Help! I lost a hard drive

[ABe]

G3 B&W 256mb ram OS9.1 with one 6gb hard drive and another 8g hard drive.
I was attempting in vain last night to install the drivers for an Epson printer and after install, it would not restart. I attempted to restart w/o extensions- nothing. I used Norton (I know how many people feel about Norton, but it's all I have) but it would not recognize the 8g drive that has all my Apps, documents, etc on it. (I just installed Jaguar on the other drive- see previous post.) Running out of ideas, I attempted to reinstall with OS9 Recovery disk, and it won't let me do that either! I'm stumped. Any ideas?

[kelly]

Which Revision of the B&W is it?  

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/yosemit...ewfeatures.html

http://www.xlr8yourmac.com/G3-ZONE/

You know the B&W has had Drive "corruption" issues?

Which version of Norton's are you using?

[neokm]

After loading the printer drivers did you ever get this prompt "Installation was successful" - Restart your Computer???

[ABe]

neokm:  yes, I got that message several times.  Every time I restarted and still was not able to get the Chooser to select the printer.  At this point, I'm not so much worried about the printer as I am about the inability to find the hard drive.  I'm giving serious thought to giving up on the printer problem.  Epson tech support doesn't seem able to solve it either.

[ABe]

Kelly:  Thanks for the links.  I will study them when I get a moment (I'm at work right now, and it's a bit hectic this morning). I was not aware that B&S had corruption problems.  

I have Norton Disk Doctor for OS9.  Does that tell you anything?

[kelly]

It's just that with Norton Utilities people get in trouble with too old a version.  

Any chance you can put that drive in another mac to get at it?

[ABe]

Kelly:  Not really. I have an iMac (possible but quite difficult) and a Powerbook (physically too large).  

I CAN access the data from the other drive in the B&W.  After all my difficulties with the 8gb drive, I installed Jaguar on the 6gb Hard Drive.  After the install, I was able to transfer documents to the Jag drive, so I now have access to the data, the computer just doesn't 'identify' it and will not allow me to repair/install new OS.

Is all this making any sense to you?

[kelly]

Sure.  

Just so you get everything you need onto the other Drive.

Hard to say at this point what's going on.

Could be a result of that peculiar B&W problem.

Could be Directory problems that have nothing to do with that.

Could be a Hard Drive going south.

Read about the B&W issues and see if anything fits.

[Al]

The IDE controller problem with corrupting data was for rev. 1 (A) B&W's.  They were all 300 MHz models and some earlier 350 MHz models.

Do you now have all pertinent documents off the bad drive?  And what happens when Norton's tries to repair the drive?  Does it just hang (freeze) your computer?  Oh yeah, and what version of Norton's are you using?  Usually if it is a corrupt directory Norton's can repair that and usually when it hangs trying to repair a drive it means that there and bad blocks appearing (bad blocks will probably mean the end of that hard drives life).

Try and give Norton's as much allocated memory as possible, I found out that some tasks will hang the computer if not enough memory is alloted to Norton's Disk Doctor and after alloting more memory the task went through.  Oops, not sure if your trying this from a CD.

If all pertinent documents are safely backed up somewhere else and you have all the installers for your applications.  Try and see if Apple's Drive Set up can recognize the drive, if so, then you are at least able to initialize (reformat) it and see if it is indeed a corrupt directory.  If you go through with initializing the drive, you will infact lose all data on that drive, why I asked if you already have everything backed up.
 
 [ 03-14-2003, 02:28 PM: Message edited by: Al ]

[Mayo]

Another valuable lesson about the importance of regularly backing-up essential data.

Good luck with that drive!

[ABe]

Kelly:  Apparently it's a mystery.  I may just invest in a new hard drive to see if it is recognized.

Al:  Sorry, I never did mention that it is a later revision- 400mhz.  I am using a Norton CD, so I will attempt(?) to allocate more memory and try it again.  I had little success repairing anything before since it did not recognize the drive.  Failing all else, I will try to erase and reformat with the Install CD.  As I mentioned, the Rescue CD would not allow me to repair.

[Al]

Okay, the 400 Mhz models came with the revised IDE controller and are not part of the data corruption problem experienced with older model B&W's and using dual drives or larger drives.

If your running from a CD, it won't allow you to allocate more memory to the program.  It would have to be installed on a drive that has OS 9 installed on it.  Plus, there probably is an update for Norton's that you can apply if it is installed on a drive.  Oops, I didn't read close enough, Norton's doesn't recognize the drive anymore.  I think the one route left might be to try to initialize the drive.

Do you have an OS 9 system that you can boot into at this moment?  9.1 or better preferred cause it came with Drive SetUp 1.7.3, it should also be included on the CD if it is an OS 9.1 CD.  Apple recommends using that revision or better to initialize drives for OS 9.1.
 
 [ 03-14-2003, 02:55 PM: Message edited by: Al ]

[ABe]

Al:  Not at this moment.  I am HARD at work (he says while standing up and looking over the cubical walls for any sort of supervisor).  I will take another look tonight when I get home.  I'm getting the feeling that it's time to try a different dard drive.