Disk warrior unable to repair drive

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dr fletch

Registered
Had a few issues with a couple of (Glyph) drives which are clearly corrupted. I booted with Disk Warrior and attempted a repair but it says error 2155 unable to repair as the disk is too badly damaged. Disk Utility verifies OK. Anyone got any suggestions as to how to clean up this disk. I've e-mailed DW - awaiting reply.

It's clearly corrupted as when I try to backup certain files it freezes the Mac. Also DW displays the same message when I try to repair the main system disk. I've already re-formatted and re-installed everything (no mean feat)

If you're interested, the drives became corrupted in unusual and unbelievable circumstances. They are 160GB removables mounted in a Glyph drive bay but when I took them to a different location/computer and used them for a few hours in a different Glyph bay (looks identical) Each one of them SUDDENLY became unreadable. I recovered info using Data Recovery2 and got them to remount using Disk Utility but all three have clearly corrupted catalogs in some way.

cheers

Mac 1.25 G4 Dual 1.25
 
dr fletch said:
Had a few issues with a couple of (Glyph) drives which are clearly corrupted. ...
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Disk Warrior is not a disk repair utility, per se. It is a recovers files by repairing directories. For this, it is very good. If you want to repair a damaged disk, then you may use TechTools Pro. Apple includes TechTools Deluxe, a cut-down version of TechTools Pro, in each AppleCare kit.

The most effective utility that I have found for fixing problems on my Mac is the command line utility File System Check aka fsck. Reboot your Mac in Single-User Mode. Type fsck -fy at the command prompt.

Since Apple journaled HFS+, my hard drives rarely (very rarely) need repair. If yours needs repair, then it is likely that you have severe media damage. Minute media damage occurs on virtually all drives over time. The OS moves files out of the damaged areas and then blocks those out. Persistent media damage may be a sign that the drive itself has become defective and needs replacement. No utility can repair a defective drive.

If you run a disk repair utility once and and your drive does not appear to have improved, then stop. It is likely that your drive is damaged. Get it to a technician for drive replacement and file recovery. Your files will be much easier to recover if you don't futz with the drive.
 
Yes, I don't actually think it's disk damage, just directory problems. Forgive ignorance, How do I reboot in Single-User Mode?
 
  1. Restart while pressing [Apple]+[ s ] on the keyboard.
  2. Your computer will boot into a full-screen UNIX command line interface.
  3. Read and follow the instructions onscreen.
 
Yes, I did that and it verifies ok (now) but what I'm looking for is a way to rebuild the directory..Maybe I'm just being over cautious as it seems to be working ok now. I will backup all the data and replace the drive with a new Seagate or something. You can't be too careful and from what I gather if a drive starts acting suspiciously, it's time to ditch it.
 
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