Eek.. one of my hard drives might be dying.

Hi everyone.
I have a 2tb raid (4 x500 seagate drives), and as of yesterday I began hearing an intermittent clicky click sound.. Actually sounding like wires hitting a fan-- Which is what I thought was happening, but after some inspection, I realized one of my 4 drives is making this sound every few minutes. My data is still available-- But I am weary of this and am planning to isolate the drive and replace it with a new one.
My question is, is there a way to carbon copy clone an individual raid slice? Does anyone here recommend a particular way to proceed with this?
-patrick

What version of RAID? 0,1,5?
If zero, you may be SOL as the OS does not see individual drives and there there are not full files on individual disks. You need more than CCC ability to write files, you need a program that will do a byte for byte / bit for bit duplication. Since the file segments may end up in different sectors (bad sectors a possibility) I'd say the individual drive is not usably duplicatable through normal means.
What this means in real world terms is it's time to move the material off of the RAID, replace the dying drive, restripe the set and start over.
This is why RAID 5 has some appeal. It is built for just this very problem.
Good luck.
x

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Please Help! I think my hard drive might have died (iMAC G3 600)

Hello Everybody
I'm really desparate for some help.
Directly after downloading Security Update 2007-006 my iMac G3 froze. It was switched off at the mains and since then won't get past the grey screen with the apple and the spinny thing.
I know very little about how computers work, troubleshooting etc so have spent hours searching the forum and the apple support pages, following which I have tried -
start in safe mode - no change
Boot from install disc and run disc utility. This appeared to be working but disc utility can't repair the drive and comes up with the following - 'Error - the underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)'.
So I decided to have a go at starting up in single user mode and use fsck. But to no avail, it starts up in single user mode but never gets as far as the command line prompt. The final 3 lines of text say -
'disk0s5: I/O error.
Load of /sbin/mach_init, errno 2, trying /etc/mach_init
Load of etc/mach_init failed, errno 2'
and the screen is frozen, no chance of typing any commands in.
So HELP please! What does it all mean? Is my hard drive dead? Can I do anything else to try to save it? Is there anyway I can retrieve the contents of the drive if it is dead?
Sorry this is so long, I thought it best to try to explain methodically what has happened. If anyone ot there can help I will be made up.
Cheers
Tim
iMac G3 600 Mac OS X (10.3.9) 512m Ram

"'disk0s5: I/O error"
I've seen this error when the read/write arm on a hard drive becomes inoperative. It looks like you need a new drive. Don't buy anything larger than 120GB, and the 7200 RPM drives work fine. Drive replacement pictoral - Takeapart for swapping drives - slot load. When you get to the step that advises taking out the drive cage, you don't really have to do that. Just loosen the 4 drive hold-down screws and slide the drive out.
Unfortunately, anything on the old drive is gone. This is how we all learn to make backups.
David

Your hard drive might be dying if...

Out of the blue this week, started getting kernel panics: spinning beachball in every open program, dock would freeze, mouse could move but do nothing, restart would only give me grey screen. This was initially after waking from sleep or the screensaver; I have done nothing to the comp recently besides installing an ATI 9800 card a couple months back, been running fine.
Today it's really taken a bad turn. After startup there is a horrible hiccuping noise from my boot drive, kind of like a windshield wiper you know? I can hear something physically clacking back and forth in there, I think it's the little arm that reads the platter. When I do get it to start up I can keep it running for a few minutes before it locks up again. I'm desperately trying to back up my projects and I hope I'm not damaging my drive every time it makes that noise on startup. The Hardware Test CD (v1.2.5, old) finds no problems, but this wouldnt be the first time that SMART diagnostics have given no warning of impending death. It does sound like a bad drive, no?

Good move with the spare drive and OS, John!
If you're unsure about the old one being defective, after you get your new one you might zero the old one using the option to overwrite zeros to it, which will map out any bad sectors which might be present, then use it for archiving or as a spare/emergency boot drive if it then seems to be operating normally again. As you might suspect, I'm not one to immediately jump to the conclusion that a drive is going to die when it clicks, whirs, and won't mount or boot. Screeching or sounds similar or worse than what you heard on the linked Hitachi site are a sure sign, but sometimes strange whirring and clicking happen when the directory is fouled up and the drive goes goofy running in a "do loop" as it repeatedly searches for something it can't find. I say this from my own experiences with drives, one of which is the startup drive I'm on right now and have been running 24-7 for 9 months now after having a problem similar to yours (although I don't know what your drive sounded like).
Glad you got your data - I'm sure it's a relief!
Gary

Imac will not see my hard drive on start up, wants to start from network start up disk that does not exist. How to get rid of it? So there is just one choice / my hard drive.

