Emergency help with G3 B&W hardrive...crash?

E

Ella

Registered
Howdy,
Let me start by saying the computer is not here in front of me, but I'm hoping for advice to forward to the person that I brought it into yesterday. I work on an old G3, and run OS9.2.2 (the original instal disc is broken by the way, so I can't reboot with that) I am a freelance graphic/site designer, and the computer started freezing quite a bit, in the last several weeks, but I thought it was because I was using so many of my graphic programs for so long that it was being testy..not so. Yesterday when I went to look for an ai. file, it just ....went. All I got on the screen after a restart, was the blinking folder with question mark, and I panicked, because there are several designs from the last week and a half that aren't backed up, that are due to the client, and I have no way to duplicate them. YES! I should have backed them up, but it's been so hectic in the world of Ella lately that I didn't. I was ABOUT to though, and had just picked up an old imac that I was going to put some of them on, but this happened first. The guy who I brought it to, said it wasn't recognizing my hardrive, so he tried to duplicate it, but I don't think that worked either. He took it home with him last night..he is not a Mac specialist, so I'm really scared, but he was the ONLY computer person in the tiny town I'm in, and he started on it immediately. I'm just afraid that he doesn't know what options he has? Any body...please help. I could easily lose my business (tiny and struggling though it is, and any referals) on this.
 
Was the hard drive making any weird, repetitive clicking noises or noises that it sounds like it was trying to spin up? If so, then it's possible that your hard drive has physically failed. There are disaster recovery services that can go through such damaged drives and recover the data, but they are extremely expensive (DriveSavers is the only one I know of).

I'm praying that this isn't the case that you are experiencing. It's posible that maybe the Mac "lost" where the System Folder might be. Have you tried rebooting from the supplied OS 9 discs to see if you can see the hard drive that way? If you have the discs, insert them, restart the Mac and right after the startup chime hold down the C key to boot from the CD. Once it reaches the desktop, try and see if the hard drive shows up on the desktop. If so, then this is good. You might want to try and run Disk First Aid once you're booted to the desktop from the CD to see if it can repair it. If not, then you might need to go and purchase DiskWarrior from Alsoft. Many people here swear by it.

Good luck, and I'm hoping that this gets resolved soon.
 
Hi there:), apparently he did that, and now he can see the icons etc. on my HD?, but he (bear with me on this, because I'm not sure what he said) can't retrieve the files because there's some broken fork or something(?) so now he's either reformatting or repartitioning to try to just get the files off..does this sound like a good thing to anyone...?:)
 
I hope he's not reformatting before removing the files! Otherwise I would get him to pay for DriveSavers.
 
OK, I'm going down there now, to make sure he isn't doing this before removing the files! Thanks for the heads up~
Ella
 
If he hasn't touched it yet, I recommend taking it to an Apple service center. Try the Apple Store...you'd be surprised what they might help you with. I read at one time that this one guy brought in a Mac Plus and they helped him out in getting the Mac Plus working again. Since your machine is newer, they might have a better chance at actually fixing it since it's using standard parts.
 
He has taken it apart, and I was able to see that the hard drive, when on another computer, does have all of my desktop files there, but he can't get to them. He ran the system softwear disk utility, and these are the two error messages that he received:
*Checking extents overflow file
*Invalid BSD
*Invalid Key length
He knows that I found you guys, and is open to anyone helping him figure out how to get the files OFF of the hardrive and onto somewhere else.He's a PC guy...
He's working as fast as he can, so that he can get me up and going, but he's doing it because I designed a logo etc. for him, so it's not technically costing money. Although in the next day of design that I miss it will be. Thank you for ALL of your help already, I can't tell you how great it is to have this community available.
 
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