Hardware level HD corruption?

[efseiler]

Hi,
Awhile back my internal modem in my iMac got fried by lightning. I'm beginning to suspect it might have bitten my HD as well. Every so often files seem to get corrupted and I used to have to reinstall X every couple of months because the system would just hang itself. I initally thought this was due to the funky network setup I no had to use to get access to the Net. Things got better when I made some changes but I still had to deal with the corruption issue.

Additionally, certain installers won't install, all giving the same error message 'There is not enough room on the volume "", an additional 413 bytes are needed'. I tried to do a low-level format in sys9 but it fails each time. I can initialize and use it fine (do a degree), however.

I've tested my HD by mounting humungous disk images and everytime mounts without a squawk. No apparent corruption.

Does anyone know what the symptoms are of 'hardware-level' (as suggested by apple engineers) disk corruption?

Thanks for any insights,
Damien

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

An error when trying to low-level (or zero data) format usually indicates something wrong with the hard drive itself. Initializing just tells the hard drive to appear as if everything is wiped clean and to put a new driver on the hard drive. Low-level (which I think is SCSI only) or Write-zeros tells the hard drive to physically go through and write blanks (zeros) on all the blocks on the hard drive and to map out bad blocks. If this kind of format fails, then something is most likely wrong with the hard drive itself -- i.e., WAAAAY too many bad blocks or some other hardware problem.

 

[ElDiabloConCaca]

...or, take the suspected "bad" hard drive and try to format it in a different machine, if you happen to have access to one. Do the lowest-level, slowest format with all verifies turned on to get a good, thorough inspection.