I have a Intel duo Imac. Everything has been running relatively smoothly for a few years now. All of a sudden my computer will not start. I get the flashing folder with a question mark.
When I go to Start up disk in my system perfernces while the computer is on. I see 2 possible choices. One is my hard drive with the operating system shown. The other is a non-existant Network Start up disk with a question mark in it ( looks like a hard drive with a question mark and it say's its a "network start up disk).
All I think I want to do is get rid of the Network startup with the question mark. I can not find anywhere how one can just remove an old or non existant start up disk without reformatting.
I believe this came from a clients hard drive who had a network system on it. We no longer have that drive. It no longer exists. But a latent icon shows up in start up disk.
When I go to change the start up disk. I can change it to either the hard drive or the network with the question mark. But when I select my hard drive and then got to restart the computer. I get the flashing folder with a question mark on start up. I have also seen the flashing globe a couple times.
When I attempt to run disk utility from may install disk ( holding down "C" on start-up ). Disk utility does not see my hard drive. Just the Apple install disk with the disk utility on it.
What can I do to remedy this short of re-installing? Will a program like Disk Warrior or Tech Tool help?

Thank you. That's what I thought will need to happen.
One more question. I tried using the Apple install disk that came with the computer. It's an OS 10.5.6 disk. It does not see my 10.6.8 system internal hard drive to repair. All it see's is itself 10.5.6 disk. Do you think I can use a 10.8+ disk utillity since that is a higher system it will see the 10.6.8. Where the 10.5.6 does not?
I don't want to turn the computer off for fear I'll get the question mark again. P-Ram got me going last time but for how long I don't know? It would be nice to be able to turn the computer off for the night and startup as usual to give it a rest and try to reset itself.
Thanks for your help, I know I will eventually need to re-install. But I am in the middle of a project with tight deadlines and all I can do right now is back-up. Trying to migrate to another computer temporarily to finish the job. That's a lot of extra work in the short time also.
Just trying to put a band-aid on it for another couple weeks.

I have two iPhoto libraries: one on the hard drive, and one on an external hard drive. I cannot access my external hard drive iPhoto library. Help!

I have two iPhoto libraries: one on the hard drive, and one on an external hard drive. I cannot access the iPhoto library on the external hard drive. Yes, it is plugged in!

How are you trying to access the EHD library? Can you open it by launching iPhoto with the Option key held down and selecting the EHD library in the window that appears?
OT

One or more hard drives in Server Backup are not connected

A year ago I moved from Windows Home Server to Server Essentials 2012 as a backup solution for my simple home configuration - 2 Windows 7 Professional desktops. It was a perfect solution and works flawlessly - and has saved my tail on numerous
occasions.
The configuration is simple - I have a internal SSD drive from the operating system and a few other applications and (2) identical 4 Terabyte internal hard drives setup as a single storage pool - configured as a 2 way mirror. Every few days when I
log into the Windows Dashboard and check out the alert viewer, I have a single error - "One or more hard drives in Server Backup are not connected". When I follow the instructions - open the dashboard, click storage, hard drives - I see a single
C drive (which of course is connected - it runs the OS) and a single D drive - the storage pool. Clicking on the D drive and "Advanced - Manage Storage Spaces" shows my single pool (a green OK) and the 2 physical drives (also a green OK).
There are no other drives attached to this server - no external USB drives, external hard drives - nothing. Why is WSE showing this message?
Matt M

Go into the Server Backup Selections and reconfirm what is selected, then save.
If it persists, change the selection (remove a folder) and save, then go back in and correct it, then save.
Robert Pearman SBS MVP
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I'm an avid Mac enthusiast who works in a creative field. However, I simply cannot afford a new Mac after my old one's internal hard drive failed. Can anyone recommend an affordable Mac option? I don't want to consider a non-Apple product.

I'm an avid Mac enthusiast who works in a creative field. However, I simply cannot afford a new Mac after my old one's internal hard drive failed. Can anyone recommend an affordable Mac option? I don't want to consider a non-Apple product.

Macs with a FireWire port will also boot happily from an External drive. You don't even need to open the MacBook.
Some users buy a drive they would like to have as a future Internal drive, and also buy an external enclosure. They get the External set up the way they want it, then swap with the Internal drive.

