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My Dual 2.7 G5 Hard Drive has apparently crashed. I have no idea what happened or how. I was out of town for 10 days. The computer was left on. My wife used it on occasion to check email on Safari-Outlook. When I returned I woke it up and tried to open another window in Safari, but it just gave me the spinning beachball for 10 minutes. I force quit with the on/off button. Couldn't use FORCE Quit from the finder.

I then tried to restart and all I got was the light gray apple logo. System wouldn't load. I tried to do Disk Warrior but it couldn't do it due to errors. I put in the Apple G5 install disk and opened disk utility. Couldn't repair permissions. It just got to a certain point and got hung up. It said something like 'taking a lot of time due to disk damage.' So I quit that after an out an hour and tried to repair the disk. I didn't copy what t said but after three tries it always said something to the effect that it can't repair the disk due to damage and errors.

I am booted in 10.3.9 from a fw drive and am trying to copy as many important files as possible. The drive is partition into 4 sections. 1. system/applications, 2. Audio 1, 3. Audio 2, and 4, Extra system for disasters like this one. The trouble is all the partitions are effected. Some things take an extraordinary amount of time to copy.

So . . . my plan thus far is to call Apple Support. Back up as much as I can. Erase the drive. Reinstall everything. Not lose a lot of time. Or . . get Tech Tool Pro (or something else; an idea from some other brilliant person). Or Apple Support actually has a solution.

Help. Anyone know what I can do here?

YIKES!

What a pain in the studio you've got there.

If DISKWARRIOR ( a real war horse for restoring directories ) stalls then TechToolPro will not do it either. So don't waste your money on TTPro now but buy it for the future for its protection features and a myriad of other services it offers.

Have you tried doing a disk image using Apple'sDiskUtility from the INSTALL CD/DVD?

You don't say but was that HD running TIGER or PANTHER?

I am still puzzled as to why DiskWarrior failed you:

If it was TIGER did you have DISKWARRIOR version 303? and also very important did you run DiskWarrior version 303 from a CD?

There's a few other thoughts I have however I would like your response to the above noted.

Yikes is right.

I'm sorry. This was running Tiger 10.4.12. I was using the new Tiger version of DW. I ran it from the CD.

The latest info from Apple is that if DW can't fix it nothing can. So in their estimation the disk is hosed. I can get a replacement for it, but that entails me taking my G5 to the Apple Store so a Mac Genius can tell me what I already know.

This might be somewhat simplistic of me to ask, but have you tried to boot in safe mode? (holding the shift key - same as Extensions off in OS 9).

Originally posted by Henry Robinett:
Yikes is right.

I'm sorry. This was running Tiger 10.4.12. I was using the new Tiger version of DW. I ran it from the CD.

The latest info from Apple is that if DW can't fix it nothing can. So in their estimation the disk is hosed. I can get a replacement for it, but that entails me taking my G5 to the Apple Store so a Mac Genius can tell me what I already know.

I've given up on using Apple for servicing "their" products.

I have found them to be beyond expensive and beyond the realm of being helpfull.

However in your case you have a warrenty claim that they should full fill by replacing the G5.

It seems that your G5 has a internall overheating problem because if the computer was sitting in idle gear why would a drive get hosed.

It is, accoring to my mac tech geek ( non apple centre ) Apple has not addressed the overheating problem and continues to install "cheap" internall fans. So perhaps your G5 internall fan simply failed.

I would ask Apple to not only replace the hard drive but also to replace the fans with a high quality fan. They won't like hearing that but I would strongly suggest they replace it and perhaps split the cost difference. Believe me the cost difference is extremely small. You can buy them for under $25. What's the point of having a Mac if it's not reliable.

I don't know if this can be done in your G5 but in my G4 I installed a second fan in the PCI slot. This fan exhausts the heat. Actually it's an idea that the PC use in high end gaming machines.

Anywhoo, if there is valuable data on that drive can you make a disk image of that drive and park that image on an external firewire drive?

Originally posted by midiw:
[It seems that your G5 has a internall overheating problem because if the computer was sitting in idle gear why would a drive get hosed.

It is, accoring to my mac tech geek ( non apple centre ) Apple has not addressed the overheating problem and continues to install "cheap" internall fans. So perhaps your G5 internall fan simply failed.

I think the new G5s are liquid cooled, aren't they?

Anywhoo, if there is valuable data on that drive can you make a disk image of that drive and park that image on an external firewire drive?

I don't know. I kind of doubt it, but given time I'll try. I've tried to repair permissions, repair the disk with DU and copy files. The first two failed and the later just took forever. So I have a feeling doing a disk image or carbon copy cloning will take a day and a half and then end in incomplete operation or errors.

Apple is sending me a new drive. Should arrive tomorrow. I even zero formatted an old ata drive and tried to install it before I realized it had to be SATA. Now I'd rather have two seperate drives. One dedicated to system/apps and the other everything else. Rather than the way I have it now: partitioned 4 ways. But I'm out of the money presently.

I just hope I won't have re-authorization nightmares.

I did not try booting in safe mode. When I put it back together I'll try this. Thanks for the reminder.