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Level 1

14 points

Q: How to backup, reformat and restore boot drive?

Bear with me, I am not a seasoned Mac person - I learned on PC's - any notion of reformating my boot drive makes me very anxious. Computer: Mac Pro (2008 vintage) running Snow Leopard, 10.6.8, 6GB RAM, 4 internal HD's (320GB, 1, 2 and 3TB).

Symptoms: Mac Pro starts with the horizontal "thermometer" bar across the bottom of the screen. It takes 10 minutes or so to boot, then starts over one more time, or several times more, but eventually boots up. I ran the disk utility repair from the install disk and it says HD is corrupt and needs to be reformatted, "incorrect..thread count" message in red seems to be the killer.

Plan: 1) back up boot drive to other internal drive using Time Machine, 2) reformat boot drive (320GB original drive), 3) restore boot drive.

I'm currently running Time Machine and doing a backup of the boot drive. Once that is complete I want to reformat that drive, which hopefully will repair it, and then restore it AS WAS. I understand from reading other posts that Time Machine does it all: after refromatting, install the Mountain Lion install disk, run Utilities, and simply do a restore. I haven't been through all of the steps, obviously, so I'm anxious. Does this really work? What else should I do in preparation for this process? I'm not prepared to go and spend money on stuff I don't need. If the disk doesn't repair, I plan on using one of the oher internal HD's, but they all have a bunch of files on them.

If necessary, can I do a restore to one of those HD's without losing any files exisiting on them?

Perhaps it it is recommended to use one of the other internal HD's as the boot drive anyway?

Whats' the best plan forward that might be different from what I plan?

I appreciate the helpful reponses, however, I have read some responses from folks who obviously know everything there is to know about Mac's and I sometimes I understand, but sometimes I have a vague idea what they are talking about.

Mac Pro, Mac OS X (10.6.8), Dual 2.8GHz Quad Core Intel Xeon

Posted on Jan 26, 2014 1:41 PM

Best reply

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Posted on Jan 26, 2014 1:44 PM

Correction: using Snow Leopard, not Mountain Lion as stated; should be "install Snow Leopard repair disk.."

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31 replies

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 18, 2014 3:50 AM in response to DBLewis

notion of reformating my boot drive makes me very anxious.

It should be part of boot camp for any computer, so you are comfortable and familiar and know you have a safety net, a 2nd parachute.

Cloning Windows or Mac are not much different except Mac can be easier.

Samsung makes a great "Data Migration" for their SSD that is very basic but works, CCC does smart backups and can do a afile integrity check.

I give all my family and friends 900 pg "Mac OS X: The Missing Manual" by David Pogue which is easy to use and get more out of your Mac and more than cost of book.

Mac OS X: Starting up in Safe Mode - http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=107393

What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode? (Mac OS X) - http://support.apple.com/kb/HT1564

Isolating issues in Mac OS X

Creating a temporary user to isolate user-specific problems:

Isolating an issue by using another user account

Identifying resource hogs and other tips:

Using Activity Monitor to read System Memory and determine how much RAM is being used

Starting the computer in "safe mode":

Mac OS X: What is Safe Boot, Safe Mode?

To identify potential hardware problems:

Apple Hardware Test

General Mac maintenance:

Tips to keep your Mac in top form

How to install OS X on a new or faulty HD without Internet recovery

Corrupt and new disks might not have a working Recovery partition, but there are still ways to access one and reinstall OS X, if needed.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57594422-263/how-to-install-os-x-on-a-new-o r-faulty-hd-without-internet-recovery/

Feb 18, 2014 7:48 AM in response to The hatter

How to install OS X on a new or faulty HD without Internet recovery

Corrupt and new disks might not have a working Recovery partition, but there are still ways to access one and reinstall OS X, if needed.

http://reviews.cnet.com/8301-13727_7-57594422-263/how-to-install-os-x-on-a-new-o r-faulty-hd-without-internet-recovery/

If you were using Time Machine with 10.7.4 or later, there should also be a bootable Recovery_HD on your Time Machine Volume.

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 18, 2014 8:26 AM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

I am rather disappointed in Cnet for leaving out that essential feature! Tx.

------

On wifi subject some highlights:

Airport access points, upgrades to 802.11ac

http://news.techworld.com/mobile-wireless/3502459/apple-shop-maxes-out-airport-a ccess-points-upgrades-to-80211ac/?pn=1

You just want Wi-Fi connectivity to work. So you plug in an Apple Airport Express access point and then you and your coworkers go to town on your MacBook Pros. You plug in another one. And another one.

Until one day, the setup just doesn't work.

