[Macpartners] OS X Finder hanging proble

[John C. Welch]

On 10/10/04 2:38 PM, "Kerem B Limon" <k_limon at MIT.EDU> wrote:

> Given the possibility of an imminent hard drive failure and potentially
> further
> corruption by trying to meddle with it, I suggest you take it to the Help Desk
> instead of PC Service. They can
> 
> - remove your hard drive, mount it in another Mac, and recover whatever data
> is
> possible,

By doing what is happening now...trying to mount it and running diskwarrior
or Data Rescue. <http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products/data_rescue.php>
I'd get a copy of Data *now* and leave the drive alone until you get it.
Then use Data Rescue to get any non-backed up data to reliable media. On the
other hand, if you have good backups of your data (check! :-) just wipe the
drive, and get a new one. (Having a new drive in the system will ensure that
the format didn't just gloss over other problems. If you're worried about
the data on the drive, I know a few people that will happily render that
drive into a state where the data will cease to exist in any usable form).

> - remove the hard drive again, place it in a PC and run full manufacturer
> diagnostics to recertify or identify the problem (as HDD vendors do not make
> Mac versions of proprietary HDD diagnostic tools),

Unless you have a full complete backup, I would not do this until you've
recovered as much data as possible, since the chances of a PC utility
dealing correctly with HFS+ as it exists in Panther are slim. If the utility
cannot repair HFS+ disk structures, it's not going to fix your drive into
any usable format to begin with, and if the utility manages to fix the
drive, but kills your data, then you've wasted a lot of time that could have
been avoided with a format days ago.

As well, most vendor tools are going to really only care about the mechanics
of the drive and the electronics. They may support FAT(32), possibly even
UFS or NTFS, but beyond that, it's luck. Right now, the cause of the problem
is secondary, getting your unbacked up data off it is primary.

I've heard nothing but love for data rescue from people whose opinions I
trust in such things, including the makers of Disk Warrior, and considering
the HFS+ knowledge at Alsoft, that's saying something.

And I'm curious as to what drive vendor tools are going to successfully pull
data correctly from an HFS+ drive.

john
-- 
We're surrounded. That simplifies the problem.
- Chesty Puller, USMC