Drive Troubleshooting Advice

My disk drive appears to be "broken". Never had this happen before and I'm wondering what, if anything, I can do to troubleshoot it.
When I put in a blank CD or DVD to burn, it opens Toast (as I have it set to do), but then after hitting "write disk" I get an error message: "The drive reported an error: Sense Key = MEDIUM ERROR Sense Code = 0x73, 0x03" and it ejects the disk. When I put a movie DVD in, I doesn't show up and won't play. When I put one of my burned CDs in (from project backups) they don't show up either ... sometimes I hear a faint ticking sound, and after about 30 seconds the disk is ejected.
Is there anything I can try to see what's going on ... or do I just need to buy a new drive? If that's the case, any and all recommendations for how to go about this would be welcome ... I've never had to replace one before this.

Hi CD,
Sorry I don't have a solution for you, but I have a similar problem.
But I noticed you ran some diagnostics on your iPod.
Which diagnostics are these, for battery reset and or hdd test?
Where do I run them from?
Tx
eJ

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Is it possible to actually remove files from a hard drive? advice needed pl

Hey guys and gals. i have a G5 Dual 2GHz Power PC with a problem. I recently had to do an archive and install (my second one). after getting thru with this and trying to get back what had been lost i realized that i only had about 90GBs left on my System Hard Drive. I have two drives on my Mac, one for the system, programs and such and one for recording audio and saving Logic and GB songs. The one that is the boot drive and has all the programs on it is the one that is seriously depleted. It seems that i will have to replace a lot of programs to get them to work again after the A&I and i just don't have the room to do so.
So my first question is that if i move files off that drive do i get that space back? Does it actually "get rid' of those files or does it just make them unaccessible? My second and related question is that if i erase the drive does this actually "get rid' of the files and do i get that space back? The reason i ask is that i have heard that you can't actually completely get rid of files on a hard drive. That when you erase a hard drive it it doesn't really erase the drive it just makes them (somewhat) inaccessible.
If i can't get that space back am i correct that i will need to replace the drive to get more space? Is replacing the hard drive a difficult process? I know that i can by an external hard drive but i am uncomfortable with using one for other than back-up or storage space.
any opinions or advice would be appreciated-thanx-gospel

If you did archive and install, your old system files are most likely still in a directory called Previous Systems at the root of the hard drive - IF you don't need anything from there (i.e., your system is working fine), you can delete that folder - it has many files, so it will take a while to delete. Whenever you delete files, you get the space back. What you heard about data not being deleted is somewhat true (see next para), but you'll need special utilities to reclaim the deleted data, so from a normal usage perspective, you DO get the space back when you delete, so you can reuse that space for other files. Archive and Install of Leopard creates about 11 GB worth of files in the Previous System folder, so there is a lot of space you can reclaim on your system drive.
* Here's an over-simplified view of file storage. Normally a hard disk contains random 1s and 0s anyway. Storing a file organizes some of them (a file size worth) to the proper sequence of 1s and 0s. Think of the hard drive as made of many 'slates' on which file data is written. A master slate keeps track of which files use which slates. When you delete a file, the operating system (OS) normally 'deletes' the name off the master slate only and marks the space as free and available (even though the data may still be there on the slates the old file used - that is, the 1s and 0s belonging to that old file - it is marked as free/available). So the OS can reuse the space - this is what was meant by "you get the space freed up when you delete the file." The special data-recovery utilities know the method the OS uses, so they CAN reclaim the data if that space wasn't overwritten by storing other newer files. So really, erasing the whole disk means marking all space as available/free on the master slate. The disk elements always contains 1s and 0s - even when "empty" - just in a disordered way and known to the master slate. Storing a file just puts order into the sequence of the 1s and 0s.
Obviously I took too long typing all that!
Message was edited by: BobZune

After replacing HDD system unstable troubleshooting advice?

Hi,
I just replaced my HD with the following process.
Full copy to new dri on usb enclosure with superduper.
swap drives and system comes up fine.
After a day or so now its unstable. While browsing the net suddely everything restarts almost like finder restarts. but in this case it takes all the running programs and services with it. it recovers but almost all the services in the upper bar has vanished. a reboot restores fine until it dies again.
I have run onyx and run everything and resored permissions also run repair via diskmanager.
I keep looking for any tools to help me troubleshoot this. Where would the logs be?
What to do? reinstall from scratch? the copy stuff in from old disk that is still intact. i dont want to do that since i dont know if i have all the media anymore to my software.