One solution is to turn to a controller-based WLAN architecture, opt for new 802.11ac access points,

Apple services such as AirPlay and AirPrint work across subnets, while limiting unnecessary Apple Bonjour protocol traffic, which can bog down Wi-Fi performance.

With 11ac operating only in the 5-GHz band, with lower propagation than 2.4GHz, RPS needed a "lot more APs, with small coverage areas" to provide both pervasive and high-performing Wi-Fi connections.

"We wanted to saturate the air with APs to give the throughput we needed as people roamed the building," Bass says.

Bass hasn't done any in-depth studies of performance, but the lack of complaints from users may be all the evidence needed. Only a handful of the company's Macs have 11ac built-in (Apple offers it on MacBoook Air, MacBook Pro with Retina display, iMac and the new Mac Pro).

But a range of early 11ac adopters are reporting that even existing 11n clients are seeing significant performance gains, partly from being placed in the uncluttered 5-GHz band and partly from some proprietary vendor features.

"We're finding that with the Mac clients especially, that differences in the OS version can help or hinder how they roam,"

------

I tend to buy new routers almost yearly lately, as they improve performance and features and my demands grow. Never used an Apple product though, and I use to always disable Bonjour, though that by now should have improved and hope less chatter. Thought the other discussion and some context for what happens with AC and N-bandwidith?

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 18, 2014 7:35 PM in response to DBLewis

Here's a log of the latest panic (a bit long). What of this is most important to a user (as opposed to a guru)?

Mon Feb 17 10:03:15 2014

Machine-check capabilities (cpu 0) 0x0000000000000806:

family: 6 model: 23 stepping: 6 microcode: 1547

Intel(R) Xeon(R) CPU E5462 @ 2.80GHz

6 error-reporting banks

threshold-based error status present

Machine-check status 0x0000000000000005:

restart IP valid

machine-check in progress

MCA error-reporting registers:

IA32_MC0_STATUS(0x401): 0x1000000020000000 invalid

IA32_MC1_STATUS(0x405): 0x0000000000000000 invalid

IA32_MC2_STATUS(0x409): 0x0000000000000000 invalid

IA32_MC3_STATUS(0x40d): 0x0020000000000000 invalid

IA32_MC4_STATUS(0x411): 0x0000000000000011 invalid

IA32_MC5_STATUS(0x415): 0xb200001084200e0f valid

MCA error code: 0x0e0f

Model specific error code: 0x8420

Other information: 0x00000010

Threshold-based status: No tracking

Status bits:

Processor context corrupt

Error enabled

Uncorrected error

panic(cpu 1 caller 0x2aaf41): Machine Check at 0x002b1eae, thread:0xb9bc000, trapno:0x12, err:0x0,registers:

CR0: 0x8001003b, CR2: 0x83c7d000, CR3: 0x00100000, CR4: 0x00000660

EAX: 0x00000014, EBX: 0x00000024, ECX: 0x5ba860d3, EDX: 0x00000003

ESP: 0x836338e8, EBP: 0x836338e8, ESI: 0x00000003, EDI: 0x00000000

EFL: 0x00000046, EIP: 0x002b1eae

Backtrace (CPU 1), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)

0x79feafb8 : 0x21b837 (0x5dd7fc 0x79feafec 0x223ce1 0x0)

0x79feb008 : 0x2aaf41 (0x59dfe4 0x59e0d1 0x2b1eae 0xb9bc000)

0x79feb0f8 : 0x2a29f2 (0x1 0x8558bff 0x9a82b60f 0x83000045)

0x836338e8 : 0x2b202c (0x14 0x0 0xbb97f38 0x6647277)

0x83633908 : 0x1275ad7 (0x79fa60a8 0x83633998 0x0 0x1000)

0x83633948 : 0x12760cf (0x79fa60a8 0x673cd1e 0x3 0xffffffff)

0x83633998 : 0x126ebbf (0x79fa60a8 0xffffffff 0x7fffffff 0x83d1d000)

0x83633a78 : 0x1270850 (0xffffffff 0x7fffffff 0x0 0x0)

0x83633b78 : 0x2ad0c5 (0xffffffff 0x7fffffff 0x83633bb8 0x79fb5000)

0x83633b98 : 0x225bba (0x79fb549c 0x66497cb 0x3 0x79fb5488)

0x83633bf8 : 0x22698c (0x1 0xb9bc000 0xb1c2884 0x0)

0x83633c68 : 0x2275b0 (0xb9bc01c 0x2198ae 0x0 0x0)

0x83633cd8 : 0x227654 (0x0 0x0 0x0 0x0)

0x83633cf8 : 0x2199ab (0x0 0x3 0x83633d18 0x10f6661)

