Installation of Leopard to new firewire drive fails

Question

Installation of Leopard to new firewire drive fails

I've tried to install Leopard on a brand new firewire drive (in order to diagnose a keyboard problem on my iBook G4) from the Leopard DVD without success; after four (five?) tries, the install freezes every time. I'm looking at my frozen iBook screen now, and the log reads at step 280: "Opened Receipt database on '/Volumes/Hardcastle/' with schema 17', followed by (step 281) 'Extracting...' and the process has to a dead halt for the last ten minutes. I can move the mouse by not affect the desktop in any way.

Any ideas where to go from here? Again, I'm attempting to install Leopard from the Apple DVD to a new 250 GB Firewire drive, partitioned appropriately with Disk Utility. I've erased and re-partitioned the new firewire drive after each failed install, by the way.

Thanks in advance!

iBook G4, Mac OS X (10.5.2), 1 Gig RAM

Posted on May 15, 2008 9:42 PM

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Answer 1

Kappy

Level 10

362,023 points

May 15, 2008 11:32 PM in response to GaryHardcastle

When you partition the drive be sure to click on the Options button and set the partition scheme to Apple Partition Map (APM.) Be sure you format using Mac OS X Extended, Journaled.

Because this is a new drive I would suggest the following:

Extended Hard Drive Preparation

1. Open Disk Utility in your Utilities folder. If you need to reformat your startup volume, then you must boot from your OS X Installer Disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Installer menu (Utilities menu for Tiger or Leopard.)

2. After DU loads select your hard drive (this is the entry with the mfgr.'s ID and size) from the left side list. Note the SMART status of the drive in DU's status area. If it does not say "Verified" then the drive is failing or has failed and will need replacing. SMART info will not be reported on external drives. Otherwise, click on the Partition tab in the DU main window.

3. Click on the Options button, set the partition scheme to Apple Partition Map (APM) then click on the OK button. Set the number of partitions from the dropdown menu (use 1 partition unless you wish to make more.) Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Partition button and wait until the volume(s) mount on the Desktop.

4. Select the volume you just created (this is the sub-entry under the drive entry) from the left side list. Click on the Erase tab in the DU main window.

5. Set the format type to Mac OS Extended (Journaled.) Click on the Options button, check the button for Zero Data and click on OK to return to the Erase window.

6. Click on the Erase button. The format process can take up to several hours depending upon the drive size.

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Answer 2

May 16, 2008 5:29 AM in response to Kappy

Thanks!

But, the thought plickens. I tried to follow that procedure this morning (up until this morning, I had done everything except steps 4-6), but DU halts after 10-20 minutes of writing zeros to the external disk, with the following windown:

Volume Erase Failed
Volume Erase failed with the error:

No such file or directory

After the failure, if I ask DU to verify or repair the disk, or the volume I created, DU fails to repair the disk, indicating "Invalid B-tree node size"

Argh! Any (more) advice?

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Answer 3

May 16, 2008 6:36 AM in response to GaryHardcastle

Well, it appears that the Firewire purchased, the Maxtor OneTouch4 Plus, is not compatible with OS 10.5.2. Just a heads-up, I suppose, for anyone considering a firewire drive. Very very frustrating; I've spent several hours and a hundred bucks (though I'm about to return the drive) and I'm no closer to solving my original problem, dead keys on my iBook G4. Anyway, details here:

https://seagate.custhelp.com/cgi-bin/seagate.cfg/php/enduser/popupadp.php?p_sid=G-F-8T3j&p_lva=&p_li=&p_faqid=5005&p_created=1195077097&psp=

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