]

just to let you know, your title is a little decieving. >$100 means greater than 100 dollars. I think what you're looking for <$100

sorry I can't tell you what's wrong. I'm not sure it's possible to go from harddrive to harddrive if it cannot mount or even be recognized sometimes.

i would hold off on the purchases until someone more knowledgable comes by.

[RayLuczak]

Mea culpa!

You're absolutely right. :-/

Raymond

[SSharon]

Hmm, where to start. I have some ideas but I am missing some info from you. Does the drive spin up, or does the power light not even come on on the enclosure? After flying with my enclosure I came back to school only to find out that my drive wouldn't power on and therefore didn't mount. It turned out that the drive had wiggled its way off of the molex power cable and the ATA bridge. Open your enclosure and be sure that the drive is connected properly, especially if it you don't hear it spinning at all. Hopefully this is a case where the simplest solution is the right one, but if its not keep reading.

going in order...

I have only used DW for Panther, but I think there is a decent chance that you need to upgrade versions (perhaps there is a download at their site).

I have never used TTP so I have no coment on it.

You should be able to take the drive out of the enclosure and place it in slot #3 with no problems or cost to you. I also have a MDD and it comes with 3 ATA channels, one for the optical drives and one each for the 2 pairs of hard drives. So just find the cables already in the tower and connect the drive. As for jumper settings, I have never heard of losing any data by changing their settings. Mac OS X suggests having all external drives on cable select (CS) and leaving it on that should be no problem when you insert it into slot #3. If you are unsure what its set to at the moment, don't change it as its probably set to CS.

On a side note if you already have two drives internal they should ideally be in slots # 1 and 3. This will increase their speeds as they will have their own dedicated channels and also help for airflow and cooling since they will be far apart from each other and not 2mm away from each other.

[f1000]

Can you reinstall the hard drive into an internal bay, and then run DiskWarrior on it from the Boot CD?

In addition, are you getting the dreaded "Hardware malfunction" warning in DW?

I would recommend that you use Data Rescue X (Mac) to get the data off that drive before you do anything further.