0x83633d28 : 0x535562 (0x1 0xf4240 0x7a 0xe0)

0x83633d48 : 0x10f8f72 (0x1 0x7a 0x1 0xbeee5e0)

0x83633db8 : 0x10f7903 (0xbf29000 0x1 0x0 0x53b0ea)

0x83633dd8 : 0x10f611b (0xbf29000 0x1101f40 0x0 0x0)

0x83633e18 : 0x543f60 (0xbf29000 0xb1e5880 0x1 0x506b76)

0x83633e78 : 0x542137 (0xb1e5880 0xbf29000 0xb621740 0x51a1b0)

0x83633f28 : 0x5426e9 (0xb1e5880 0xbb03680 0x0 0x516766)

0x83633f78 : 0x5443d5 (0xb1e5880 0x8 0x83633fac 0x1)

0x83633fc8 : 0x2a179c (0xbea3650 0x0 0x10 0xba9e0a4)

Kernel Extensions in backtrace (with dependencies):

com.apple.driver.AppleHDAController(2.0.5f14)@0x10ef000->0x1103fff

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily(2.6.5)@0x909000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOHDAFamily(2.0.5f14)@0x10e8000

dependency: com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily(2.2.1)@0x920000

com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement(142.6.0)@0x126d000->0x1290fff

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: kernel_task

Mac OS version:

10K549

Kernel version:

Darwin Kernel Version 10.8.0: Tue Jun 7 16:33:36 PDT 2011; root:xnu-1504.15.3~1/RELEASE_I386

System model name: MacPro3,1 (Mac-F42C88C8)

System uptime in nanoseconds: 13311360499

unloaded kexts:

(none)

loaded kexts:

com.apple.driver.AppleMCEDriver 1.1.9 - last loaded 12992241661

com.apple.driver.ACPI_SMC_PlatformPlugin 4.7.0a1

com.apple.driver.AppleLPC 1.5.1

com.apple.driver.CSRHIDTransitionDriver 2.4.5f3

com.apple.iokit.SCSITaskUserClient 2.6.8

com.apple.BootCache 31.1

com.apple.AppleFSCompression.AppleFSCompressionTypeZlib 1.0.0d1

com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIBlockStorage 1.6.4

com.apple.driver.AppleIntel8254XEthernet 2.1.3b1

com.apple.driver.AppleFWOHCI 4.7.3

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBHub 4.2.4

com.apple.driver.AirPortBrcm43xx 423.91.27

com.apple.driver.AirPortBrcm43224 428.42.4

com.apple.driver.AppleAHCIPort 2.1.7

com.apple.driver.AppleIntelPIIXATA 2.5.1

com.apple.driver.AppleEFINVRAM 1.4.0

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBEHCI 4.2.4

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBUHCI 4.2.0

com.apple.driver.AppleACPIButtons 1.3.6

com.apple.driver.AppleRTC 1.3.1

com.apple.driver.AppleHPET 1.5

com.apple.driver.AppleSMBIOS 1.7

com.apple.driver.AppleACPIEC 1.3.6

com.apple.driver.AppleAPIC 1.4

com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagementClient 142.6.0

com.apple.security.sandbox 1

com.apple.security.quarantine 0

com.apple.nke.applicationfirewall 2.1.14

com.apple.driver.AppleIntelCPUPowerManagement 142.6.0

com.apple.driver.AppleSMC 3.1.0d5

com.apple.driver.IOPlatformPluginFamily 4.7.0a1

com.apple.driver.AppleHDAController 2.0.5f14

com.apple.iokit.IOGraphicsFamily 2.2.1

com.apple.iokit.IOHDAFamily 2.0.5f14

com.apple.driver.AppleSMBusPCI 1.0.10d0

com.apple.driver.CSRUSBBluetoothHCIController 2.4.5f3

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBBluetoothHCIController 2.4.5f3

com.apple.iokit.IOBluetoothFamily 2.4.5f3

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBHIDKeyboard 141.5

com.apple.driver.AppleHIDKeyboard 141.5

com.apple.iokit.IOUSBHIDDriver 4.2.0

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBMergeNub 4.2.4

com.apple.driver.AppleUSBComposite 3.9.0

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIMultimediaCommandsDevice 2.6.8

