on 5/2/02 4:48 PM, Tom Lastoskie wrote: > I ran into a similar situation with my son's S900 last Oct and at Xmas > time (He's at college, so he uses it daily). > > In his case, he has three HDs (2 [30GB] IDE - running off a Acard ATA66 > PCI card and 1 [2GB] SCSI) with OS 9.1 on each of the 3 HDs (we use > multiple partitions on all our HDs). Anyways, in both situations, his main > boot partition suddenly came up with the flashing ? mark, then booted off > the SCSI HD. We ran Diskwarrior, TT Pro and Norton and NONE of the three > saw the missing partition. So, since he still had two good bootable > partitions, I told him to just keep using the machine off the second IDE > partition. > > Here's the interesting part - within 10 days, BOTH times, the second IDE > boot partition came down with the SAME problem! We ran Diskwarrior, TT Pro > and Norton and, again, NONE of the three saw the missing partition. > > So, the first time (in Oct), I erased both of the bad partitions and > reinstalled OS 9.1 on both (from a back-up disk image). As you already > know, the problem returned at Xmas. So, this time, I erased both of the > bad partitions and did a clean-system install of OS 9.1 on each of the > partitions. He has had no problems to date. > > Unfortunately, I have not been able to determine what caused these > problems. I have 2 S900s and a PM9600 and have had them torn down to bare > bones too many times recovering from "disasters" (I'm a perpetual > tinkerer). This is the first time I've ever seen a bootable partition > "disappear" (other than a hard drive failure) and not be recoverable by > Disk Warrior (4 times no less). > > The only consolation I have is that I know what to do the next time it > happens. BTW, I recommend making a Disk Image of your operating system > (pre-OS X) and keep it for these types of disasters - much quicker > recovery times.
DiskWarrior couldn't see my drive either. The strange thing for me was that I had a couple other system folders that the Mac couldn't see for some reason either. It wouldn't even boot off of a regular Mac o/s install CD either. I tried two of them. (I got the second free with the 10.1 update.) It got more strange when I was finally able to boot off of my system restore CD, but couldn't see the drive. Intech's SpeedTools saw the drive but couldn't mount it. Even more strange, I installed a new hard drive with Mac o/s X and booted from it and my bad drive showed up without any problems. More weird, in X I lost the firewire drive connected to my built-in firewire bus. Can't see it, mount it, nothing. I agree about having back-up drives. My back-up wouldn't boot at first either. The strange thing is that the back-up showed up in X even though it's 160gigs. It's supposed to only work in 9, and be limited to 128gigs in X. -- SuperMacs is sponsored by <http://lowendmac.com/> and... Small Dog Electronics http://www.smalldog.com | Refurbished Drives | Service & Replacement Parts [EMAIL PROTECTED] | & CDRWs on Sale! | SPECIAL SM LIST PRICES - 24x Bootable SCSI CDROM $39.99, Umax Processors $19.99 PowerSupplies from C500/C600 $49.99 J700/S900 $79.99 <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Support Low End Mac <http://lowendmac.com/lists/support.html> SuperMacs list info: <http://lowendmac.com/supermacs/list.shtml> Send list messages to: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> To unsubscribe, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> For digest mode, email: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Subscription questions: <mailto:[EMAIL PROTECTED]> Archive: <http://www.mail-archive.com/supermacs%40mail.maclaunch.com/> Using a Mac? Free email & more at Applelinks! http://www.applelinks.com
