It’s not that I’m superstitious or anything, but I’ve decide it’s not a good idea to sing your Mac’s praises to other people. Several times recently I boasted about my marvellous G4 – 3 years and not a single crash that necessitated restarting the computer. For good measure, I mentioned that I hadn’t lost anything from a hard disk since about 1990, and that I had experienced NO problems with my various Macs’ internal HDs since that time.
One morning, not long after this, I turned on my G4/1Ghz with my customary confidence and found myself staring in disbelief at the dreaded question mark folder. After the initial panic, I did what I could – as follows:
1. started up from external HD (which has Tiger installed, my internal has Panther) – the internal HD icon did not appear; tried disk utility – still no icon
2. started up from Diskwarrior CD – still HD icon did not appear, so there was no action I could take. The HD had become invisible.
3. started up holding down S key to get Unix schpiel (sp?) – I won’t tell you everything that came up, but my inexpert eye picked up what seemed to be pertinent disturbing bits, viz. “Apple CPUThermo couldn’t parse platform functions” and, further along – “Apple RS232Serial ……. start returning false early. Connector or machine incorrect.” I wasn’t really sure what that meant, but I knew it wasn’t good.
Anyway, my gut feel was that the internal HD was dead and that I would have to rush over to my favourite Mac repair centre and bribe them to save my data and install a new drive before Christmas. Luckily I recently backed up my most critical files to the external … not all the stuff I WANT because the external is only 20Gb. I began to mourn in advnce for all the valuable personal stuff that I feared was lost forever.
Before I did that I posted to the MyMac staff list, hoping to be told there was a very simple fix I could apply myself.
Nemo suggested I should blog what followed … it could be of great value to someone else out there.
TIM: Something similar happened to me once, and you know what I did to fix it? I smacked the hard drive on top. It simply would not spin up. Once I did that, it booted, and I archived everything! I knew the drive was dying, and this got me to a place where I could at least get my data.
Do I suggest this? Not until some others make suggestions and nothing else works…
ADAM: Tim, I have done this before too, with dying hard drives. Also, letting them sit for a few hours will allow them to cool down and cause them to spin up sometimes as well.
If open firmware isn’t finding a startup disk, then single user mode (running fsck -y or -fy on a journaled volume, -f to force the check and -y to automatically answer yes) won’t do any good because the computer never gets to BootX. I would try a disk warrior CD or Tim’s brute-force method in this case.
JOHN F: No doubt you give wise counsel, although smacking things is a very ancient remedy with a grand & glorious tradition. It often DOES work, like with the CD-ROM drive on my poor ole 500 MHz TiBook. Sometimes a CD just won’t mount unless I smack the case over the drive.
Personally, I wouldn’t hesitate to bang something really hard if it wasn’t working and I was good and mad. My Yamaha stereo amp simply refused to play unless I rapped on the end of the balance control with a small hammer. That went on for months until I lost the left channel, so I beat on the case REALLY hard and sparks flew out. Had to toss it in the dumpster. But hey, at least I achieved closure. 
(I have to play CDs now on the TiBook, but that’s cool. I plug it into my Fender Twin Reverb guitar amp, and let me tell you, most stereo systems can’t hold a candle to that thing when it’s cranked up.)
But Carmel: uh, what Tim said.
OWEN: STOP! Do NOT smack the had drive on the top. Tim was lucky. Can you smack a hard drive? Yes, but the top is a very bad idea.
(CARMEL: Luckily I hadn’t got around to belting the HD)
If you wish to test this, first, power up the machine and listen for the drive spinning up. If you hear the usual whine of the hard drive spinning up, no smacking is necessary. If you do not, you want to hit the drive from the SIDE, and ONLY from the side in such a way was to get the drive spinning. As crazy as this sounds, you might have to remove it from the mounting to do this. Disk drives occasionally get a flat spot on the spindle and the drive has trouble starting to turn. The occasional smack from the side will spin the disk a bit and cause it to start spinning. DO NOT wait to get what you need and replace this drive, because if it does it once, it will do it again as the drive will come to rest on the flat spot very soon.
All that said, I am not clear what a bad hard drive would have to do with not being able to boot from an external drive or a DVD however. It should have NO effect if the proper magic handshake is held down.
(CARMEL: Owen had actually misunderstood my problem here, but what follows could be very useful to someone else, so I’ll include it.)
So, try a BOOTABLE DVD next. I suggest that Apple install DVD. Hold the C key while booting and see if this disk will boot. At the least, you can get to the install DVD menu, select Disk First Aid from the menu (is that what it is called these days?) and have it check the HD (if visible) for problems.
Next, reconnect your external drive and RESTART the machine. HOLD DOWN THE OPTON key until you see a, for lack of a better description, a menu system that lets you see all the boot devices available to your Mac (CARMEL: I wish I’d known about that before). I believe the left and right keys select which drive. It should be obvious, but have patience with this screen, it is not fast. It will tell you a few things:
Is your internal drive on and listed as a boot device? If it does not show up, there are drive problems.
Also, it SHOULD show you both a bootable DVD (if one is inserted) and bootable firewire or USB drives if connected. Select the one you want and hit enter. It should now boot that device.
At the least, it should let you get to a utility that might help you resolve or test the problem.
If you have access to a browser, look here for more info:
http://www.macfixit.com/article.php?story=20050311073316780
BRUCE: Okay, my own 2¢ worth. (Man, I do love using that ¢ symbol. You just don’t see it anymore.) As has already been suggested:
Boot from a Disk Warrior disk. (Owning this top utility is not something I consider an option) Disk warrior works, sometimes slowly, but it does work. I have used Disk warrior to restore some badly hosed drives to life.
If there is an actual mechanical problem with the disk, well, there isn’t much you can, or should do, other then the light taps on the side already suggested.
“thou shall perform regular backups…”
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At this point it seemed clear to me that my hard disk was dead or dying and as I’d carried out all feasible remedial action I needed to get to the Mac service centre quickly.
Two days later, my hero the Graphics Plus tech guy (tall, well-built, golden-skinned, lovely soft voice with an interesting Eastern European accent … and clever too) had my G4 back in my hands. He’d saved all the data, installed a new 160Gb HD, and resurrected the original 60Gb drive – nothing physical wrong with it apparently. I think he said it had a ‘kernel panic’ (I know just how that feels, as I definitely had a kernel panic when I saw that blinking question mark!) This is not entirely surprising … the drive hasn’t been formatted in 3 years, but I didn’t tell him that because he presently thinks I’m fairly smart.
Now I’m faced with the fun task of restoring my working environment. I’ll make that the subject of another post though, as this one has become stultifyingly long.
Just a few more comments from Owen though, which could be of great value to someone in the same situation.
OWEN: There ARE tools that can fix the drive EVEN if it will not mount..
For future reference: In days of OS-9 past, Norton Disk Doctor would use its own driver to mount a disk so it would NEVER try and run the driver from the disk, which was often fatal. I believe Disk Warrior will do this now, and find a disk that does not mount but can bee seen. If you plan to use a recovery center, which are VERY expensive, I suggest NOT trying to repair the disk unless you are sure what you do will not cause further harm. It is possible, although unlikely, that trying to repair a bad drive will make things worse.
Do ask these guys what they did. If all they needed was a local driver and they saw the disk, then I hope they do not charge you much. If they had to rebuild the directory and recover files from fragments, then the cost would be higher.
Hope you get it all back, and I agree…backup your important stuff often.
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I must admit I’m feeling a sense of anti-climax. I was almost getting used to the idea of starting my life afresh. Instead, I’ll be spending days and days just getting back to where I was.
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