Help for advanced use of fsck to repair a disk

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Level 1

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Help for advanced use of fsck to repair a disk

I have a PPC PowerBook 17" from 2005 running Leopard that has worked like a CHAMP for all these years. I have to upgrade, because I'm tired of all the incompatibilities, but hope to keep it going until the end of the year for financial reasons. Problem is, it has a disk problem and Repair Disk fails.

I ran Apple diagnostics from my original system install disk. It failed: Mass Storage - error detected Error code 2STF/8/3:ATA-100 ata-6 - Master

Tried to boot into Safe Mode but it just dies after a while.

Booted into Single User Mode to run /sbin/fsck -fy and results are:

...Checking catalog file

disk)s3: I/O error

invalid key length

(4,17766)

** volume check failed

/dev/rdisk0s3 (hfs) EXITED WITH SIGNAL 8

ran the command again with identical results. I was hoping to see some change in the error code.

The computer does boot and run "normally". I have a full Time Machine backup but can't figure out how to restore. Have other backups as well, but want to fix this disk problem before I go erasing and reformatting anything. It's at least working now. I seem to remember that fsck takes additional parameters, including telling it to use an alternate superblock (is 32 still an alternate superblock - used to be in BSD) - would this help? Can anyone advise me on the correct parameters for repairing the drive from Single User Mode?

What version of Unix is the OS based on? Is it BSD?

PowerBook

Posted on Aug 14, 2013 4:06 AM

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Answer 1

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Aug 14, 2013 7:48 AM in response to Kentuckienne

Your drive is almost dead and needs replacing. To restore, boot the 10.5 installer disc with the Option key, and use the Time Machine restore option under Utilities after replacing the hrad drive.

http://www.macsales.com/ has 2.5" Parallel ATA IDE hard drives you can replace the one in your Powerbook.

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Answer 2

Kentuckienne Author

Level 1

15 points

Aug 14, 2013 8:20 AM in response to a brody

Haven't found the Leopard disk yet - I moved - and the Tiger boot disk offers no such option. I'd rather not replace the disk unless I have to, since I'll be getting a new machine soon, and I'm not sure the disk is really failing. The disk is old, it could be failing, but I have a couple of reasons to try to fix it.

1. There were some power outages and it's possible something got corrupted.

2. I'm not sure restoring from Time Machine will work. I can get TM to restore individual files, but there seems no way to do an erase/format/restore on the current disk even though the TM backup is on another drive.

3. I just miss working with Unix and would like to learn to fix this myself.

I have got a FireWire OWC drive, maybe I can format and install to it and use it as a boot disk?

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Answer 3

a brody

Level 10

82,941 points

Aug 14, 2013 8:53 AM in response to Kentuckienne

It is NetBSD based with some components of AT&T Unix. That said, the permissions are a tangle compared to some Unix systems, and you can royally mess yourself up trying to untangle them for anything but folders you create yourself.

You could as you say format the Firewire drive. I would make a second partition for when you do find the 10.5 installer, so you can recover the entire backup with Time Machine. Don't forget, many things that may have been upgraded to 10.5 won't work with 10.4. So you are in a bit of a bind until you find that 10.5 disc.

The Apple Store could put your machine in Target mode and recover everything with their copy of Time Machine, if you want to work with them on that. Also a nearby http://www.apple.com/usergroups/ usergroup might have someone who has the discs or at least the ability to do what the Apple Store can.

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Answer 4

Kentuckienne Author

Level 1

15 points

Aug 15, 2013 4:58 AM in response to a brody

Found the disk. Last night I used it to Repair the backup drives, as the boot drive was still unfixable. I have a couple of options - there's a Firewire disk with some year-old Time Machine backups, and a newer USB drive which has current TM backups on one of its partitions, plus an image backup from last year.

I might as well format and reinstall on the internal drive, as that preserves all the backups, and see if the hard drive is truly failing. That laptop has just been a stellar piece of hardware - it's been my daily workhorse since January 2005! I've never had any other computer give me eight years of reliable service.

I confess I'm puzzled about Time Machine. It has a restore button, and when I selected a date from a month ago (thinking that recent backups might hold a corrupted file due to the hard drive problem) it prompted me to select a destination. I didn't see any option for a full restore. Is that because TM is smart enough to know that only one file had changed?

It might be better to not put all the junk back on - to do the fresh install, then just reinstall the programs I use regularly. I'd like to get all my mail back. Can I use Time Machine to selectively restore specific programs, or say, just the user data files? Isn't there a decent online reference for Time Machine where I can read up instead of asking for help?

It seems like Apples's got to be refreshing or coming out with new versions of the Mini, which is the replacement machine I want, so I hate to spend a lot on the old machine.

Thanks for all your advice - I appreciate the help.

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Answer 5

Kentuckienne Author

Level 1

15 points

Aug 15, 2013 5:34 AM in response to Kentuckienne

Duh, nevermind, found the Time Machine button in the Leopard DiskUtils .... and we're off ...

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