Hard drive crash! Help!!

[frankymax]

Well I just turned on my iMac G5 which is less than 9 months old yesterday and boom... the dreaded "?" mac icon. After running tests and talking to Applecare it looks like my internal 250 gig drive is toast, for no apparent reason other than God hates me!! the good news is I should get a free new drive as it has a 1 year warranty. But I'm hoping you Mac OSX experts can help me with making my reinstall of system and software somewhat easier- questions follow- thanks for any help & advise in advance:

1- So the install disks that came with this iMac are OS 10.3.5, and over the months I installed up to OS 10.3.8. I also had burned a DVD backup a few weeks ago by just dragging into Toast my Applications folder, Library , Users, and System folders. Should I install from the 10.3.5 install disks and then do a software update to get up to system 10.3.8 or can I just drag the folders I just mentioned onto the newly formatted 10.3.5 drive, deleting the old folders? ( I think I know the answer to this, but I'm hoping someone has tried dragging system and user backup folders and will tell me its no problem!)

2- If I do have to load 10.3.5 and then I do software update to get to 10.3.9, could I drag over my Users and Applications folders from the DVD backup or will that be wrong as the DVD backup is in 10.3.8?

3- I have a ton of authorized apps and plugs (see below) so does this mean I have to get new challenge-response codes on all these or is there some possible way to copy over from the DVD backup?

In general if any of you have any advise to the best and fastest way to get this computer back up and running I'd be very grateful. I've learned my lesson- I'm going to get Carbon Copy Cloner after this is all set up and make a clone to my external firewire drive for future mishaps.

Thank you- Frank

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Hi Frank! Well, we never connected on that coffee but there is a data recovery place right here in Burbank. It is at the corner of Orange Grove and Front St. (right at the 5 FWY entrance). Perhaps they can recover your data if that is useful to you.

I don't think you can just drag your system folders back into the new drive, but individual files MIGHT be OK. That is sometimes where people get into DEEP trouble with the OS. It likes to find things where IT put them. I suspect that means both in the correct directory and at the exact location on the HD (but I am speculating on the last part). There are also invisible files the OS writes and if they cannot be found... CRASH!

It might also be that 250GB is beyond the ability of the OS. I seem to remember a limit of 120GB per drive, but that may have been lifted (all my drives are 80GB or less). I'm surprised you aren't running Tiger either. But perhaps there are compatibility problems. You are runnning an awful lot of plug ins and such.

If you haven't already done so, it might also be worth trying a commercial data recovery program (run from a CD boot disc of course). It's a wild shot, but it might save some data.

Unless you recover the data from your downed HD, you probably do have to contact all the shareware vendors for passwords, etc. But again, a recovery company might be able to AT LEAST get some of that back for you, and AT MOST get all your data back. In my case, all those codes are usually in emails, so if my emails are readable in any form, I can recover the codes.

I've only seen that type of crash on one other Mac and it was where the guy (a video editor) had a HD that was too big for the OS. He didn't bother to try and recover the data, but we WERE able to boot from a CD (cannot remember which one) and copy files to a new disk. Not everything was saved, but some stuff was recoverable.

BTW, I saw your CD article in the Musician's Union paper last month. That's great! Congrats!!!

GIve me a holler or drop an email if I can help in any way. I'm still over by the Media Center.

Mike Mortilla

<small>[ June 08, 2005, 08:18 AM: Message edited by: MIDI Life Crisis ]</small>

[frankymax]

Hi Mike- nice to hear from you, and thanks for the kind words- yeah, I don't think the 250 gig drive is a problem or Apple wouldn't sell them with the iMac- I also had it partitioned into 3 for apps, files and sounds, where I keep @120gigs of sounds for Mach5. I did backup all my files on DVD as I stated so I didn't bother with the data recovery of the HD as I do have all my files- my questions are pertaining to an easier way to reinstall system & apps & user prefs that I already had set up and saved to the DVD backup. Thanks for your thoughts- ... so has anyone out there dragged a back-up Users folder onto a newly formatted system!?

[inukshuk]

I haven't done it, but as you mentioned earlier, get Carbon Copy Cloner or Super Duper ASAP.
Have you tried rebooting from TechTool Pro?
Good luck

[Tim]

Originally posted by frankymax:
so has anyone out there dragged a back-up Users folder onto a newly formatted system!?

Only parts, not the whole folder.

I would think that if your backed up user folder is from OS 10.3.8, the system should be at that version before dragging that folder in. You might still need to re-authorize some stuff after doing this (I've had to re-authorize after restoring with a system drive clone. That's just the way some of the copy protection works.).

I think that you should have an external FW drive for audio files (DP project folders), and even a second one for streaming samples. If running digital audio and streaming samples on the same drive, it's probably best not to have them on seperate partitions, as that would have the head jumping around more than necessary. Having a partition just for cloning the system drive to could also be handy.

<small>[ June 08, 2005, 12:00 PM: Message edited by: Tim ]</small>

[frankymax]

posted by inukshuk: Have you tried rebooting from TechTool Pro?

I brought the computer to an Apple authorized repair shop and they say the drive is shot- I believe they tried all the usual programs: Disk Warrior, Tech Tool Pro, Drive 10 but they said it was inoperable! So, it sounds like I need to re-install from my 10.3.5 disks, then upgrade to 10.3.8 and then load single items from the Users folder, not the whole thing. Does this sound right?
Do you think I could drag the entire Preferences folder that I have backed up into the new system?

[Labonza]

Originally posted by frankymax:

I brought the computer to an Apple authorized repair shop and they say the drive is shot-

Get a 2nd opinion on that. It may be possible to recover a significant amount of your data,specially since you have your HD in 3 partitions.

Find someone in your area that has Mac-specifc experience doing this.And, they dont use things like Tech Tool, there are specialized applications for drive recovery.

i've just found this out the hard way myself.

A warning to all: Hard Drives are cheap these days,but THEY SURE DONT MAKE THEM LIKE THEY USED TO!

Back Up Or Die .

[Don T]

Hello:
I have used the techtool stuff and had good luck with copying the OSX 10.3.5 sys drive to another HD.
Linux has a forensic app (I forget the name)that the feds use. It's supposed to be at 99.99% recovery rate.
Heat has been the big problem with the mac PB and i models

<small>[ June 08, 2005, 06:30 PM: Message edited by: Don T ]</small>

[inukshuk]

frankymax

Here is another option. I know you are still on warranty, But now drives are so inexpensive, why not have them put in a WD Caviar 3 year warrant or a WD Raptor 5 year warranty. That's what I did and mine are quite and doing well.
Just a thought.

[dweiss]

You absolutely can not drag systems around in OSX like you did in OS9. There are lots of invisible files in OSX which won't go along for the ride. You can copy it back with Carbon Copy Cloner and similar utilities but the question arises, how did you back up the system to begin with? If you simply dragged it to the DVD forget it, it's toast. You can drag items from your users folder where there are often lots of important items.

[frankymax]

Dan- that's what I was afraid of hearing, even though deep down I knew I wasn't backing up correctly. Yep, I just used Toast to copy the Apps, System, Library and Users folders to a DVD- so do you think I can possibly copy back files like the plug-ins folder, the preferences, things like that back to a newly formatted sytem? is there any stuff in particular that won't copy back in?

[MIDI Life Crisis]

Originally posted by frankymax:
Dan- that's what I was afraid of hearing, even though deep down I knew I wasn't backing up correctly.

That's what I said in my post this morning Frank...

"There are also invisible files the OS writes and if they cannot be found... CRASH!"

<small>[ June 08, 2005, 08:52 PM: Message edited by: MIDI Life Crisis ]</small>