MMD Hard Drive issues

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Level 1

125 points

MMD Hard Drive issues

I attempted to install a new PATA hard drive and was never able to get it to be recognized or mount, no matter I gave up on that and went back to my original configuration to find that my 3rd small drive was now unreadable. I erased that and remounted.

Then when shutting down, file vault crashed on me, it hung for an hour, literally an hour and I did a hard shutdown, Guess I'm lucky anything was left of my drive after that.

So since then I stared dumping files off of the near to capacity drive . At about 230gb 200 is used. I trashed about 30-40 gb of files, and info for the HD still shows no spaced gained, same as before only 30gb available.

Then I open a psd file and save it as a new file. Except that the saved file is unrecognizable as a psd.

I hardly know where to begin to sort this out. Disk utility shows the drive as valid with no permission issues.

Any basic comments would be helpful

Thanks

G4 Mirror Door 1.25 ghz, Mac OS X (10.4.2), 1.75GB DDR SDRAM, 250GB HD, 2x DVD RW, Apple Studio Display, ViewSonic G790

Posted on Sep 7, 2007 6:37 PM

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Answer 1

Zagnut Author

Level 1

125 points

Sep 7, 2007 6:43 PM in response to Zagnut

MDD that is...

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Answer 2

Sep 8, 2007 6:51 AM in response to Zagnut

Have you actually done a Repair on the drive? Try using Disk Utility to do a Disk Repair, as shown in this link, while booted up on your install disk.
You could have some directory corruption. Let us know what errors Disk Utility reports and if DU was able to repair them.

Also, this Lack of Hard Disk Space and Freeing Up Space faq might help. I believe you have to empty the trash and restart to get the correct gb reading on the drive. You are pushing things 200 out of 230. That alone can cause problems.

Cheers!
DALE

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Answer 3

Sep 8, 2007 9:54 PM in response to Zagnut

Zagnut,

Please follow Dale's expert advice, but can you please provide a bit of additional info? I'm wondering what may have caused issues with your new drive installation...

All internally installed hard drives are jumpered/set to Cable Select, correct? )If you provide the drive brands you're working with, we can help confirm the correct jumper settings for you, if you wish.) Also, do you have three hard drives or four hard drives in your MDD?

Thanks,
Gary

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Answer 4

Sep 9, 2007 10:33 AM in response to Zagnut

Zagnut,

Disk Utility and "no permission issues" in the same sentence ? I've never known DU not to find permission issues. But this might just be that the 230GB (never heard of 230GB disks, might be a 250GB formatted to 232GB) is not the boot disk. Disk Permissions mean nothing off the boot disk. And 30GB free from 230GB is fine when it's not the boot disk.

Post back with the disk makes, which ribbons they're on (ATA-100 or ATA-66), where they are on the ribbon (end or middle) and most importantly, the jumper settings - Master no Slave / Slave / Cable Select / Master with Slave / etc, for each drive.

Also tell us about your new drive, settings, make, capacity and where you tried to install it. I'm sure with the right info from you we can get it working.

Just one question out of the blue, do you try to use OSX's RAID setup ?

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Answer 5

Zagnut Author

Level 1

125 points

Sep 15, 2007 8:23 PM in response to Simon Teale

I've been off line a few days, I'll try to collect this info and post back.

Thanks

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Answer 6

Zagnut Author

Level 1

125 points

Sep 15, 2007 8:36 PM in response to Simon Teale

How do I know which is ATA 66 or ATA 100, and would that matter as to which hard drive is on it?

Thanks

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Answer 7

Sep 17, 2007 7:51 AM in response to Zagnut

Zagnut,

The ATA-100 bus drive carrier and cable is the one at the bottom rear of the tower. The ATA-66 bus is the one at the front of the tower. A hard drive will run on either bus, though the throughput ("speed") of an ATA-100 or ATA-133 drive should be greater when connected to the faster ATA-100 bus.

Simon has asked what's connected to what and how because of drive jumper settings and cabling requirements. Remember, if you attach a single drive to either the ATA-100 or the ATA-66 IDE ribbon cable using Cable Select jumper settings, the drive should be connected to the end connector of the cable. This tells the computer that it is a master device and not a slave. In order for a drive bus to work properly with an attached drive, it must identify a master drive on its cable. If you were to instead connect a single drive to the inline/intermediate cable connector on the ribbon cable while leaving the end connector without a drive, the computer will instead recognize your drive as a slave device without any master, which won't work.

Gary

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Answer 8

Zagnut Author

Level 1

125 points

Sep 17, 2007 6:14 PM in response to Simon Teale

I have a 250gb HD on the ATA 100 cable (at the end) set to cable select. This is the boot disk and its the only one in this bay. In the ATA 66 bay I have 2 smaller disks a 80bg and 40gb. They are fine in position.

With the new drive, I gave up on it. After not being able to have it mount in any position with the other drives, I removed all the drives and connected only the new drive on the ATA 100 in the end position, while booting up with the system disk. Still nothing. A bad drive do you think?

In any case I have now moved on to general disk problems and will probably take it in for repairs this week. I don't have the time and god knows I've already messed it up worse that things were to begin with.

I now have a situation where my Home folder is acting like a separate drive, files pulled out of the home directory get copied, not moved. permissions for email and safari have vanished. I have to re-enter email account settings every-time I launch entourage or mail, keychain file cannot be "found" by applications- it must be corrupt. Also itune's crashes constantly and rebuilds the library every-time it is launched.

I think this is to much for me, its time for the repair shop-

thanks for your efforts

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