Q: Stuck: Need Disk repair but DVD drive dead and only have USB 1
[1 Ghz flat-panel iMac with USB 1 ports (no USB 2) and also Firewire 400]
I noticed a strange discrepancy (small but concerning) between the size of a folder on hard drive (folder of all mp3's with no subfolders) and the backup of the same folder on a mounted thumb drive.
(The size difference was not due to any invisible .DS_Store files and both folders are displayed in List view format.)
Disk Utility reports three things:
1. Incorrect number of thread records
2. Volume Bit Map needs minor repair
3. Checking volume information.
Volume free block count",0) [I might have mangled this line]
(It should be 13438611 instead of 13437937)
::::
Here is the GOOD (but these are useless as explained under the "Bad"):
- I have a Tiger 10.4 boot DVD for a repair ==>but see below
- I also have a Disk Warrior disk (never used)
Here is the BAD:
- My built-in optical drive [Pioneer DVD-RW DVR-105] is -- I now discover - defunct and DEAD - it does not run the Tiger Boot DVD (in pristine shape).
- I bought an external SuperDrive (unopened) but I believe no boot from USB 1 is possible in PowerPC so a SuperDrive with USB 1 is useless.
Questions:
1.) Is there any way to boot from some external source (optical drive is DEAD) to run Disk Utility and/or Disk Warrior? -- I see none in this case! (gulp).
2.) More importantly (and this is my fundamental concern): Do the three Disk Utility hard drive issues constitute any direct threat to the integrity of my files?
I have almost everything backed up to duplicate thumb drives over these many months as standard practice.
Are these Disk Utility errors fully isolated to hard drive directory-keeping...or do these directory damage errors pose the possibility of mangling or harming my files or their metadata (filesize, etc.).
Put another way, when files are backed-up from a hard drive under the Disk Utility reports above, do they remain unharmed and undamaged by the situations reported by Disk Utility?
Thanks,
Bill
iMac, Mac OS X (10.4.11)
Posted on Sep 21, 2013 6:51 PM
Final Report: (good news further down)
DVD player has returned to disfunctional last legs..shooting more forced air does not help. The DVD player will not start the commercial DVD movie disk that successfully loaded a few hours ago.
The drive *did* successfully open a data CD burned by ImageBurn (on PC) in Windows 7 but refused to mount a duplicate version of the same data CD that had been burned directly through the Windows 7 OS and not using ImageBurn as the agent.
GOOD NEWS: Firewire SAVED the situation -- running Disk Utility in Target Disk Mode worked perfectly with MacbookPro as host and iMac as Target Disk.
Even better:
1.) Disk Utility run by MacbookPro reported no errors (bada bing!) related to the iMac disk ("Everything appears to be OK" message). Apple directs users not to fully trust Disk Utility's errors when it is being run off and against its own startup drive.
2.) SUPERB: After disconnecting the target disk setup, I ran Disk Utility from the iMac against itself and this time -- as opposed to last time -- it agreed with the MacbookPro, reporting "Everything appears to be ok."
Quite a decent ending as long as a dying and dysfunctional CD/DVD optical drive is of little concern.
Posted on Sep 22, 2013 10:54 PM