I need to replace one of my hard drives for Power Mac G5

Hi guys, I've been having some trouble turning on my computer. I found out that one of my hard drives (I have two) have been damaged. The damaged hard drive is 250 gigs. Its a MAXTOR hard drive and on the top right corner it says "DiamondMax 10" Then right below that... "250GB SATA150 HDD".
My second hard drive is fine, it has 150 gigs on it. However I am not able to start up my computer with that hard drive. Anyways, my real question is (or two questions)...
1) Is it possible to "upgrade" and get a hard drive that has more memory (such as 1tb) or would I need the same model to replace the bad hard drive?
2) Where can I find a replacement? Please list some sites or retailers.
Thanks guys

Sanfradan wrote:
Hi guys, I've been having some trouble turning on my computer. I found out that one of my hard
1) Is it possible to "upgrade" and get a hard drive that has more memory (such as 1tb) or would I need the same model to replace the bad hard drive?
You can move up to 2TB if you want to, as those are getting pretty reasonable at this point. I have had a few Seagate 1TBs in backup service for a while (SATA300 versions) and have recently moved all to 2TB Hitachis because the 2TB Seagates were not 7,200 RPM. The Hitachis have been so far a breeze, but I only have a couple of months on them at this point.
Concur with BD about the "avoid green" thoughts. The SATA300 drives I obtained have all been "plug and play" with no jumpers needed, so that's another plus.
2) Where can I find a replacement? Please list some sites or retailers.
All over the place. As to retailers, out here, Best Buy and Fry's have been good, but I don't know what you have in your neighborhood. Online are all sorts of vendors and perhaps even a little more price competition, but you should not be surprised by the price variance on the same items from different sites. One thing you can do is zero in on a candidate drive and then Google the part number for wider coverage.
BTW, are you talking hardware damage or directory damage?

I have been storing my Aperture and IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive that recently died. Fortunately I've been using Time Machine to back up to a 2nd external drive. How do I restore my libraries to a new external hard drive?

I have been storing my Aperture and IMovie Libraries on an external hard drive that recently died. Fortunately I've been using Time Machine to back up to a 2nd external drive. How do I restore my libraries to a new external hard drive?

This is a tricky one.
Open up Time Machine and go back to a date using the timeline on the right side of the window when you know the drive was working and was backing up as part of Time Machine backups.
Click on the name of your Mac under the Devices heading on the left side of the window in Time Machine, and if things are working correctly you will see Macintosh HD (or whatever you have named it) and the name of the external hard drive that was backing up in the past.
Right-Click on the name of the external hard drive and then click on "Restore (name of drive) to....." You may be asked for your adminstrator password at this point.
It might be easier to restore the drive contents to your desktop if you have room on your Mac, and then copy things over to the new external drive where you want to store the Aperture and iMovie Libraries.
Once the libraries have been moved over the new external hard drive, you will likely need to "point" Aperture and iMovie to the location of the libraries on the new external hard drive.

Just baked up my macbook pro to an external hard drive. my computer died on me and i plugged it in and rebooted it ,started time machine and finished backing up but. just wondering if thats good or should i delete and restart

just baked up my macbook pro to an external hard drive. my computer died on me and i plugged it in and rebooted it ,started time machine and finished backing up but. just wondering if thats good or should i delete and restart

I wouldn't trust that backup.
Make sure the system is connected to AC and Do Over.

Trying to install snow leopard on my Macbook Pro. After already having problems with Grey screen, blinking file with a question mark, etc. Computer now says that one of the hard drives is failing.The "hitachi" drive says it's failing in disc utility.

o.k. So, I've been tinkering with several "self help" fixes for several days now with no positive results. I'll explain my initial problems and then end with my most current situation. In hopes that someone out there will have a good suggestion or possibly remedy for the issues i'm facing
First, my problem started after my wife played a game on my macbook pro and the computer froze. She went into a panic and decided to shut down via power button. When computer restarted she got the blinking file/grey screen and that problem continued for a couple of days before I began using steps from various support topics from apple concerning the grey screen/blinking file folder.
Ultimately, yesterday I decided to erase my Macintosh HD file as one tip suggested. Following the brief online and on screen (via the process) tips that were there. Once that was completed I attempted to reinstall snow leopard (my most current version on hand) into the pc.
At first, I thought this would work. It looked promising. But, after several hours the installation screen returned with failure. I attempted to repeat. And, even repair drives during this try and re-try process.
Now, today, one of the drives.. "hitachi..." states that it's failing and is in red letters with no ability to repair via the disc utility screen. The Macintosh HD drive shows that it's o.k. But, this drive is listed under the HItachi drive so I think that's where a problem might lay.
So, I guess my question really revolves around.. What if anything can I do to get the hitachi drive back up? (short of taking it to a repair facility and replacing.)
And, how on earth can i get my OSX back up to I have a laptop again.
Operating on a macbook pro here. It's my lifeline. Otherwise, I am using a Windows desktop that i'm not that fond of. lol
I'm trying to bring this 2006 laptop back to life. Trying to avoid a rather expensive repair or the purchase of a new laptop. Also expensive...
Any help would be appreciated.