First, you don't have a Recovery partition on the boot drive, which you should have. If your model is capable of it, boot into Internet Recovery and reinstall OS X.
Computers that can be upgraded to use OS X Internet Recovery
If you still have the problem after reinstalling, proceed as below.
If you have more than one user account, these instructions must be carried out as an administrator.
Launch the Console application in any of the following ways:
☞ Enter the first few letters of its name into a Spotlight search. Select it in the results (it should be at the top.)
☞ In the Finder, select Go ▹ Utilities from the menu bar, or press the key combination shift-command-U. The application is in the folder that opens.
☞ Open LaunchPad. Click Utilities, then Console in the icon grid.
Step 1
Make sure the title of the Console window is All Messages. If it isn't, select All Messages from the SYSTEM LOG QUERIES menu on the left. If you don't see that menu, select
View ▹ Show Log List
from the menu bar.
Enter "BOOT_TIME" (without the quotes) in the search box. Note the timestamps of those log messages, which refer to the times when the system was booted. Now clear the search box and scroll back in the log to the last boot time when you had the problem. Select the messages logged before the boot, while the system was unresponsive or was failing to shut down. Copy them to the Clipboard (command-C). Paste into a reply to this message (command-V). Please include the BOOT_TIME message at the end of the log extract.
If there are runs of repeated messages, post only one example of each. Don’t post many repetitions of the same message.
When posting a log extract, be selective. In most cases, a few dozen lines are more than enough.
Please do not indiscriminately dump thousands of lines from the log into this discussion.
Important: Some private information, such as your name, may appear in the log. Anonymize before posting.
Step 2
Still in Console, look under System Diagnostic Reports for crash or panic logs, and post the entire contents of the most recent one, if any. In the interest of privacy, I suggest you edit out the “Anonymous UUID,” a long string of letters, numbers, and dashes in the header of the report, if present (it may not be.) Please don’t post shutdownStall, spin, or hang logs — they're very long and not helpful.

Media Drive purchasing advice

I would really appreciate some advice on purchasing some additional storage. I currently use two 2TB unstriped internal drives with very few problems. I edit with ProRes 422 LT 720p 60. More space is needed so I am looking at buying either 1). another internal drive, 2). A CalDidgit VR 4TB drive, or 3). a Cal Digit AV drive w/ USB 3.0
RAID protection is not a huge issue. Fan noise is an issue though. It is very pleasant in my suite now since I use internals. But, I am sure more speed would be nice. Thoughts?
Your input will be greatly appreciated.
Best.
Tom

Skip the USB3 drive...no macs have USB3. I highly recommend the Caldigit VR drives. Spendy, but worth it.
Also look at the Mercury Elite Pro drives from otherworldcomputing.com. Cheaper.
Shane

Original internal hard drive problems - advice please

hello forum members, i am looking for advice with my situation and would be grateful for any suggestions.
here it is, i have a 2003 model dual 2gb G5 shipped with a 160 Serial ATA internal hard drive.
i purchased a second 500 WD drive becuase the 160gb drive seriously malfunctioned, disk utility, apple jack nor disk warrior could help and i had delete and reinstall the 160 drive. I then purchased the second drive to act as a safe guard against loosing some serious amounds of data again (once bitten, twice shy).
only now the 160 has gone again. it allowed me to fix with disk warrior (or so i thought), but when i changed it back to the start up disk it stopped functioning properly (SMART status now saying "not supported"). It will allow me to view some of the files that are on there, but when i try to open anything i get the spinning beach ball and it makes a very repetative noise and doesn't do anything for ages, sometimes allowing me too look inside folders after a while, but not allowing me to move anything.
i have lost all trust in this drive, is it the drive or have i done something wrong? if i replace the 160 with a second WD would my computer still function or could it be the WD that is causing the problems?
any help or advice would be greatly appreciated
Thanks in advance

When a four year old drive starts acting up, you should replace it; zero the drive and hope it can be used as an archive backup - AFTER zeroing the drive or using (Speedtools etc) to map out bad blocks.
You should have made the 500GB your main drive. Also always keep TWO backups. The 500GB would also be faster.
Keep one backup at least always off line, even while backing up to your alternate drive. And have a bootable backup of the last OS revision. A bootable drive set aside just for emergencies - for running DW, Applejack, TTPro etc. Then keep your backups current with CCC or SuperDuper.
SMART isn't that SMART or good at predicting. Zeroing a drive every year or so is always a good idea. As is a backup - Erase - Restore from time to time.
FireWire and FireWire/SATA drive cases are one way to hold your backups. 500GB WD drive from OWC is less than $120.

