I have a G4 with two hard drives. There is a smaller ~40GB drive that is the start up disk and a larger ~150GB drive (which I call Big) that holds most of my data. Last week I noticed that Big would occasionally not mount on start up. This problem got my lazy self to start updating my backup on an external drive, but due to a poor organizational choice and then an even worse common sense choice, I cleared that drive and began backing up from scratch.
This didn't seem like a problem until, about half way through backing up my important files, Finder (but not necessarily other programs) would hang while I was doing this and I would have to hard restart. This happened many times and I noticed that the time I could spend accessing Big before it would stop responding grew shorter. At one point I could copy around 500mb, then 200mb, then just a bit, et cetera. Now I'm afraid to even left-click on its icon in Finder because doing that has resulted in the forever-spinning rainbow spiral.
Yesterday I tried Disk Utility, running it before start up by putting the OSX install disk in and, when I tried to Verify Disk or Repair Disk I just got the "Could not unmount disk (-10000)" error. Trying to select Big in Disk Utility a couple minutes ago resulted in Disk Utility hanging with the rainbow spiral.
Some random details:
- I don't know what this is called or if it's relevant, but Big is actually two drives connected by a card in a slot on the motherboard.
- They are/It is "ATA ACARD STRIPE HD0 Media"
-I got Data Rescue II but haven't really had much of a chance to try it out and I'm not exactly sure what I would be able to do with it if I did.
-Restarting, or any hard shutdown or restart, will usually result in Big not appearing in Finder.
- A successful shut down will usually, but not always, result in Big appearing in Finder.
The latest vague idea I've had from stuff I've read is to try to do some sort of copying of the disk ("dd"?) but I don't really know where to start with that and, even if I did, Big is something like 153GB and the largest external I have is 149GB. I could buy a bigger external drive, but I don't feel like doing that if it's not even worth trying.
So. Is there any other information I can give you? Should I bite the bullet and lug my tower into a mac store and see if they can do anything? Should I bite an even larger bullet and send my drive away?
I would be grateful for any advice you can give. It looks like my drive is failing fast and I'll be glad to try anything you think might work while there's still a chance.
Thanks,
-Clarke
This didn't seem like a problem until, about half way through backing up my important files, Finder (but not necessarily other programs) would hang while I was doing this and I would have to hard restart. This happened many times and I noticed that the time I could spend accessing Big before it would stop responding grew shorter. At one point I could copy around 500mb, then 200mb, then just a bit, et cetera. Now I'm afraid to even left-click on its icon in Finder because doing that has resulted in the forever-spinning rainbow spiral.
Yesterday I tried Disk Utility, running it before start up by putting the OSX install disk in and, when I tried to Verify Disk or Repair Disk I just got the "Could not unmount disk (-10000)" error. Trying to select Big in Disk Utility a couple minutes ago resulted in Disk Utility hanging with the rainbow spiral.
Some random details:
- I don't know what this is called or if it's relevant, but Big is actually two drives connected by a card in a slot on the motherboard.
- They are/It is "ATA ACARD STRIPE HD0 Media"
-I got Data Rescue II but haven't really had much of a chance to try it out and I'm not exactly sure what I would be able to do with it if I did.
-Restarting, or any hard shutdown or restart, will usually result in Big not appearing in Finder.
- A successful shut down will usually, but not always, result in Big appearing in Finder.
The latest vague idea I've had from stuff I've read is to try to do some sort of copying of the disk ("dd"?) but I don't really know where to start with that and, even if I did, Big is something like 153GB and the largest external I have is 149GB. I could buy a bigger external drive, but I don't feel like doing that if it's not even worth trying.
So. Is there any other information I can give you? Should I bite the bullet and lug my tower into a mac store and see if they can do anything? Should I bite an even larger bullet and send my drive away?
I would be grateful for any advice you can give. It looks like my drive is failing fast and I'll be glad to try anything you think might work while there's still a chance.
Thanks,
-Clarke
