Greetings, Jim, Bruce and G-Books users: Thanks for the very quick replies, both of which are incredibly helpful. As a prequel to my issues with failing hard drives, I need to continue using the Aluminum PowerBook G4 as opposed to the TiBook (original AirPort won't do for most WiFi) or MacBook, as I have too many Jenkins Typography customers who rely on my ability to open their old résumé files dating back to 1992 (really! they'll call at a moment's notice and say, "You did a résumé for me a few years ago--can you pull it up?"), which go way back to WordPerfect Corporation/Corel WordPerfect, which do NOT play well/open at all with any version of Microsoft Word (other programs I still access under OS 9 for my business are Lotus 1-2-3, FileMaker, and PageMaker). Until I cross the bridge to run something like SheepShaver on a modern Mac, the Aluminum PowerBook is as "modern" as I can get for awhile.
This prequel aside, I've only bought one brand new 120GB HD--a Seagate--for my PB, and it was the first drive to suffer badly and rather quickly, being slow to boot while OS 10.4.11 re-allocated lots of bad sectors. I didn't understand what was happening until I downloaded and used (and gladly paid shareware fee for) SMART Utility. Jim's suggestion of SMARTReporter is helpful, as I have 2.3.9 (last version for OS X 10.3.x and 10.4.x) running so at least I don't have to hear "NOBODY expects the Drive Failure Inquisition!" ;-) With my first Seagate HD failure, I downloaded (and paid shareware fee for) Carbon Copy Cloner, which keeps all my data backed up. What led me to my original post is that I'm backing up to the "FAILING" drives, which I used to use as startup drives in my PowerBook. I just placed those drives in external cases, Disk Utility checks them out as okay, and I've felt like my data was safe. In fact, as these drives are FireWire compatible, I've BOOTED my PowerBook from them (not regularly, but to make sure I can still boot if my primary drive dies). I was kind of hoping there was some kind of "magic" program such as the ones I grew up with in OS 8 and 9, such as DiskWarrior or TechTool Pro, that could re-allocate those bad sectors of those old drives to never being used again. But the answer is obviously that disk failure is disk failure, period, and to throw the bad drive away. Example: the first drive that failed so badly? The Seagate 120GB? As an external, it finally died two weeks ago, so to truly destroy the data and bid adieu to it, I drilled a hole in the damn thing and threw it away. It felt quite good to do that! Thanks again!! On Thursday, August 21, 2014 7:36:33 PM UTC-4, Jim Scott wrote: > > > On Aug 21, 2014, at 3:48 PM, Bruce Johnson <[email protected] > <javascript:>> wrote: > > > > > On Aug 21, 2014, at 11:08 AM, jentypo <[email protected] <javascript:>> > wrote: > > > >> Greetings, G-Book members: > >> > >> I have a toughie that's taking me time to figure out. I use an Aluminum > PowerBook G4--have for several years, and I work it very hard. I've had > internal hard drives wear out due to bad sectors being re-assigned, and I > can verify that the drive is "FAILING" using the SMART Utility. However, is > there any way to verify the SMART status of a drive without taking apart > the PowerBook, literally installing the drive and booting from that > computer? That seems to be the only way to make an "UNSUPPORTED" check. > > > > > > The issue is that SMART status reporting is managed at the lower SATA or > IDE hardware interface level, and connecting via external means (such as > firewire or USB) is not supported under OS X. > > > > There are open source drivers that will allows things like smartmontools > <http://www.smartmontools.org/> to access some (not all) external > interfaces, <https://github.com/kasbert/OS-X-SAT-SMART-Driver> , getting > all this running on a G4 powerbook would require a fair bit of work, I > think. > > > > Here, for example, is the process to get smartmontools set up under os x > 10.9: <http://mulita.com/blog/?p=7200> > > > > In theory, if you have the Developer tools installed, you may be able to > get this installed under 10.5 or 10.4, at which point you would be able to > get the info you want. You may have to back down to older versions or work > through a lot of changes in the makefile and figuring out how to back port > stuff to older libraries. > > > > In general though, the only real solution for failing hard drives is > surprise, and a fanatical devotion to backing up your data. > > > > The TWO real solutions are surprise, a fanatical devotion to backing up > your data and regularly testing your backups. > > > > The THREE real solutions are ...:-) > > > > (No one expect the Drive Failure Inquisition!) > > > > What Bruce said, plus these thoughts: > > -- The free utility SmartReporter is something I install on every Mac that > passes through my hands. Many times, I've had people call and say the > little green icon in the menubar turned yellow or red. I tell them their > drive is failing and to backup their data immediately and get a new hard > drive. Sometimes the drives fail almost immediately, sometimes they linger > for a while. But SMARTReporter has been right every time in alerting to an > impending drive failure. > > -- I find the shareware or donationware SMART Utility somewhat > unnecessarily alarming. It often will tell me a drive is failing when Drive > Genius 3 says the drive is perfectly fine after I run a scan and integrity > series of read/write tests. At the same time, SMARTReporter stays green and > says the drive is fine. In short, SMART Utility is only one of the tools I > use, and it is not the most trusted tool at that. Grammatical errors in a > supposedly precision monitoring tool application always unsettle me. On the > other hand, SMART Utility does tell me how many hours a drive has run, > which is about its only feature I value and trust. > > -- It's not too difficult to open up a PowerBook G4, compared to, say, an > iBook in order to access the hard drive. So since you seem to go through > drives rather quickly, might I suggest you get a pile of drives, open up > the PowerBook and test them one by one to eliminate the losers and > hopefully identify the losers. Of course, that means installing or trying > to install an OS on each drive so you can install SMART Utility and run it. > But what a bother! That's why I use Newer Technology's universal USB 2.0 > drive adapter to connect an ATA/IDE drive to a newer Mac with USB 2.0 ports > so I can run Drive Genius 3 on a bunch of drives to find the bad boys > before doing a caesarean on a G3 or G4 laptop. Never mind the SMART > attributes, if Drive Genius 3 says a drive has bad sectors or fails > read/write tests, that drive goes in the e-waste bin. > > -- With new ATA/IDE hard drives increasingly difficult to acquire, you > would be well advised to get a stack of known-good used ones set aside, if > you plan to continue using that PowerBook. In addition, if you're not > backing up multiple copies of your important data on separate devices, do > it. Unless you like surprises. :^) > > Jim Scott > Eureka, CA > > -- -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Books, a group for those using G3 iBooks and PowerBooks (we run a separate list for G4 'Books). The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-books.html and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to [email protected] To leave this group, send email to [email protected] For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g-books Support for older Macs: http://lowendmac.com/services/ --- You received this message because you are subscribed to the Google Groups "G-Books" group. To unsubscribe from this group and stop receiving emails from it, send an email to [email protected]. For more options, visit https://groups.google.com/d/optout.