My new HD with a cloned system and apps won't boot the G5 when installed. The clone drive is being journal formatted via usb with OS9 checked in disk utility. First time around, I didn't check OS9, and the G5 didn't boot from the clone drive. Advice?

My system is a G5 PPC with 2x 2Gig 64bit processors (dual core). 6 gig of ram on board, running OSX 10.4.11. I recently discovered the main drive was actually a laptop drive someone had stuffed in there! (The machine was given to me - yes, really). So I bought a nice new WD Caviar Black 500Gig HD. Hooked it up via usb adapter (G5 won't see it internally). Disk Utility saw it, formatted it with Journal option selected, but not OS9 install.
After that, I cloned the data on the slow laptop drive complete with all the applications onto the Caviar HD.Sure enough, the G5 can see the Caviar HD with everything on it.
However, when putting the Caviar HD in where the laptop drive once was, the G5 would not see the disk at all.
So now, I'm reformatting the drive again but this time with OS9 checkbox ticked in Disk Utility. After this, I will install it into the machine alongside the offensively sluggish laptop drive, and as long as the G5 sees the Caviar HD internally, I will clone from there, rather than via USB hookup.
I hope this way the system will speed up! There's no way the machine is running as it can do with a pokey little laptop drive in it spinning at 5k surely!
I am assuming the Tiger 10.4.11 is genuine (I think it is - the X symbol is present on the folder), but I don't have the original disk...
Any suggestions? Has anyone had this experience?

Hi BDAqua... downstairs away from unit at the moment. It's a Western Digital Caviar Black 500Gig, twin processors, SATA3 / 6, 64Meg cache on-board... nice. Very quite with minimal vibration (slight).
However as I'm here I can announce I've solved the problem! The G5 had an original Seagate Barracuda HDD on board as a slave drive. I backed up the dat off that onto the Caviar Black via USB adapter. Then Disk Utility wiped the Barracuda safely.
Then, I installed SuperDuper! to clone the data from the sluggish laptop master drive onto the Barracuda; I also told SuperDuper! to boot the G5 from the newly image Barracuda.
After it had done the job I switched off the machine (it may well have rebooted - I was downstairs watching England fail at Eurovision Song Contest), took out the laptop drive and started up the G5.
Mercifully, it rebooted fine! All details and programs are intact and functioning right down to my screensaver.
I can report that the machine is noticably (considerably in the case of Logic8 and JamPack) faster and swifter at sourcing data.
Everything is backed up and I now have a speedier G5! Hurrah!!
I now have a spare 80Gig drive to hand in a caddy (originally a spare backup) that was made about the same time as the G5. It's my guess that it would fit the G5 internally and probably be seen ok by the system.
It's worth a try. The Caviar Black will have to go into a caddy and become my backup disk. It has a clone of the OS and all apps, so if something goes badly wrong, I'm safe.
Just a thought: The more advanced Leopard and Snow Leopard OS may struggle in G5's because the OS itself may require faster HDD's that cannot go into the G5 normally? I see many reports of Snow Leopard running like a bag of bones in people's G5's. Perhaps it's something to do with data retrieval speeds?
I'm sticking with Tiger!
I hope this story has assisted someone somewhere... and many thanks to all you kind people who offer to help.
When Humanity's back is against the wall, this is how civilization will restart and re-establish... guys like us solving problems at desks, on PC's and in garden sheds!

DVD drive troubleshooting

I have a tough problem with the DVD drive on my powerbook. Maybe one of you Apple guys would be able to point me in the right direction. I'm mostly new to Macs, myself, being a Linux/PC user. I figured I'd get try out Macs. I got this old Titanium Powerbook from a roommate, but it had some peoblems. The casing is well worn and dented, and it had a broken hinge when I got it. The CD drive wouldn't read any discs, and it wouldn't respond to the eject key or to any other eject commands.
I got the hinge fixed, and replaced the CD drive with a SuperDrive (Matsushita UJ-845B). This drive exhibits the same symptoms as the drive I replaced. It won't read any discs, I have placed a CD in, and I can't get it back out. I've tried the F12 Key, holding down the trackpad button at boot and typing 'eject cd' at an Openfirmware prompt.
Under 'Disc Burning' in the System Profiler, it says 'no burning device was found.' The disc that's currently stuck in the drive now spins up whenever I boot the computer, or whenever it comes back from sleep, so I know the drive has power.
What could be my problem here? Any ideas would certainly help. Thanks
Titanium Powerbook DVI Mac OS X (10.4.7)

