31/12/03 chris : >If you have or can borrow Disk Warrior, I would try that. The goal at >this point should be to get it up long enough to get off the files that >you can't live without.
Disk Warrior is my favorite maintenance tool too and I used it to repair several volumes that had disappeared, but before doing that I first backup as much data as possible from the bad *unmodified* drive using Data Rescue (usually all data, or more than that). In most occasions it turns out to be a waste of time (a lot of time) because DiskWarrior later repairs the drive, but in the few cases where it didn't, it was safer to have copied the data from the bad drive before because repair utilities can make the directory structure worse, write it over data, etc. (DiskWarrior less so, but still it would cause damage if there really was a hardware problem, like heads crashing or arm mechanism about to fail definitively). Depending on the size and speed of the drive, Data Rescue can take a very long time to analyse and then copy the data, but if all you really need is the Emailer DB, you could choose to backup only that (to another disk, or a shared drive on the network), and then use DiskWarrior. I wouldn't worry too much at the present state: I've seen very few crashed hard drives and a LOT of non-mounting ones, and I heard all sorts of noises coming from good disks. My experience led me to believe that harware HD failures are very rare, sometimes tech support will replace your drive because it's easier and more profitable than repairing it if they're the ones selling the replacement drive, but almost all HD problems I fixed were data corruption caused by program errors, unreliable transfers, bad cabling, weak connection, sometimes inappropriate driver. I've managed hundreds of disk problems, of which only a handful were hardware problems: 1 crashed disk, 1 probably overheated with a fused component on its controller board, 2 that had become unreliable, 2 that didn't like low atmospheric pressure (one that needed help unparking heads under some weather conditions and another that worked at see level but not in the mountain), one that just needed its connector reseated, a few that required changing some cabling. And a few with bad sectors, but disks and drivers tend to handle those themselves now so I didn't notice any since the floppy and SyQuest days. I would fear grinding noises more than clicks, yet I have a perfectly working disk that sometimes makes terrifying grinding noises when the mac wakes up. The problem with noises is that I have yet to find a bad disk making a noise I haven't heard form a good disk before. What usually keeps me from worrying too much is that most drives I see are partitionned. Of course potential problems are infinite and include cases where hardware problems are limited to some areas of the disk and allow other partitions to work, but in most cases I see a partition missing from an otherwise working disk and think "well, at least it's not a mechanical failure". ---- VRic ___________________________________________________________________________ To unsubscribe send a mail message with a SUBJECT line of "unsubscribe" to <[EMAIL PROTECTED]> or <[EMAIL PROTECTED]>
