10.3 Upgrade and Disk repair hang

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Level 1

9 points

10.3 Upgrade and Disk repair hang

Hi all,

I have a G4 with 10.2.x that runs great on its own, but I tried to upgrade to 10.3 over the past few days and it just hangs at verifying the disk for hours, whether I try to upgrade the existing OS or move the old one and install a new copy. I've even left it overnight only to find it still there the next morning. Yesterday, I tried twice to repair the disk and it just hangs there for hours (again overnight) with the progress bar filled but just never completing. I still hear disk activity, but clearly something is (or isn't) going on. What to try next? TIA

Posted on Sep 22, 2005 5:41 AM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Sep 22, 2005 8:52 AM in response to James Tucker

If Disk Utility is unable to repair the hard drive, then you should reformat the hard drive before attempting to install Panther.

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Answer 2

James Tucker Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 22, 2005 9:19 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks and no offense, but that seems like a Windows kinda
approach. It seems to be a perfectly running system. Is there no low-level means to see what's really wrong? Will and fsck shed any light?

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Answer 3

Kappy

Level 10

361,741 points

Sep 22, 2005 9:26 AM in response to James Tucker

No offense taken, but it really has nothing to do with Windows. If the drive is sufficiently corrupted that it cannot be repaired, then there's really little choice but to reformat.

Fsck does the same thing that Disk Utility does. Both use the same Unix utility to repair the drive. The major difference is that DU will not repair the startup device.

You can certainly boot into sngle-user mode and run fsck. Like DU if fsck reports it has repaired the drive, then re-run fsck until it reports the drive is OK.

Do not attempt to upgrade OS X until you have verified that the hard drive is OK.

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Answer 4

James Tucker Author

Level 1

9 points

Sep 22, 2005 9:37 AM in response to Kappy

Very good, I'll try this at home tonight. Thanks.

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Answer 5

RKing

Level 1

5 points

Sep 22, 2005 2:27 PM in response to James Tucker

Am having very similar problem, upgrading from 10.2 to Panther.
Need to upgrade because of iLife 05 requirements.

I get an error message during the install, while the program is checking the volume, & the installation quits.
I ran disk utilities, it found problems and fixed them.
Then I ran the install again, but it quits with the same error message.

Tried running archive and install, same problem. Tried running the disk utilities from the 10.3 disk; it found problems it couldn't fix.
(not appropriate to use 10.3 disk utilities on 10.2?)

Is the only fix a clean install?

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