Power Mac G5 is freezing....HD not mounting......

Question

Okay, so for the last few days my Power Mac G5 Dual 2.0 has been a bit sluggish to say the least. When switching quickly from iTunes to Safari it will pause for a second or two and then spin that lovely little beach ball for about 5 seconds.
Last night I was playing a game (World of Warcraft) and it locked up when I switched to iTunes. At first it was just WOW then after about 15 seconds the whole computer locked up. I shut down and restarted.
That went on all night. Every hour or so. This morning the same thing would happen. The program I am on will lock up, but the mouse will still work. I can switch to another program. Then the whole thing locks up and I have to shut down.
The real problem came when upon rebooting I came to the grey apple screen and it just sat there. And sat there. And then it went to a blank blue screen. After 5-10 minutes it booted only to freeze up once I tried to close iChat that starts upon rebooting.
I tried installing any patches thinking that might fix the problem. I got an error message saying "Cannot install "/" folder".
I got on these discussion boards and tried the verify/repair disk method. I got two different error messages and whether I was verifying or repairing it would fail.
The first message is "Error: File system verify or repair failed" and somewhere in the message is says "Invalid Node Structure"
The second error message said "underlying task reported failure upon exit"
I am not sure what I need to do. I really want to get this fixed so that I can at least get my files off the Seagate 1TB that is my boot drive. Thankfully I have the boot drive I had with 10.4.9 so I can still use the computer.
If it makes a difference, I have the same problem when running programs in 10.4.9 but not as bad. I just have to be careful not to be running two RAM intense apps at the same time.
Any help that you can give me would be greatly appreciated. I would love to keep this computer working for several more years.
Incidentally, what do you guys think I should do if it comes to this: buy a new iMac or buy a G5 Quad? Just in case I have to make that choice.

Answer 1

Are the malfunctions because of the problem that Seagate has with the HDs?
Yes, the malfunction with DiskWarrior is due to the bad firmware of the Seagate.
My sister just got a new mac book. Will that work for what I need to do to connect it to my computer?
I think, at a minimum, you will need to remove the hard drive from the G5, and put it into an external enclosure to do the flash. I don't know if it will work or not. #6 of the following "How to" is why I think it may not work with the Macbook and external housing.
Because of this, I recommend contacting Seagate, or finding someone with the right machine.
Here is a How to from a Mac Pro user:
1. Get the firmware:
Seagate link for the 750/1TB 7200.11 drives:(if you look in Seagate forums you will find a few others for smaller drives).
http://www2.uwants.com/viewthread.php?tid=7524956&extra=page%3D1
For the ES2 much trickier as they pulled it even though it was released, possibly unrelated to this issue in December. Who knows?
I found it here though:
http://www2.uwants.com/viewthread.php?tid=7524956&extra=page%3D1
2. Download the zip to get to the ISO files.
3. Use Disk Utility to burn the ISO to CD. Takes seconds, they are really tiny.
4. Don't confuse which ISO is which. The names help but do one at a time. They both have "Moose" in the name, no idea who Moose is. The ISO for ES.2 is called ES2SN06B-3D4DMoose.ISO and for 7200.11 it is MooseDT-SD1A-3D4D-16-32MB.ISO
5. Put the CD in the IDE (native) DVD drive BEFORE shutting down. Firewire won't work (as I discovered). Nor the eject button.
*6. Remove ALL SATA drives from the Mac Pro. If you have an external array disconnect it. Firewire, USB disconnect them ALL.*
7. Use the sled from Drive 1 to put your pooched Seagate drive in Drive Slot 1. Not 2, 3, or 4, only 1.
8. Start up and press option at the bong, there will be a CD Windows disk to select as the boot disk. Select it.
9. FreeDOS starts up. Press F10 to get past the bumpf.
10. The Seagate utility starts. First select "S" to scan. Make sure the drive is matched to the ISO you burned.
11. There will be 2 or 3 firmwares listed. PICK THE RIGHT ONE and select A B C as the case may be.
12. Let it work, maybe one minute. Note the actual working differs a bit for the 7200.11 vs. ES.2 but it is clear what is going on.
13. When it says cycle the power, do that. Press the power button to power down.
14. Reboot from the CD again. Get to the updater and press "S" again, confirm the firmware. For 7200.11 it goes from SD15 to SD1A. For the ES.2 it goes from in my case SN03 to SN06.
15. Press Z to exit and power down.
16. Repeat in my case 5 times. Remember if you are doing 7200.11 and ES.2 at some point you will have to put in a bootable OSX drive, reboot, just to open the DVD drive to switch CD's to the right image. A right pain in the tuckes.
17. So far all work fine, System Profiler reports the new FW version, all the data (they were all blank but were formatted and named) is still there and the all copy files fine.
At some point the official SN06 firmware will appear, I assume. The problem with Seagate is the 7200.11 files are being hosted at the link but they want you to write for the ES.2 drives and then they do not respond, e-mail or trouble tickets. I had no problems, you may want to wait for them to post the SN06 firmware updater if they ever do.
Thanks to Ricktoronto for the How to.