Is all lost?

gazzerdc

Registered
Running Panther 10.3.8?9? on an iBOOK G3, 256mb, 30gig (don't know as it is not "here," it's "on the road," and crashed prior to our ability to see the System info, but I'm pretty sure it is 10.3.9.

Got Diskwarrior V 3.0.2. Was able to load the CD. The Hard Drive was recognized. Clicked on "rebuild." Process gets to about 35%, then just spins and spins, nothing happened for about an hour.

Shut down. Followed the procedure. Did the same thing again.
However, the second time we got a message to the effect: "Speed is impaired due to disk malfunction." Speed of the CD? Speed of the hard drive?

So, are we "done for?" The version of DiskWarrior is V3.0.2. Is it possible that when the iBook is back home, and I'm able to insert the Panther Disks, and run the program from the Panther CDs, that there will be something that is "corrected" that DiskWarrior isn't able to do? Or, is the hard drive dead?

Interestingly, the 'clicking" noises we were getting from trying to boot up (spins and spins and spins) did go away while DiskWarrior was working; when Disk stopped "working" - and all we got was spinning spinning spinning- the clicking returned.

Thanks in advance. You tech people are great.
 
When we ran the program the first time, we let it "hang" for about thirty minutes and shut down. Then we ran again, seemd to get a little further and got the "speed" question. Can we try doing this a few times? Is it going to hurt anything since we probably have lost the data anyway? I'm thinking maybe we can just keep starting diskwarrior and stopping when it hangs, three, four times, and maybe it will get past the bad section? Any thoughts? Or, are we just beating the dead drive?
 
The message 'speed is impaired due to disk malfunction' tells the tale. I decipher as 'DiskWarrior is going to take a lot longer, because the disk (your hard drive) has problems'
I have let this continue on. Alsoft will tell you that some disk repairs may take several days(!). I have sometimes let it run overnight. You can monitor the 'project'. It may tell you that a lot of files are being recovered. Watch as the number of files increases. It may seem to stop for quite some time (half an hour or more). There will be some point that you can be pretty sure DW is not continuing. You can let your patience be the judge. You also have to decide how important the data is to you, and if you want to trust the hard drive after this much struggle.
My opinion is: Let DW try to finish if the data is important to back up. Then replace the hard drive, no sense in going through this again.
Good Luck :)
 
30 minnutes is not nearly enough time to let DiskWarrior run. If you have multiple problems with the hard drive, 6 to 10 hours would be a good estimate of time it should take.

Since you interrupted the process, chances are you did even more damage to the hard drive. You should never, ever, ever, ever, ever interrupt any kind of disk-repair utility until the utility reports that it either can or cannot fix the drive.

The clicking sounds make me want to say that there's some kind of physical damage to the hard drive that will require a replacement.
 
Well, we killed it. When we attempted to run the program again, we let it go for about three hours, the clicking vanished, we thought things were doing well, but we hadn't got the information back from you folks prior to STOPPING AGAIN. Once I had all this great information, of course, the hard drive no longer shows up; we killed it.

I have to say, I wish I had held off doing anything until seeing the consensus. I know better the next time. live and learn.

Thanks to all.
 
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