From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

I have an old IDE drive that's corrupted. Sometimes it mounts on the
desktop, but then DiskUtility says it can't be unmounted to be verified, repaired, or formatted. I'm trying to get it working in an old G3 Power
Mac.

If I buy DiskWarrior, it might help or it might not.

Are there ways to know ahead of time if DW would help? Or are their
other alternatives?

Are there any Unix low-level formatting utilities that can be used from
the Terminal?
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

In article
<BLOCKSPAMfishfry-A4F172.20390307042006@comcast.dca.giganews.com>,
fishfry <BLOCKSPAMfishfry@your-mailbox.com> wrote:

Are there any Unix low-level formatting utilities that can be used from
the Terminal?

man pdisk from the Terminal. It may or may not be what you want.

leo

--
<http://web0.greatbasin.net/~leo/>
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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system




in article BLOCKSPAMfishfry-A4F172.20390307042006@comcast.dca.giganews.com, fishfry at BLOCKSPAMfishfry@your-mailbox.com wrote on 4/7/06 10:39 PM:

I have an old IDE drive that's corrupted. Sometimes it mounts on the
desktop, but then DiskUtility says it can't be unmounted to be verified, repaired, or formatted. I'm trying to get it working in an old G3 Power
Mac.

If I buy DiskWarrior, it might help or it might not.

Are there ways to know ahead of time if DW would help? Or are their
other alternatives?

Are there any Unix low-level formatting utilities that can be used from
the Terminal?

Speaking from unfortunate experience, I would say that if the disk is even occasionally mountable, DiskWarrior can *probably* fix it. I've had DW fix drives that even a "professional" data recoverer couldn't. Even so, there
were still some files that it couldn't retrieve, but I've always managed to
get most of my documents off even severely damaged drives with DW. I can't
say enough good things about it!

That said, there is no way to know if DW can fix it before the fact, but my advice is just bite the bullet and buy it. Someday you will need it.

The great thing about DW is that you can run it, and it will automatically
do whatever it has to to try to reconstruct your directory and repair your files and it lets you CHECK THEM OUT and BACK THEM UP before DW actually
writes anything to the disk. You can cancel DW and leave your disk untouched
if you don't like the results, then send your HD to some expensive data recovery facility.

If you're not concerned about recovering data from the drive and you just
want to reformat and use it, DW can probably repair the directory well
enough for this, but I wouldn't trust that disk anymore, even after the reformat. You may have a hardware issue going on there - hard drives don't
live forever, you know. I've had several drives that were rendered
unmountable (with Apple or other third-party software) that DW could see and repair, but I'm always suspicious of a drive that has been seriously compromised.

Get DW, repair the directory so the machine can mount it and ZERO it when
you format. And make sure that anything that goes onto it is backed up. DW
is one of those utilities I would never be without.

Hope this helps...

Tracy

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

fishfry <BLOCKSPAMfishfry@your-mailbox.com> wrote:

I have an old IDE drive that's corrupted. Sometimes it mounts on the desktop, but then DiskUtility says it can't be unmounted to be verified, repaired, or formatted. I'm trying to get it working in an old G3 Power
Mac.

If I buy DiskWarrior, it might help or it might not.

Are there ways to know ahead of time if DW would help? Or are their
other alternatives?

DiskWarrior repairs HFS volumes, not defective partition maps or
drivers. If Disk Utility cannot "format" the disk, using DiskWarrior on
it will probably be useless. Your best bet is to replace the drive.

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

I wouldn't toss that HD yet. I also don't think that DW will be of any
help. If the drive won't mount then DW won't see it either. It didn't
work in my situation explained below.

I had a similar problem just last week with a disk I was swapping
in/out of a server that uses softraid on OS 10.3.9. It was a used HD
and after I installed the softraid drivers I couldn't get the server to
see it at all. It wouldn't show up under Disk Utilities or softraid.

I was finally able to get it to show up on another computer by
connecting it via a USB housing, but I still couldn't erase it using
disk utilities. Disk utilities would stall. I was able to zero out the
dive using my Sortraid software. Now it works fine.

I don't know what software is out there that can zero out the drive,
I'm 99% sure my Norton's System Works (os9) had this feature, but if
the drive won't mount it won't work.

But you could also ask a friend with a PC to format the drive for you.
That should zap all the previous mac formatting from the HD. Then when
you reinstall it into your mac it should see it as a new drive.

I'd try this first before tossing the drive.

Good luck.

Gene Y.

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in article 1144516877.932343.243840@i39g2000cwa.googlegroups.com, geno.y at gene.yama@gmail.com wrote on 4/8/06 12:21 PM:

I wouldn't toss that HD yet. I also don't think that DW will be of any
help. If the drive won't mount then DW won't see it either.

Not necessarily so. I've had several situations in which a drive would not mount, but DW did see it and did repair it. I didn't get 100% data recovery, but got the majority of my critical files.

IMHO, DW is still worth a try, and even if it doesn't work in this
situation, it's still a valuable tool to have around.

Kind Regards,

Tracy

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

fishfry wrote:

I have an old IDE drive that's corrupted. Sometimes it mounts on the
desktop, but then DiskUtility says it can't be unmounted to be verified, repaired, or formatted. I'm trying to get it working in an old G3 Power
Mac.

Strange it won't UNmount. Try DiskUtiltiy while logged in as root.

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From Newsgroup: comp.sys.mac.system

Tracy Doyle <tracy@unspam.ragtime.com> wrote:

IMHO, DW is still worth a try, and even if it doesn't work in this
situation, it's still a valuable tool to have around.

It is, but the OP doesn't have it and seemingly doesn't want to buy it
without some assurance that it will work on an "old" drive that's
showing signs of failing. A new drive will cost the same or even less
than a new, licensed copy of DiskWarrior. If the OP's priority is to get
a working drive in his G3 at minimum cost, his best bet is replacing the problem drive rather than trying to repair it.

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