Well, running on a 2006 model. I did not have a startup disc. Initially, it booted up on original software in 2006. Since then, I've upgraded to 10.6 via a box set. And, since then I think I popped it up to lion.
All I have on a disc is snow leopard. And, I can't get farther than the setup screen due to hard drive. I'm taking to a apple authorized repair store right now. We'll see what they tell me . I'm just going to weigh the cost of repair vs. buying new.
Another bad, stupid thing is I had no means of backing up my stuff. So, I might have lost things like music, vids, etc. we'll see if they can recover. If the cost is too much for repair I might just forget it and start over with a new system. Just not sure at this point.

Migrating old iMac to new one via external hard drive with Time Machine

I was led to believe this was going to be easy! Using the migration wizard in Utilities I was hoping to copy everything over via my external hard drive however it told me that it couldn't do it because the name already existed so muggins here gave it a new name. It all ran smoothly, even all my email stuff etc etc. Then Time Machine told me it couldn't back up any more because there wasn't enough space on the hard drive. What I now have is two computers on one which I don't want and I don't know how to get it back and then solve the problem of having the same name on the back-up as the computer - not sure if this is making sense. Can anyone help me please?
thanks

Have a look at Pondini's Time Machine guide that might help you get back on track:
http://pondini.org/OSX/MigrationProblems.html
I know hindsight is a wonderful thing but Setup Assistant is the better option for transferring your data.
If all else fails, you can always erase the drive, re-install the OS as if it's new out of the box and use Setup Assistant. Hopefully that won't be necessary and Pondini will see you right.

One of My Hard Drives not showing up ion desktop

Hi
I've got one internal hard drive that will just not show up on the desktop or finder windows I can see it in disk utilities and everything is ok it was working no problems yesterday but since I have had to do a reformatting of my system disk and reinstall leopard and then snow leopard as my system hard had been case sensitive formatted which was causing some trouble with some software not being able to be installed, so after a complete fresh install I now cannot see one of the 3 hard drive that is in my Mac, any ideasTTFN
Subcoustic

if you can see it in spotlight then you should be able to use the go menu. I suspect you are entering the path incorrectly. the drive might have a hidden flag. run the following terminal command
sudo chflags 0 /volumes/*
you'll have to enter your admin password (which you won't see). that's normal. see if the drive shows up after that.

I think my hard drive might be getting ready to crash again.

