Stupid computers…
Posted by Nick.
So, does anyone around the department have an OS X boot/installation CD? Looks like the best way to diagnose my computer here is to boot from CD and see if I can read the drive. I tried booting from my supposedly bootable backup, but that doesn’t seem to work. Turns out a lot of people have had similar problems, but there is a piece of software that will make nicely bootable backups.
March 14th, 2007 at 10:39 am Using
So what’s the word on the disk recovery? Sounded like the disk utility fix seemed to work? I have since tried booting from my silverkeeper “bootable copy” backup with mixed success. Nathaniel, any thoughts?
March 14th, 2007 at 1:56 pm Using
Yes, the disk utility fix seemed to work. I repaired the disk that way, and cleaned some things out so there is space on the disk now. It has still been acting a bit slow, and odd at times. HD still makes some weird noises. Figure I might buy a new disk for it anyway, and throw that in there. See if I can limp this computer along for a while longer.
The external HD however is not behaving as hoped. The disk does not show up as an option for boot device. Not sure what the problem is. The SuperDuper! instructions say to use certain kinds of disks because they have always worked for them, while others have not given the same success. So … maybe I will be buying a new internal and external drive soon ….
March 14th, 2007 at 2:48 pm Using
is the external a firewire or a usb connection? you can only boot from a firewire-connected external on OS X.
March 14th, 2007 at 4:11 pm Using
Sorry I didn’t take a look at this earlier.
First of all, linux/unix/bsd machines don’t do well when you fill up the hard drive. They depend a lot on having plenty of free space to use for swap and if they don’t get it. Well, bad things can happen. It’s a big enough deal that linux automatically reserves 5% of a drive for root use when you format it unless you explicitly tell it not to.
Second, if the hard drive was full, you definitely would notice the computer slowing down as it had to seek around a lot on the drive to find what it wants and there would be some chattering noises from the HD too. If you hear anything other than that, it’s definitely a warning sign.
About the external drive. Whether you can boot from it is going to depend more on how the drive is formated than anything else. You probably want to erase the drive from your computer to make sure that the partition map is set up in the Apple way. (This, of course, is different from the linux way, the windows way, and strangely enough, the new intel Apple way.) Then make sure the external drive is formated as hfs+ with journaling. I’m pretty sure your powerbook should be able to boot from usb or firewire, although firewire is twice as fast due to poor error handling in usb.
Since you’re always running short on space, slapping a new drive into the computer is probably the best solution. I got a little Western Digital external 120 GB drive for like $90 a few weeks ago. It looks like you can get a 160 GB internal for around $120 on newegg. You can get big-ass desktop hard drives for cheap too. Lacie has usb-only 320 gig drives for $150.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:19 pm Using
hmm, when my drive died last spring, i ran into all sorts of “powerbooks won’t boot from a usb drive” on the internet (I should’ve been more specific in my first comment, it’s the powerbooks - for certain, the powerpc g4 powerbooks - not os x in general). so i googled again and came across this which says that someone was indeed successful with a superduper! external drive. color me surprised. however, Apple doesn’t support the behavior.
March 14th, 2007 at 5:40 pm Using
When your powerbook was new, Holly, the advice of “don’t boot up from a USB drive” was pretty much in force. That Apple info thing was dated in 2001. I know that my titanium powerbook couldn’t boot from usb. By the time Nick’s 17″ powerbook came out, I’m pretty sure that usb booting was supported.
If you have the choice though, a firewire drive is a much better thing. The theoretical bandwidth is lower for standard firewire (400 vs 480 for usb2), but in practice, you end up with twice the speed.
March 15th, 2007 at 11:09 am Using
So I tried the SuperDuper! USB trick and the program wiped the disk, reformatted and supposedly made it bootable but when chosing boot devices it still doesn’t come up. The SuperDuper! website says that they know certain drives definitely work, while others have trouble but it doesn’t make sense to me exactly why that would be the case. I’m not familiar with the ins and outs of how external drives are accessed and handled as opposed to internal etc.
Good to know about the drive space thing. I tend to keep it pretty full … not even really sure what takes so much space but something seems to fill it up. I have a lot of music but not an obscene ammount … and I have moved most big files (movies, data from work, etc) to externals. Who ever thought 80 GB would seem like a small drive one day? A solid 300 gig drive would definitely service all my drive needs but they don’t yet make one for G4s. Is 200 the best they have so far? Damn computers need to be less expensive… I think I’ll be waiting til the next MBP line comes out to buy a new one. Maybe they’ll come down a little in price as seems to be the trend with each new release…
March 15th, 2007 at 1:09 pm Using
all i know for sure is that last spring, my g4 didn’t recognize my old hard drive as a bootable disk when i had it in Nathaniel’s usb external case. but when i put the old drive back into the computer, it booted. both incidences were obviously AFTER the drive had decided to try working again.