waiting for local disks

[dang47]

my g4 has been freezing at start up, it freezes at "waiting for local disks"......i have to restart sevral times before it will totaly boot up but today it will not reboot at all.... any ideas? it all started when i used tech tool pro and it kept freezing on scan disk...dont know wich disk it was freezing on becouse they were all being scaned....could my boot drive or one of the drives be taking a crap?

g4 os 10.8

[midiw]

Originally posted by dang47:
my g4 has been freezing at start up, it freezes at "waiting for local disks"......i have to restart sevral times before it will totaly boot up but today it will not reboot at all.... any ideas? it all started when i used tech tool pro and it kept freezing on scan disk...dont know wich disk it was freezing on becouse they were all being scaned....could my boot drive or one of the drives be taking a crap?

g4 os 10.8

It may not be your boot drive.

When you reboot or startup hold down the option key and when all the drives that are system blessed show up select TTPro's eDRIVE.

Then when eDRIVE boots in use it to analyse not only your boot drive but also verify/repair directory ( which has nothing to do with "repair permissions" which is handled by Apple'sDiskUtility and a plethora of other shareware/freeware system doctors.

My reading of your boot/log in indicates that the directory needs repair.

If you did not install the eDRIVE then reboot from TTPro's CD by holding down the C key and then use the TTPro's doctor to check/repair the directory and check on the hard drive.

[dang47]

thanks.... i do have edrive but its not leting me get to it by pressing the option key and i cant open the drawer to put in TTPros cd

[dang47]

just got the cd drawer open with guitar string...booting up withTTpro cd now

[dang47]

its not leting me boot from cd....just keeps going thru the same cycle and freezing when it gets to waiting for local disks...and yes im pressing c key

[midiw]

Your Mac was not signing into the CD. At some point of time away back whenever you may have unintentionally set your startup disk to be your MAC which effectly locks it to start up with that system.

So lets go do this:

When you insert your TTPro 404 CD in the CD tray wait for it to mount onto the desk top however if you do not have a desk top because you can't log in then leave that CD in and turn the power OFF to your Mac. Hopefully in the power down it will not spit the CD out.

Wait at least 5 minutes.

Then power back on BUT restart holding down key C.

That should get your MAC to boot into the CD. Be calm/patient because it takes about 5 long songs for any MAC to sign into the TTPro CD.

I am assuming that sometime ago you did confirm that the TTPro CD will boot the system?

I'll check back here to see if you get into TTPro and fix your Mac's directory.

[dang47]

no.... just freezes at the spinning thing below the gray apple screen

[dang47]

got it to open with option key to pick edrive but it wont let me pick any of the drives and then freezes also

[dang47]

i need to stop for the day before i destroy somthing

[midiw]

If you want to give this another try today:

Just in case,

if you have any ( but any ) firewire/usb gear attached disconnect them all.

Just plug your usb mousey into the usb port on your mac where it should always be plugged in. For greater certainty here a mouse should never be plugged into a usb hub.

Then try a start up from the installer disk for which ever CAT you have there.

Once you get the "installer" disk up use the disk utility on the installer disk to verify/repair all your drives and all do the repair permissions on all your drives. However, if any one of your other drives has TIGER then only use the TIGER installer disk to repair disk permisions on a TIGER system. There are some huge differences in directory structures in the TIGER system which means running a PANTHER disk repair permissions on a TIGER system can create a wonkey sick old TIGER.

TTPro was updated to version 404 just for that reason. Although TTPRo 404 is safe to use on all three CATS.

Excuse me if you know all this stuff.

<small>[ July 25, 2005, 11:51 AM: Message edited by: midiw ]</small>

[dang47]

bad B-tree node on one of the drives not the boot.... just removed bad drive and now im in edrive woooo!!!......man what im going to do with the bad drive??? and of course i didnt back up.... i have 100 gigs of stuff in it!!! hope that now i can use techtools, ill be able to read it and repair it after i run other drives thru a workout and cleaning with tools.

thanks so much for you help midiw

[midiw]

Originally posted by dang47:
bad B-tree node on one of the drives not the boot.... just removed bad drive and now im in edrive woooo!!!......man what im going to do with the bad drive??? and of course i didnt back up.... i have 100 gigs of stuff in it!!! hope that now i can use techtools, ill be able to read it and repair it after i run other drives thru a workout and cleaning with tools.

thanks so much for you help midiw

So in a few words or less how did you figure out that and how did you sign into one or other of your drives?

There is a very very good programme called, guess what, Data Rescue that will do that for you. I've never ran it on a "bad"/"dead" drive although I guess the drives I ran it on were badly mangled.

I'll get the url in just a minute. ( Right now I feel like my QuickSilver is going to have a heart attack so I'm just going to POST this.)

<small>[ July 26, 2005, 05:47 AM: Message edited by: midiw ]</small>

[midiw]

http://www.prosofteng.com/products/data_rescue.php

I have used this programme and it works for me.

Worth the few bucks it costs.

[dang47]

i ran osx utility like you suggested.. i would have tried that first but since TTpro didnt open from cd i didnt think the osx utility would open from cd.....ran repair disk on all drives, got to the bad disk and it couldnt repair and gave reson why, bad B-tree node..so i wrote down the disk number or what i thought was the number st3 160023a... i have 4 segates in the g4, opened it up and the most excessable drive had that codes so i left it mounted and pulled the power and ribbon cables and restarted and it booted...but i got lucky because all the seegates have this code.. i just happend to yank the right one...... so when i was booting up when the bad drive was plugged the system would freeze when it got to that drive because its so badly damaged???? how will i be able to retreave my stuff if i cant fire the system up with the bad drive connected???

[midiw]

Thank you for detailed explanation because it will help me or someone reading these posts.

how will i be able to retreave my stuff if i cant fire the system up with the bad drive connected???

Now that could be a pain in the studio!

If you had a "legacy" mac with external scsi then you could put that "bad" boy in a case and then scsi it to the "legacy" mac and using OS 9 disk utility tools such my favorite DiskWarrior. DiskWarrior works both in X and 9.

I am not very good putting back together what I can so easily take apart. I use a PC/MAC repair shop and my mac tech guy puts my machine in order. It's so simple watch him work inside my Macs.

I saw a usb to scsi adapter in his shop but for me the cost of that unit seemed a waste of monies. I've got 4 legacy macs plus my QuickSilver G4. It's a Mac museum in this studio.

Once again sure would like to hear/read what happens with that bad drive.