My HD has died on me, help needed....

S

spugsy

Registered
...ok last week my mac (1 year old iMc, 2.4ghz intel chip, 4gb ram, system 10.5.7) went all funny, everything was working slowly - so I restarted, same thing, I restarted again and it just went to the grey screen with the spinning ball.

Ok so I restarted from my tiger disk and it could see the drive, so I tried to install a new system and it got right to the end of the installation then said because of a disk error it couldn't do it.

Hmmmm.

Ok so I bought an external HD, put a system on and started up from there - now the drive came up, but things were slow still, it took forever to copy anything so I tried disk utility, it couldn't repair it. I tried drive genius, same thing. DiskWarrior 4.1.1 same thing.

Now I tried again a few times and the programmes took forever to start up but now disk utility opens after about 30 mins and can see the drive, but it's lost it's name and I can't even repair or repair disk permisssions. Drive Genius can see it but not repair and same for Disk Warrior, the 'rebuild' tool is greyed out.

It's a 500GB drive and only has 3GB spare on it, it has loads and loasds of stuff on there, work, music, films, all my preferences, passwords and of course all my software - I do have a backup of some stuff, my photos luckily enough - but I still need to get it fixed.

Now what can I do? Is there anything in terminal I can do? Any other ideas anyone? I'm desperate for help.


I have downloaded Data Rescue II and it has been gathering device information for an hour, I'm hoping it will carry on and later on I can start recovering.

But in all honestly is there anyway of fixing the drive?

And if not can I recover and then do I need to re-format? And if so will it work ok once formatted?

Also any ideas why this would have happened?

Thanks for all your help in advance,

Dave, England
 
Don't mix the install discs of different systems.
10.5.x that came with a Mac -> use the same set on the same Mac
10.4.x that came with a Mac -> use the same set on the same Mac
10.5 retail -> use on the 10.5 Mac where that system was installed --- but not on a Mac that shipped with a later than that build of Mac OS X with
10.54 retail -> use on the 10.4 Mac where that system was installed --- but not on a Mac that shipped with a later than that build of Mac OS X with (so 10.4.2, 10.4.3, .. 10.5.anything..)

If it's a year old, it shipped with 10.5. Find those discs. They are model specific.
 
it had 10.4 installed and came with 10.5 DVDs, so it has 10.5 on it - the external has 10.4 on it.

So I should upgrade the external software and try again? this will make a difference??
 
so it makes a difference for operating systems? I'd have more luck if I upgraded my external HD software to 10.5.7 which is what I have on the internal disk?
 
spugsy said:
so it makes a difference for operating systems? I'd have more luck if I upgraded my external HD software to 10.5.7 which is what I have on the internal disk?
Click to expand...
This issue has been explained on this forum too many times to count. The grey disc that ships with each Mac is not an OS distribution disc, it is a System Restore disc. It returns your Mac to its as-shipped state including the OS and all bundled software. This disc is model-specific.

Different issue. You cannot install an OS on your Mac that is older than the OS that shipped with your Mac. Although a retail disc is able to install a complete OS on an older model Mac, it is intended to upgrade the OS from the point-release that shipped with your computer. For example any retail version of MacOS X 10.5 can install the OS on any Mac that shipped with MacOS X 10.4 and most earlier Macs. If your Mac shipped with MacOS X 10.5, then the retail version of MacOS X 10.5.x can be installed only on a computer that shipped with MacOS X 10.5.y only if x is greater than y.

However, you should never dispose of your System Restore discs. This is because retail distributions of MacOS X install only the OS, system utilities, and certain base-level apps like iTunes. The retail version of MacOS X does not include most of your computer's bundled apps.
 
spugsy said:
It's a 500GB drive and only has 3GB spare on it,
Click to expand...

Your drive is too full, and there is undoubtedly no continguous free space left on it to write to the directory. That's why things went nuts. (Even Disk Warrior doesn't have enough room on the drive to create a new directory.)

Until you either clear off enough data to create a good chunk of free contiguous space, or you clear off a relatively small amount of data and defragment your drive (or both), your drive won't run reliably again.

(3GB may seem like it is a lot of free space, but that 3GB is doubtless spread all over your drive in little tiny bits, and it is virtually unusable.)

See:
http://www.macattorney.com/ts.html
Item #6 and note #1
 
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I'm not sure where you're coming from to be honest, but I updated the software on the external drive to 10.5, same as the internal but it made no difference to trying to repair the internal drive.
 
Well for some reason the internal drive is getting worse, diskwarrior and disk utility can see the drive, although it's lost it's name - but neither can repair it as the option is greyed out.

It disappeared altogether last night but I realised after leaving it running and trying to get it to work the mac had been on for days and was hot so I shut it down and checked it this morning, still no joy - as above I can see it but not repair.

I'm pretty gutted and not sure why it mounted, then disappeared, then was there to be fixed and now has almost gone altogether?

Anyway all I can do now is try and recover it as far as I can see.
 
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