I'm starting to see some awfully weird stuff right now... after hard reboots due to X lockups (Sauerbraten fucking up), I seem to be losing data from config files that weren't being written to or used at the time of the reboot - .viminfo, for example, and the XML config stuff for Galeon. I also lost everything in my .xinitrc file after a normal, clean reboot. No SMART errors but I am getting rather suspicious. And no rootkits or trojans, AFAICT.
(Had this drive for only 2 years though, it shouldn't be failing now. Then again, it might have crashed before.)
Here's what smartctl --all has to say:
smartctl version 5.36 [i686-pc-linux-gnu] Copyright (C) 2002-6 Bruce Allen
Home page is http://smartmontools.sourceforge.net/
=== START OF INFORMATION SECTION ===
Model Family: Western Digital Caviar family
Device Model: WDC WD400BB-00JHA0
Serial Number: WD-WMAMC1539009
Firmware Version: 05.01C05
User Capacity: 40,020,664,320 bytes
Device is: In smartctl database [for details use: -P show]
ATA Version is: 6
ATA Standard is: Exact ATA specification draft version not indicated
Local Time is: Wed Jul 12 14:26:23 2006 EDT
SMART support is: Available - device has SMART capability.
SMART support is: Enabled
=== START OF READ SMART DATA SECTION ===
SMART overall-health self-assessment test result: PASSED
General SMART Values:
Offline data collection status: (0x82) Offline data collection activity
was completed without error.
Auto Offline Data Collection: Enabled.
Self-test execution status: ( 0) The previous self-test routine completed without error or no self-test has ever
been run.
Total time to complete Offline
data collection: (1260) seconds.
Offline data collection
capabilities: (0x7b) SMART execute Offline immediate.
Auto Offline data collection on/off support.
Suspend Offline collection upon new
command.
Offline surface scan supported.
Self-test supported.
Conveyance Self-test supported.
Selective Self-test supported.
SMART capabilities: (0x0003) Saves SMART data before entering
power-saving mode.
Supports SMART auto save timer.
Error logging capability: (0x01) Error logging supported.
No General Purpose Logging support.
Short self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 2) minutes.
Extended self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 23) minutes.
Conveyance self-test routine
recommended polling time: ( 5) minutes.
SMART Attributes Data Structure revision number: 16
Vendor Specific SMART Attributes with Thresholds:
ID# ATTRIBUTE_NAME FLAG VALUE WORST THRESH TYPE UPDATED WHEN_FAILED RAW_VALUE
1 Raw_Read_Error_Rate 0x000f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
3 Spin_Up_Time 0x0003 168 166 021 Pre-fail Always - 2591
4 Start_Stop_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1443
5 Reallocated_Sector_Ct 0x0033 200 200 140 Pre-fail Always - 0
7 Seek_Error_Rate 0x000f 200 200 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
9 Power_On_Hours 0x0032 093 093 000 Old_age Always - 5145
10 Spin_Retry_Count 0x0013 100 100 051 Pre-fail Always - 0
11 Calibration_Retry_Count 0x0012 100 100 051 Old_age Always - 0
12 Power_Cycle_Count 0x0032 099 099 000 Old_age Always - 1443
194 Temperature_Celsius 0x0022 103 088 000 Old_age Always - 40
196 Reallocated_Event_Count 0x0032 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
197 Current_Pending_Sector 0x0012 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
198 Offline_Uncorrectable 0x0010 200 200 000 Old_age Offline - 0
199 UDMA_CRC_Error_Count 0x003e 200 200 000 Old_age Always - 0
200 Multi_Zone_Error_Rate 0x0009 200 200 051 Pre-fail Offline - 0
SMART Error Log Version: 1
No Errors Logged
SMART Self-test log structure revision number 1
No self-tests have been logged. [To run self-tests, use: smartctl -t]
SMART Selective self-test log data structure revision number 1
SPAN MIN_LBA MAX_LBA CURRENT_TEST_STATUS
1 0 0 Not_testing
2 0 0 Not_testing
3 0 0 Not_testing
4 0 0 Not_testing
5 0 0 Not_testing
Selective self-test flags (0x0):
After scanning selected spans, do NOT read-scan remainder of disk.
If Selective self-test is pending on power-up, resume after 0 minute delay.

- Electrostatic discharges: drive was pulled from a lightning-fried machine, apparently undamaged (I figured that it would be either okay or dead, given the surge's magnitude), but I'm starting to wonder if something got a little scrambled. If so, though. it took a while to show uo.
ESD damage is cumulative. in silicon terms you can weaken the transistors (silicon junctions) over a period of time just with low voltage discharges. It isnt necessarily so that these will fail totally and immediately. this is like a weld being ok but the metal around it rotting away over time.
re the CPU etc. a year or so back miqorz had similar probs with random crashes, especially with any medium to high CPU process. turned out he changed something on the CPU, cooler , fan or whatever, and the silicon heat transfer paste wasnt applied uniformly. this led to hotspots obviously and a breakdown of process wrt temperature.
back to basics, if you run a HD test (manufacturers testdisk ) itl remove that from the equation. then u can focus on other probables.
recently had trouble accessing a Maxtor 200G. worked ok when i made an image of it, (i work in data recovery/forensics) , but when trying to wipe it as the owner requested, it failed with I/O problems.
Maxtor hard drive test showed drive was failing.
so ... it worked ok to get an image, but screwed up when trying to write to it. Warranty job.
if you want to scrap the drive should it prove faulty, i can point you to some oss utils and procedures should you need to recover data. these have worked on drives that the M/F test confirmed drive failure. if you need to take it out of forum, dont be afraid to priv msg. im happy to make time to help.
good luck
Kern

Can I use one 2tb external hard drive for time capsule and file storage?

I would like to use time capsule, but also keep the hard drive on my desktop for file storage. Can I do this?

Apple advises against doing that.
Any data stored on the disk that Time Machine is backing up to can not be backed up.
Plus the data outside of the Time Machine backup database cause problems when Time Machine starts cleaned up old backups to recover space for new backups.
For these reason it is advised that the Time Capsule disk be used for one or the other but not both.
Allan

Eek.. one of my hard drives might be dying.

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