First, welcome to the discussions
Just a couple a things, did you chrck to see if the Matshita site offers any firmware update for your new optical drive?
If not check Google
Are you sure you have the Ribbon Cable plugged in tight.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=106752
The above link is what Apple says about ejecting a disc.
I see you have Tiger Installed,
Before you Installed it did you check to see that you met the minimum System Requirements.
More important did you Install from a disc that looked like the link below.
http://members.aol.com/onlyftp/TigerFullVersion.jpg
The reason is there is a difference, ( They are machine specific)
Also be sure you have in your SYStem Preferences CD-DVD what you want to happen and what you want to open when you insert a CD or DVD.
That should help you some.
Cheers Don

Hard drive crash - advice?

my hard drive has died with no backup (stupid, I know) so I am trying to figure out what my options are to restore my music library without re-importing all my cds (I had about 20 gigs in my computer).
1) once I get a new hard drive is there any way to pull the songs from my ipod back down onto my computer?
2) if not, I was thinking my other option could be to see if a computer repair place could restore the data from my drive onto an external hard drive which I could then copy back to my computer and use the external drive to backup my computer to avoid this happening again.
assuming the data is there on the busted drive, is that a feasible plan?

Well, please do me a HUGE FAVOR!! As soon as you reinstall your Library, please develop a back up plan. This is an example of why it is SOO important to back up your music.
Ok, you can get third party software that will allow you to Rip your music off your iPod and onto your iTunes. Some are for free for a limited amount of uses, and some are for a nominal fee. I use iPod agent.
Read this article and it should help you out.
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=300173

I'm trying to decide what to buy either air port or time capsule. I want a hard drive to save my pictures documents etc. but I want to be able to delete it off my computer but it still stay on my hard drive any advice?

need to decide what to get for a hard drive

Any hard disk drive in a USB enclosure will work with either the Time Capsule or the Extreme.
Don't use Time Machine for archival purposes - that's not what it is designed to do. It's strictly a backup utility.

Troubleshooting advice anyone? Unable to get still photo embeded in menu template.

I have Premiere Elements 9. I have completed the video and am trying to use a template from Adobe that has a spot for a still picture. I imported one and it shows on the computer but when I burn the DVD there is just a big black empty box. I tried making the photo 1000 x 750 pixils and that didn't work. I even tried using a photoshop file thinking maybe it was just proprietary but to no avail. Between this and the fact that the program is so unstable that it crashes every time I try to do something, my frustration level is pretty high. It probably crashed nearly 20 times just trying to make the video. Is this normal? Any help would be appreciated. Thanks.

pianoliz
You came to the right place. What you described is an old story and known issue with Premiere Elements 9.0/9.0.1. The issue is maintaining the replacement background in the end product DVD-VIDEO on DVD Disc. The remedy is to apply an audio background to the menu in disc menu customization area of the project (either audible or muted audio file).
Some would have you chasing down still image resolution et al. No way.
Please review and consider the full details in the following
ATR Premiere Elements Troubleshooting: PE 9: Disc Menu Lost Replacement Backgrounds
If any questions or need clarification on anything that I have written, please do not hesitate to ask.
Thank you.
ATR
Add On.. With regard to program stability...have you downloaded and install the 9.0.1 Update and are running that as your program. If not...
Please download and install 9.0.1 Update from the following with Premiere Elements 9 closed.
For Windows
Adobe - Premiere Elements : For Windows : Premiere Elements 9.0.1 update
For Mac
Adobe - Premiere Elements : For Macintosh : Premiere Elements 9.0.1 update

Optical drive troubleshoot

Hello,
I have a 15 inch late 2011 mac book pro with mac os x 10.7.3. It seems my optical drive is no longer coopreating, any suggestions how I can restore it?
Many thanks,
Caroline Eriksson

There is NO restoring of a DVD drive that has failed. that is unless you are an electronics repair person and can get new parts for that 2 year old Optical drive.
But it might just be dirty and you could try one of those CD/DVD lens cleaning disks. If you are having insert or ejection problems then the motors for those operations have failed.
To replace it will cost you around $120 when done in an Apple store or you can look to OWC or iFixit or other Mac aftermarket parts reseller. Or you can just go out and buy any brand external DVD drive that connects by USB port, except the Apple Branded external Superdrive as those only work on Mac computers that did not originally come with a built in DVD drive, and it will work with your Mac.

