Hi. I have a Quicksilver 2002 G4 with an OWC 1.8 Ghz CPU upgrade. The hard drive is a Seagate Barracude IDE 80 gig drive. It’s a few years old, but has gotten only moderate use.
The computer is working perfectly, but I’m unable to back up the hard drive contents by any of several different methods. I’ve tried cloning the HD contents to my external FireWire drive, using both Carbon Copy Cloner and Super Duper. In each case, the clone operation starts but then stalls within a matter of minutes. With CC Cloner, it states at the very beginning of the cloning operation that “There may be a physical problem with the disk.” When I check the option to continue, it runs for maybe 5-10 minutes, copying maybe 2 gb or so, then freezes. With Super Duper, it starts normally, runs 5-10 minutes, then states that some particular file “can’t be read or written” and freezes. With either program, I can’t opt to “stop” the cloning operation, you can’t force-quit the program, and I’m forced into a hard restart using the power button. I tried running Disk Warrior, which detected very little out of the ordinary, and Disk Utility, which found very little was amiss with the disk permissions. Neither made any difference, and the cloning attempts still failed. I then tried something short of a full cloning operation, erasing the partition of the external FW drive and then trying to spot-paste the System folder onto it. This promptly choked as well. The one operation that succeeded was that I was able to burn a half- gig or so of files onto a DVD, using the internal burner, without incident. The hard drive isn’t making any untoward noises, and the computer is operating perfectly normally. But having irreplaceable old Classic apps, family photos and business data at risk makes me really, really nervous. Probably the best suggestion I’ve heard so far is to use my MacBook Pro to copy this computer’s HD contents by putting the G4 in “target disk mode” (though I’ll have to buy a FW 400 to FW 800 cable to try it), on the theory that it will allow the MacBook Pro to “do the heavy lifting.” As for me, I know nothing. Could the problem be something other than the hard drive? Thoughts? Theories? Suggestions? -- You received this message because you are a member of G-Group, a group for those using G3, G4, and G5 desktop Macs - with a particular focus on Power Macs. The list FAQ is at http://lowendmac.com/lists/g-list.shtml and our netiquette guide is at http://www.lowendmac.com/lists/netiquette.shtml To post to this group, send email to g3-5-list@googlegroups.com For more options, visit this group at http://groups.google.com/group/g3-5-list
