Disk Utility won't see my HardDrive

[misty]

Hi guys, Newbee here. I'm in a bit of a pickle I am having problems with programs crashing in Panther 3.9. I'm running a G4 dual 1.25GHz with 512 mb of memory. I was advised to repair disk permissions via uitilities on my harddrive but when I open Disk Utility it does not see my hard drive only a drive with 115.04 GBM on it, no other images present in the left hand window. I used to repair permissions in OSX 10.2.8 and all was fine updating to 3.9 has caused me silly little problems like. Safari & Mail crash from time to time and its running slow on the net. Please help coz I'm going mad here and even apple couldn't understand this one !

 

[barhar]

Boot from the Panther Install Disc, run 'Disk Utility' [corrected 26.08.2006, as noted by DeltaMac (thank you) - below.] from the 'Installer' menu; and, perform 'Disk Repair' and 'Repair Disk Permissions' (at least twice each).

 

[DeltaMac]

Boot from the Panther Install Disc, run 'Disk Warrior' from the 'Installer' menu; and, perform 'Disk Repair' and 'Repair Disk Permissions' (at least twice each).

I will go out on a limb here, and correct barhar
I think he means Disk Utility from the Installer menu, not Disk Warrior. You won't find Disk Warrior on an OS X installer disk.

 

[misty]

Thanks Barhar & DeltaMac, I Did that when Apple tech asked me to boot from Panther disks run disk Utility on HD but still have the same problem. Even those guys are stumped
But thanks for your help !

 

[DeltaMac]

You posted that the drive displays 115.04 GBM - is that accurate?
Is there only the one line, and what is the complete text on that line?

What capacity should the hard drive be? (what size is installed?)

If Disk Utility does not show the partition, in addition to the device, then the drive probably should be erased and then reinstall everything.

If you have had more problems recently, then the drive probably needs to be replaced.

With your symptoms, seems unlikely that you will be able to retrieve anything.

DiskWarrior has been mentioned, and it can sometimes perform miracles....
If you don't get anywhere with the Disk Utility, Disk Warrior would be worth the expense to try....

 

[misty]

Okay here goes, The drive displays 115.04 gbm and that's it. no other disk along side with hard drive on it when in 10.02 I had two disks showing and I could then run disk Utility on the one that said HD. If I even attempt to run utility on the above disk it crashes. The capacity is correct and I have 92.02 available. The only partition is for OS9. I have backed up everything now I am thinking about doing a complete erase and install but must admit I'm a bit worried about doing this because I'm not too hot on the tech side of things. I did install some 3rd party software like mac the ripper and dvd one2one also a kids go go go all has been since binned as I wasn't sure if this was the cause but it's still crashing so it's not. Do you recommend I get disk warrior instead of reinstalling panther? I know it may seem easy for you guys but for me its a bit daunting. I need an idiot proof way round this please. Thanks so much.