Disk permissions

Question

Level 1

4 points

Disk permissions

Hi all,

All of a sudden my old G4 doesn't start anymore.

It gives the gong, but hangs.

Using Leopard DVD and disk utility did repair some minor file count errors but it was not able to fix disk permissions errors.

Doing a systems reinstall finished T a point where it said it could nor access my HD volume, but did not specify why.

Trying to do a Time Machine reload hangs during the measuring of size of the data.

Now what?

By the way the disk first aid gives an all OK of the HD.

Stan

PowerBook, Mac OS X (10.5.8), G4

Posted on Jul 14, 2011 7:46 AM

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Answer 1

Braby

Level 4

1,795 points

Jul 14, 2011 8:43 AM in response to stan at home

I'm not enough of a tech to offer you a diagnosis, however I would recommend to every Mac user that they splash out on Disk Warrior: http://www.alsoft.com/diskwarrior/

It has saved the day for me on more than one occasion when faced with a situation like yours.

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Answer 2

BGreg

Level 6

17,552 points

Jul 14, 2011 10:56 AM in response to stan at home

Using Leopard DVD and disk utility did repair some minor file count errors but it was not able to fix disk permissions errors.

If the Disk Utility repair fails for some reason, it's because it can't fix an error. As Braby mentioned, Disk Warrior is one program that can typically fix issues that Disk Utility can't. Another program is TechTool Pro. Disk Warrior seems to be the more popular of the two. If one of those can't fix the problem, it's usually new hard drive time.

Don't know the steps you took, however, if I were going to reinstall the system, I would boot from the Leopard DVD, and using Disk Utility, do an erase, choosing the security erase option of writing zero's to the disk. This also resets the bad sector table, that all hard drives have. Then I'd reinstall or restore the system.

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