com.apple.iokit.IOBDStorageFamily 1.6

com.apple.iokit.IODVDStorageFamily 1.6

com.apple.iokit.IOCDStorageFamily 1.6.1

com.apple.driver.XsanFilter 402.1

com.apple.iokit.IOATAPIProtocolTransport 2.5.1

com.apple.iokit.IOSCSIArchitectureModelFamily 2.6.8

com.apple.driver.AppleFileSystemDriver 2.0

com.apple.iokit.IOFireWireFamily 4.2.6

com.apple.iokit.IOUSBUserClient 4.2.4

com.apple.iokit.IO80211Family 320.1

com.apple.iokit.IONetworkingFamily 1.10

com.apple.iokit.IOAHCIFamily 2.0.6

com.apple.iokit.IOATAFamily 2.5.1

com.apple.iokit.IOUSBFamily 4.2.4

com.apple.driver.AppleEFIRuntime 1.4.0

com.apple.iokit.IOHIDFamily 1.6.6

com.apple.iokit.IOSMBusFamily 1.1

com.apple.kext.AppleMatch 1.0.0d1

com.apple.security.TMSafetyNet 6

com.apple.driver.DiskImages 289.1

com.apple.iokit.IOStorageFamily 1.6.3

com.apple.driver.AppleACPIPlatform 1.3.6

com.apple.iokit.IOPCIFamily 2.6.5

com.apple.iokit.IOACPIFamily 1.3.0

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 18, 2014 7:37 PM in response to DBLewis

...and, if it comes down to it, can I just reload OSX on my new boot drive? I'm just relying on the clone currently to run my system.

Feb 18, 2014 7:49 PM in response to DBLewis

kernel panic,

machine check,

uncorrected error

correlates very strongly with RAM memory errors in a Mac Pro with Xeon processor.

Error free for two days, and now you have run into a DIFFERENT problem.

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 24, 2014 12:26 PM in response to Grant Bennet-Alder

Is there a way to isolate which RAM chip it is? Any suggestions as to how to proceed?

Feb 24, 2014 12:47 PM in response to DBLewis

ECC Hardware is checking every read from memory. Single-bit errors are corrected on the fly. Later, the software notes that a correctable error has been seen, and adds it to some counters that can be read out (but not updated "live") in a report like this one:

So go about your business, use your Mac. from time-to-time invoke this report again:

About this Mac > (more info ) > report > Memory

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 26, 2014 11:11 AM in response to DBLewis

Memory looks OK, but Dignostics show that the machine failed to start due to memory issues. I have two slots filled and both were shown as failed in the start-up diagnostic list.. (My Diagnostics record went to "Passed" so I can't show the "failed on memory" list.) So if memory is OK,but the machine is failing to start correctly due to memory, what could be the problem?

Symptoms are that the machine has to restart about five times before its stable. The Screen freezes, or it shuts off and restarts.

The hatter

Level 9

60,990 points

Feb 26, 2014 11:50 AM in response to DBLewis

FBDIMMs are notorious for failure, and cheap today, as in $25 2 x 2GB

FBDIMM reports of 2GB showing as 1GB have been common in the past years (or 1GB showing half) at times also. In otherwords, they failed.

Check Amazon for 667MHz DDR2, they work fine, you want if possible to use all 8 DIMM slots and 16GB would cost $75 to add to what you have.

Feb 26, 2014 3:11 PM in response to DBLewis

The error correction logic is turned on early in the Power-ON Self Test. Any module that shows an error (even a correctable error) in that first few seconds of testing is marked "Empty" and will not be used.

Re-testing at the next Startup may show that same module has not shown an error in the first few seconds of testing, and it may then "re-appear".

The ones that occasionally show an error and are marked absent are the ones that need to be replaced. Modules that show as half their correct size have also failed. Otherwise you face having your work interrupted with an uncorrectable double-bit error and the resulting kernel panic, machine check, uncorrectable error.

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 26, 2014 4:33 PM in response to DBLewis

Oh, I see now. The slots are full but showing empty. I have 800MHz chips in there now, as you know. I assume form your post that the 667MHz chips are compatible with the 800MHz ones. So, off to Amazon...and there are different configs for the same basic 667Mhz. Anything to stay away from? (Some suppliers are much cheaper than others.) Thanks again.

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 26, 2014 4:51 PM in response to DBLewis

Sheesh. OK, what is the complete RAM configuration type for my 2008 Mac Pro, 2 x 2.8 Quad Core Intel Xeon? I've been searching the forums for that specific information and coming up short: I need type, pin qty, etc. Lots of discussion about how much you need, and where to stick it.

DBLewis Author

Level 1

14 points

Feb 27, 2014 11:58 AM in response to DBLewis

As a test I switched the RAM chips from one bay to the other and now they all show good. Any comments?

Feb 27, 2014 1:11 PM in response to DBLewis

That will work for a while, then it will kernel panic again. The ones that showed bad before will show bad again.

In the meantime, it would be prudent to oreder some replacements.

Q: How to backup, reformat and restore boot drive?