Installing OSX Lion on OSX Mountain Lion Partitioned drive-Help/Advice please

I have my late 2009 27" iMac running OSX 10.8.5 Mountain Lion but need to install OSX Lion on a separate partition and would appreciate help / procedure advice as to how to do this safely.
I need to do this because I have found that running FCP7 Studio under 10.8.5 there's some missing or odd keyboard and Timeline functions that were not there under Lion and FCP7 is a valuable tool for me that I don't want compremised. I'd like to be able to run FCP7 / Lion in a separate partition on the iMac.
I have partitioned the HD and there's about 700gigs of clean space on the second partition. I also have downloaded from my account on the App Store a copy of Install Mac OS Lion to my Applications folder and I also have a copy of it on a USB Thumbdrive.
So, what do I do now to safely install the second OS without messing up everything else that's on the machine in the prime partition?
Thanks!

Ok….I managed to work it out…..Installed Lion on the second partition, working fine now.
PM

Mac hard drive storage advice

I am thinking of upgrading from a Macpro to a iMac, though I currently have 4 storage drives in the Macpro, whereas I can only have 1 in the iMac, with the option for connecting external drives. Someone is offering to sell me an older raid enclosure http://www.planetdv.net/Content/By_Manufacturer/G-Tech/Storage/G-Tech_G-RAID_Pro_FireWire_ RAID_Storage_Solutions_big.asp
I would like to use it not in a raid configuration, but instead just as a way to put 4 drives in it at a time to always have 4 extra drives connected and availalbe on my desktop. Does anyone know if this could be done? Would it work with Premiere?
Thanks.

media kat wrote:
Hi Bill,
What did you mean by:
Also I just saw the major problem with Firewire 800 in this statement.
"That said, G-RAID Pro saturates the FireWire bus bandwidth and provides a minimum sustained data transfer rate of 75 MB/second".
What does that mean?
Thanks.
I'm not Bill, but Firewire 800 cannot sustain anywhere close to 800 MB/s. You see, 800 Mbps is not the same as 800 MB/s. Not even close. 800 Mbps means "800 Megabits per second" whereas 800 MB/s means "800 Megabytes per second". Using the formula that one byte equals eight bits, the maximum theoretical bandwidth of Firewire 800 is only 100 MB/s. And since there is a little bit of overhead caused by the FW800 controller itself and its drivers, the maximum sustainable bandwidth of FW800 is only about 85 MB/s. Add to that additional bottlenecks caused by the FW800 controller in the drive enclosure, and that makes the maximum sustained data transfer rate only 75 MB/s (which is the rate quoted from where Bill got this info from).

Troubleshooting Advice - EM 12.1.0.3 on Windows 2008r2

A week ago, finally, I successfully got the 12c Grid Control up with all the associated targets added making me very happy since I had previously had 11g Grid Control but didn't have it at my new job until now. We have a scheduled monthly downtime for Windows upgrades and patching. After yesterdays scheduled downtime and after everything came back up one of my 4 monitored servers started acting up. Here is the loop it is currently going through:
1) Message=Agent Unreachable (REASON = Unable to connect to the agent at https://ora-9001.mynetwork:3872/emd/main/ [Connection refused: connect]). Host is reachable.
2) Message=Agent Unreachable is cleared. The current status of the target is METRIC ERROR.
3) Message=Metric evaluation error start - Received an exception when evaluating sev_eval_proc for:Target name = PRI1_ora-9001.mynetwork_sys, metric_name = Response, metric_column = Status; Error msg = Target encountered metric erros; at least one member in in metric error
And one more I'm getting also but doesn't seem to be in the "loop":
Internal error detected: java.lang.Throwable:oracle.sysman.gcagent.tmmain.execution.LongOpManager$ZombieDetection:719.
The Agent will continually go down and then come back without any intervention, as if in some kind of loop. If it's down I'm able to manually start it, it will run for a while then go down again. I've checked to ensure credential and settings are correct but not sure how to troubleshoot from this point on, especially since all the other systems are doing fine and without issues.
All input is appreciated.
SL

I did quite a bit of testing in our test environment before installing into production and one thing I did noticed was that after a reboot I often had issues with the agent and would have do some manually intervention to get it all talking again. The initial agent push to this server went off without issue and all was working like a charm until the reboot. It seems that if there were issues with the Java or OS that the problem would have shown itself at that point. I'm not arguing that there isn't a problem with the Java or OS layer, just that it so often doesn't make sense in that all is working great, reboot and boom.

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