Accessing an external drive with OS9 HD compatibility 2

[jimoblak]

I formatted a drive in OSX with OS9 drive compatibility. The drive is now flaking out (won't mount in OSX 10.3.9) and 'Disk Warrior' and 'Techtool' cannot repair. However, I can take that same drive and use it easily on my Windows XP computer running MacOpener. I assume that Windows MacOpener is reading the OS9 compatible drive but the Mac is using it as an OSX drive.

Can anyone suggest how I can force the Mac to read it with OS9 compatibility instead of the default OSX mode?

I cannot mount the drive on my Windows PC to transfer the files back to the Mac since MacOpener does not honor the resource forks well.

 

[jmgalvin]

You might try launching Disk Utility (Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility), select the priblem drive and scan it - including permissions. Fix as necessary.

You can also look on the File menu in Disk Utility and go to Fix OS9 permissions.

Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[jimoblak]

How does one select a drive in Disk Utility if it does not even mount in OS 10.3.9?

- - I hope this helps - -
_{(Complain to someone else if it doesn't)}

 

[ObviousTroll]

jimoblak -

DiskUtility sees the raw disks even if they can't be mounted. That's how you prep new disks for use in the first place.

In addition, from the command line you should be able to FSCK the drive even without mounting it. I'll document that, even though diskutility would probably be easier:

First, plug the drive in, then open a terminal and look in /dev/ for files called "disk????". Files called disk0 and disk0s? will refer to your boot disk. You are looking for a file called disk1 (assuming you only have one internal drive - if you have more than one, the new disk will *probably* be the highest numbered disk.)

at that point, use

sudo pdisk

at the "top level command" type

l /dev/disk1 (or whatever device you identified)

You should get output like this:

Partition map (with 512 byte blocks) on '/dev/disk1'
#: type name length base ( size )
1: Apple_partition_map Apple 63 @ 1
2: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 64
3: Apple_Driver43*Macintosh 56 @ 120
4: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 56 @ 176
5: Apple_Driver_ATA*Macintosh 56 @ 232
6: Apple_FWDriver Macintosh 512 @ 288
7: Apple_Driver_IOKit Macintosh 512 @ 800
8: Apple_Patches Patch Partition 512 @ 1312
9: Apple_HFS Untitled 156299656 @ 1824 ( 74.5G)
10: Apple_Free 8 @ 156301480

If you don't, then the disk doesn't even have a partition table and you're out of luck. If it *does* look for the partition that has the data in it (usually 9) and quit out of the program.

Now, the second step is to try to repair it with FSCK.

sudo fsck /dev/disk1s?? (where ?? is the partition number you got in the previous step)

fsck will report each problem it finds and ask you if it should repair it. WARNING: from your comments, I'm going to guess that the disk is badly damaged, and you could end up getting hundreds of questions. In addition, fsck is a destructive operation - it's going to try and rebuild the disk, and if it gets confused the data is gone...

 

[jmgalvin]

Jim: Disk Utility will scan for all disks - unmounted and mounted. Not saying it will work, but it's worth a try. You might see if you have Classic running when you try this. One other thing you can try is under System Prefs/Classic/Advanced and click Rebuild Classic desktop.

Is your machine old enough that it can boot into 9? I have a 2 1/2 yesr old g4 that boots 9. If so you might see if the disk will show up in 9.

One other thing you might try is booting your mac with the disk not attached - usb or firewire. Then power on the outboard drive and then plug it into the machine's usb or firewire. It the drive happens to be dual usb/firewire you could try the other connection. I'm a big chicken and always buy these dual plug drives as backups for our machines - I had a problem on an early drive via firewire but it mounted via usb - it was an OSX upgrade that caused the problem.



Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[jimoblak]

2 minutes before I passed out last night, I successfully mounted the drive on an old iMac I had in the closet. Yes - it is a dual USB/Firewire drive: it mounted through USB. I do not know if the alternate connection is the cure or if it was the alternate Mac. Either way, I'm not unplugging it until I transfer the files to a fresh good drive through the network. I'll experiment with FSCK after that.

At nearly 200 GB through a USB1 connection, I'll post the results of this endeavor in a month.

Thanks all.

- - I hope this helps - -
_{(Complain to someone else if it doesn't)}

 

[jmgalvin]

Jim: Does the drive use an Oxford firewire bridge by any chance? Our outboard drives come from OWC and use the Oxford bridge. There was a 10.3 something mac upgrade that screwed this up. I had to revert on the 10.3 version and the problem disappeared. Funny thing was though I tried the 10.3.9 osx ugrade and the drives mount and work fine. Our version reads Mac OS X 10.3.9 (7W98).

You might try going to the site of the drive maker and seeing if they have any firewire bridge upgrades - depending on what version of osx you're using.



Using OSX 10.3.8 on a G4

 

[ObviousTroll]

That really sounds like the firewire port fried on either the drive or the other mac - pity.

 

[jimoblak]

Other FW drives still work okay on that Mac so the Mac ports are fine. I'll look at the buggy drive's FW.

The bugger is that the drive is partitioned to 3 volumes. One of the volumes was fine when booted through TechTool and Disk Warrior. The other two had major errors that those two apps could not fix. Before it completely wigged out, the one good partition mounted in 10.3.9 fine.

I am hoping that this is simply a software disk error or something that can be easily updated in the OS or firmware... this external drive casing was my favorite. I can't find it anymore. (maybe there is a reason for that)

- - I hope this helps - -
_{(Complain to someone else if it doesn't)}