If you have techtool deluxe, you can do the hardware checks accessibly.
On Dec 24, 2008, at 2:25 PM, Tim Kilburn wrote:
Hi Scott,
You said: An update for anybody following this thread...
I wanted to install Leopard on to an external drive, just so I've got
something to boot up over Christmas... geek factor is firmly set to on
here! Thought I'd do that before I got into toying with Terminal and
disk warrior and suchlike. Amazingly, the setup assistant sees my old
macintosh HD volume and from the filesizes everything looks fine.
It's transfering over just over 100 GB as I write, which may take a
while yes, but it looks like this might save my bacon. If this does
work, it leads me to think that it's most likely to be something along
the lines of volume headers being corrupted or other such stuff that I
know nada about like Tim suggested rather than mechanical failure.
Is that a sensible assumption? Again assuming this works, I was
planning
to go for a format of the internal drive and a reinstall
TK: Yes this process will work to save data. You can then perform a
clean install to the Macintosh HD and all header info will be replaced
and things will work as they should. The difference with this method
is that you'll need to reinstall any software that you had installed
after the fact and re-apply all Software Updates. A fair bit of work
but it does the job and is less expensive than purchasing disk
Warrior. Disk Warrior is quicker and reliable but isn't free.
Scott: , but is there
any checks I can do on top of the usual disk utility stuff to get a
better idea of whether my hd is on its way out?
TK: You can use Apple Hardware Test if you'd like. Place your
Leopard Install DVD in the drive and press the "d" key as the startup
chime rings. This will give a number of hardware test options
including RAM and HD but this isn't accessible either so sighted
assistance will be necessary.
Later...
Tim Kilburn
& Carter the Canine
Fort McMurray, AB Canada
