Emergency

unlearnthetruth

unlearnthetruth

Recycle Me!
I have no idea what happend. I went to turn on my mac this morning, and it hung on the grey Apple screen for a while... eventually it ejected the CD tray... but nothing happend. Single user boot wouldn't work. So I started up off of the Jag cd and ran disk utility. It said invalid key header or something along those lines, and couldn't repair it. Sooo I installed classic on a different HD and booted in that. Can't get any files off the other drive, because "a disk error has occured." Ran Norton (i know i know, but it's all i have) and it found some errors, repaired them, and then stopped because "a disk error has occured" - it won't get any farther now. about half way through every time "a disk error" occurs. Is there ANY way to get this drive back up and running? it's my main hd and reformatting it would be catastrophic. I at least need to access its files... any ideas?

Thanks in advance...

I'm dying over here....
 
You need to run a utility like DiskWarrior or Norton to fix the drive. If neither of those can fix it then it sounds like you may have a dead drive my friend... Hope you backed up. Not to scare you because one of these utilities should take care of the problem.
 
Every time i run norton it says:

An unknown error occurred that prevented Norton Disk Doctor from fully scanning this disk

Error Found: Disk Error

Please try examining the disk again.

Which results in the same thing happening. It happens while it's examining the catalogue file.

Norton is all i have access to right now, since I lost my diskwarrior copy. bleh....

any ideas????

:(
 
It sounds like an actual physical problem with the hard drive. Maybe bad blocks or something. Check all the cables and yadda-yadda things like that, just to be sure -- believe me, I ran into a similar problem and it turned out to be a loose ATA cable...

At any rate, a complete re-format may be your only option. I think you're eventually going to HAVE to do this in order to restore a working system. You can try all sorts of combinations of disk utilities and system boots and what-not to try and salvage the files, but something definitely has seriously gone wrong with the hard drive...
 
I guess I'll be reformatting since I can't get anything out of Norton. Just kinda sucks because there's a very large amount of stuff on that drive that I am now wishing I backed up. Soooo unless anyone has any last minute ideas, looks like I'll be spending the evening trying to figure this out.

What's the best way to reformat, by the way?

:rolleyes: :( :mad:
 
Originally posted by ElDiabloConCaca
It sounds like an actual physical problem with the hard drive. Maybe bad blocks or something. Check all the cables and yadda-yadda things like that, just to be sure -- believe me, I ran into a similar problem and it turned out to be a loose ATA cable...

At any rate, a complete re-format may be your only option. I think you're eventually going to HAVE to do this in order to restore a working system. You can try all sorts of combinations of disk utilities and system boots and what-not to try and salvage the files, but something definitely has seriously gone wrong with the hard drive...
Click to expand...

would a reformat cure said physical problems, or is the drive actually deceased if that is the case?
 
Sometimes yes, sometimes no. If your hard drive has bad blocks, then usually a re-format will cure that problem -- it won't get rid of the bad blocks, but it'll "mark" them as bad so that they aren't used. Sometimes this works, other times, not.

Does your hard drive make any funny or heretofore unheard sounds? Like a constant clicking or scratching or anything? Are there any physical manifestations of these problems, or is your only clue the fact that Norton reports a problem? If you hear weird noises or clicking or scratching or the disk is physically acting funny, then it may be on its way to dying completely. Is it under warranty? Is it the original drive or is it a 3rd party drive you added yourself?
 
'tis the original 10 gig drive. it's not making any noises or anything like that. i just can't seem to access it. i can't boot off of it, it will mount, but when i access it it goes dreadfully slowly, or it reports back with "disk error." I get "disk error" when i try to copy files off of it as well. Any ideas?
 
all the cables and what not check out. disktools seemed to think the problem was with the catalogue file, and thats where norton freaks out - when it gets to checking catalogue structure, it returns that disk error bs. i guess a reformat is the only option..... grrr......

so wait a second now.... i'm going to have to install classic...... then install 10.0...... then install 10.1...... then run all the updates....... then install jaguar...... aren't i......?
 
Greg - if these files are truly important to you then get diskwarrior and run it. it has a great reputation for saving drives that no other repair utility can handle.
 
Uh, just for the record, when I had a problem similar to this a long time ago, I tried Norton on it... it fixed some, but not all of the problems. Then, I broke down and bought TechTool Pro because I heard it was much more likely to be able to fix problems.... well, IT DID. I got most, if not ALL of the files off of my hard disk using it, put them on another drive, then did a clean format, and was very happy to have my data back where it belonged. Granted, I'm not saying TechTool is a miracle.... but it performed a miracle for ME, anyway. If you've got the money to burn ($100?), TechTool Pro is definitely worth a shot.

btw, unless you have the Jaguar "Update" CD that came with recent Macs, you can simply do a clean install of Jaguar. You don't need to do 10, then 10.1.
 
Ed - yeah i'm trying to find someone here that has a copy i can borrow. One drawback of being on a 95% PC ONLY campus is well..... this......

Adam - yeah i got jaguar through up-to-date... my mother recently got an iMac, so i borrowed her up-to-date cd... so looks like i have a whole lot of installing ahead of me if i can't find anything to fix this...

grrr
 
ok so the latest problem is that techtool refuses to repair my hd. it claims that the volume is write protected.... ummmm. how do i unprotect it>?
 
you're booting from a cd or external drive right?

the only way that comes to mind off the top of my head is to boot an os x system cd and use 'show info' to check the priviledges and be sure you have read and write enabled. maybe even give the group permission while you run your repairs.
 
i'm beginning to think the disk may actually be physically damaged. ANY activity that required that disk takes AGES..... it'll access.......... pause........ access........ pause....... access....... pause..... it's unbearable. Disk Warrior hung on step 5 (locating directory information) for ages...... i ended up cancelling it to come here and give an update. The slowness and on/off reading is making me wonder.......

any ideas?
 
ever wonder if you brought this curse on yourself by choosing the itools username you did? :p

no, i know this is serious. i guess i would suggest having a little more patience with diskwarrior. let it tell you if you need to give up. perhaps you'll need to run a surface scan to repair bad blocks with TTP. This is the kind of problem that reformatting generally quick fixes if you can afford the losses. otherwise lots of patience and trying various repairs/utilities in various orders is your safest bet at this point. just remember that when direcotries are screwed up, access and searching is going to take longer than you are accustomed to.

and about the write protection thing - do you have multiple users set up in os 9 or x? if you have rhem setup in 9, perhaps you need to go to the multiple users control panel and reconfigure the permissions there.
 
Ed - actually every time i post i stare at my that line in my sig and curse quietly to myself ;)

I HAD multiple users set up on that drive.... but now i'm booted on a different drive w/o multiple users, and I can't access the drive to change the settings or anything. I've also painstakingly navigated my way to my OSX user folder on the drive, and it's empty... so i'm wondering if this is even worth it - is that data really gone or might it come back after fixing stuff up... but i'm gonna give it a few more tries and see what comes of it.... microcentre down the road is having a sale on 120 gig harddrives..... 150$..... it's more than i need but hey....
 
In case anyone is interested... here's what ended up happening...

The first hard drive is dead. completely. many a tear was shed.

So i got a new one... and i couldn't boot of my 10.0 cd to install...

Suddenly, everything stops working. Can't turn the thing on... So i take it to MacSpecialists down the road...

2 days, 135$ later they tell me my monitor burnt out.

250$ worth of mitsubishi 17" crt later...

Everything works again... YAY!

granted, EVERYTHING i had is gone... but oh well...

thanks for all the help everyone!
 
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