When my original 10-gig hard drive got too full to be of good use, I bought an internal Seagate Barracuda 80-gig HD and a Sonnet Tempo ATA133 PCI card to attach it to. Installation went without a hitch, and I put Jaguar on the new drive and made it my boot drive, leaving system 9 on the old drive for Classic purposes and to have as bootable in case anything went wrong with the new drive.
Spent two months lovingly installing the apps I wanted and setting system preferences, and had my new drive, christened "Wildcat", purring like a kitten. Tons of RAM, OS10.2.5, Safari with its tabbed browsing and no pop-ups, Apple's Mail with that fabulous junk mail filter, well-organized iPhoto and iTunes. When I replaced the original DVD/CD-ROM with a new internal Toshiba Combo DVD/CD-R/RW, it was like having a completely new computer, never having to boot back into OS9.2 (my old Ricoh SCSI CD burner wasn't supported under the new system). I began to look around for a decently-priced external drive to use for back-ups: even though I knew it wouldn't be bootable with my system, I felt it would be good to have an external drive for archive. Still haven't found what I want for my exhausted budget, and now it's too late. Why oh why didn't I back up my important stuff on CDs when I had the chance?? Everything was so new, I never expected trouble.
On Thursday everything slowed to a crawl, which I attributed to some new software updates I had installed. Figuring I would trouble-shoot over the weekend, I waited. Big mistake. Friday morning, the crash came. I began to download my email; suddenly, it hung up and there were streaks of black across the display, with lettering in white that was like a different language. I thought it was a kernal panic, and pushed the restart button as nothing else would respond; and I reached for my copy of OSX - the Missing Manual. Nope, doesn't exactly look like a kernal panic. When the computer finally booted up, it booted into 9.2 on the old 10-gig hard drive, and Wildcat didn't mount on the desktop. I reached for the phone and ordered DiskWarrior 3.0 for overnight delivery. It came yesterday, and I've been trying everything to try and find Wildcat. Only once on a restart did I see it mount on the desktop; but there was an accompanying message saying that "there is something wrong with the volume Wildcat, some data may have been lost. Run a disk repair utility." If I had had my wits about me, I would have shoved the Diskwarrior disk into the drive at that instant and run the directory repair on Wildcat; but at the time I thought I had to boot from the Diskwarrior disk in order to use it at all, so the opportunity was lost; I tried to boot up from the DW disk, but it hung up and I had to restart. Wildcat has never again mounted on the desktop. And I can't seem to get DW to behave, it hangs up the computer every time I try to boot from it (holding down the C doesn't work, and setting it as startup disk in the control panel just gives me a black screen).
Sorry for the length of this post. I don't expect anyone can help, but I'll welcome any condolences or suggestions for my next step. My almost-new hard drive is still under warrenty, but I really want my missing stuff that's on it if possible. My nearest Apple repairer is 70 miles away so it will be several days before I can go there. I could cry. I loved that system.
Sadder and wiser Carolyn in Missouri
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