Dead Hard Drive? OS X 10.3 Boot Problems (12" G4 PB)

R

Richman67

Registered
Hi all,

Got a boot up problem. Mac was running fine. Went to power it up, and it got stuck at a grey screen (no logo). The hard drive sounds like it has gotten a angry mosquito in it.

I went through the normal trouble shooting steps. Reset the NV ram and all that. It won't go into the single user mode at all.

Booted from the CD, and ran the Disk Utility and it wouldn't finish the "Repair Disk". It dumps out with 2 errors. One about a node being the wrong size, and another error (-9xxx). Sorry, I didn't write it down the first time, and now it just hangs up during repair with the DISK UTILITY.

Tried re-installing OS X from the CD, but the installer cannot find the HD (no volumes to install to).

SOOOO, the big question is there anything else I can try before hauling the thing off to the Apple Store? There was nothing critical on the HD, but I was just curious about anything I might have missed.

Thanks,

RM
 
Node errors can't be repaired with the reinstall, unless you zero all data first.

As Disk Utility could not make it, boot to single user mode (command-s at startup) and type

/sbin/fsck -fy

That may be able to repair more than Disk Utility.
If it fails at one run, run a second time, and when done

reboot

If that repairs it, still do a zero all data on the hard drive, and do a clean install.

Alternative, if you have DiskWarrior, run that. That may solve it for you.

Booting with "alt" held down, it should see all available systems to boot to.
 
DiskWarrior works well. I'd highly recommend trying that.

I've also heard of examples of people putting the drive in an external case and at least getting data recovered from it.

If your drive is making a noise like that though, chances are it's a hardware failure. Save what data you can from it - then get rid of the drive. Certainly don't reformat a bad drive in hopes that it will just be better.
 
Hiya Gia,

Ok, I finally got it into the Single User mode, and tried your hint:

This is what I got:

During bootup, it tells me that HFS: Embedded volume offset is not a multiple of physical block size.

It also says that the Root Device is mounted read only.



After entering the FSCK command:

-sh-2.05b# fsck -fy

/dev/rdisk1s9 (no write)


It then gives several lines regarding checking HFS Plus Volume, Extents overflow file, etc, etc.

The last two lines:

Master Directory Block needs minor repair
** The volume Powerbook G4 Software needs to be repaired.

Hehe, I think it's fatal, but not serious...<G>

Thanks for any info!

best,
RM
 
Disc Warrior should fix that - but I'd still be wary of using the drive again after recovering your data if it's making noise as described.
 
Hi Guys,

Thanks for your help.


Weeeiiiird stuff. I ran the singer user mode and did the FSCK trick twice. Then rebooted from the CD. Disk utility RAN properly that time, and fixed the HD. The funny noise has gone away and everything seems intact.

Strange critter!

Thanks for everyone's help!

Best,
Fg
 
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