Problem after installing a new HDD

L

langfdp

Registered
Hi Everyone,

I'm a new MAC user, so please excuse any obviously 'novice' comments/questions you might read below.

Dual 2.7 GHz G5
2.5 GB DDR SDRAM
OSX 10.4.3

I bought a MAC to do video editing on. I quickly realised that I need more disk space so I bought a:

Western Digital WD4000YR CAVIAR RE2/ 400GB/ 7200RPM/ 16MB/ SATA/ NCQ

I installed it in the box after finding the thoughtfully provided mountng screws Apple provided, then at next startup the system recognised the disk and said something about not being able to read it and automatically launched a disk utility. I created a partition on the disk, did a verify for the hell of it and labelled it 'Scratch Disk'.

All good so far.

I tried to copy the folder with all my 'movie' files in it from the existing drive to the new one, about 80gigs in total.....now the problems start.

The copy window popped up and started to do the copy, but then stopped. (I'd like to have given you a screen shot but don't know how to do that.) Clicking on the 'X' at the end of the progress bar to stop the copy had no effect. I tried to stop the process but couldn't work out how to do it. Eventually after mucking around for a while I got the little swirling colored wheel as my mouse pointer and basically the system locked up. I power reset the system and restarted, did a check on the new disk again and still no issues reported with the disk. I also did a check on the existing disk and got this error:

Verifying volume "Hard Drive"
Checking HFS Plus volume.
Checking Extents Overflow file.
Checking Catalog file.
Incorrect block count for file _CACHE_003_
(It should be 131 instead of 140)
Checking multi-linked files.
Checking Catalog hierarchy.
Checking Extended Attributes file.
Checking volume bitmap.
Checking volume information.
Checking volume information.
0 %)
The volume Hard Drive needs to be repaired.

Error: The underlying task reported failure on exit

Disk Utility stopped verifying "Hard Drive" because the following error was encountered:

The underlying task reported failure on exit
1 HFS volume checked
Volume needs repair

But the 'Repair' button was greyed out.

I have TechTools so I tried to run the harddisk diagnostic but there was a message that the disk could not be checked unless I created an eDrive. I created an eDrive on the new WD HDD and clicked on the eDrive Restart button, but when the system restarted it just sat at the Grey Apple logo and did not actually start up. I found out about the 'hold option key' at startup and was able to boot OSX I removed the eDrive so at least now the machine boots up in to OSX.

I found this forum and read this article http://www.macosx.com/forums/showthread.php?p=1272640#post1272640

And thought the Apple-s and fsck -fy might be just what I was looking for, but when I start my system up I don't seem to be able to boot in to single user mode. I'm probably doing it wrong but I am just holding the Apple-s keys from the time I press the power button but it just boots into OSX.

I did another check on both HDDs just a few minutes ago and suddenly both now pass ok, so no idea what the error above was, it talks about cache so hopefully it was a transient error that the OS was able to fix by itself. Can this happen?

I tried to copy over a smaller file to the new HDD again, about 11gigs, it worked okay so I tried another folder about 11 gigs and it stalled as described above after about 2.5gigs.

So, after such a long winded story, and if you've made it this far I truly appreciate your persisence. :). I have 4 questions.
1. Can anyone offer advice why the eDrive option from TechTools didn't work?
2. Can anyone offer advice why the Apple-s thing didn't work?
3. Can anyone confirm if the system will self hear the kind of error I listed above?
4. Can anyone offer advice what might be going on with the file copy thing?

Thanks for any assistance.
Dean.
 
Thanks very much for the link. It's seems to be exactly the problem I have. Now I just need to try and work out whay my options to fix the problem are.

Thanks once again.
 
It sounds like you just need to jumper the drive differently... does that page not say the exact jumper settings to use? If not, I can probably dig around and find them...
 
I checked the link which indicated that the problem might go away if you disable SATAII mode it helped. I found the jumper map for my drive WD4000YR

http://wdc.custhelp.com/...topview=1

My drive came as Default 1 without a jumper, I tried Default 2 (pins 1 & 2) and the system won't boot, it just sits at a grey screen. Then I thought that perhaps Opt 1 and while the system boots, the beachball happens if I try and copy data across.

I have to admit I'm a bit confused with the diagram though. What is the difference between Default 2 with pins 1 & 2 jumpered, where it said that SSC is disabled, and the digram under it, again with pins 1&2 jumpered but it said SSC enabled?
 
Tried it again and Opt1 consistently give the beachball problem. AUD$375 for a pain in the neck. I tried to contact Apple in Australia to see if it is only the WD drive that have this problem and they were about as useful as tits on a bull. Didn't even acknowledge there was aknown problem. I gave the service guy the details to the site you provided but he really didn't want to know about it.

Oh well, I guess I'll have to try the more expensive solution unless I can swap the WD drive for another type that is known not to have the problem.

Once again, thanks for your help ElDiablo
 
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