TechTool Deluxe appearantly deactivated my hard disc

I can't start up my 17" G5 iMac anymore. I used TechTool Deluxe from my Apple Care Protection Plan CD and it found errors on my hard disc. TechTool was not able to solve the problems with the disc and after quitting the application it never shut down the iMac correctly. Since then my hard disc seems to be inactive somehow. Starting the iMac up from my original Mac OS X Software CD and then starting the Disc Utility it shows the internal hard drive greyed out and it seems to be deactivated. Pressing Disc Utility's "Activate Volume" button doesn't do anything, though!
What can I do now? I need to activate the interndal drive again so my computer can start up again!

I hold down Option-Comand-P-R then start the iMac. It bongs once, then it bongs again, then the grey start up screen appears, then it simply turns itself off again without making a thirg bong. It doesn't even show a blue OS X start screen. What's wrong?

Similar Messages

TechTool Deluxe (applecare CD) unmounted my hard drive

I'll just detail what happened, any and all suggestions would be helpful.
1. Ran Permission repair utility: everything checked out
2. Ran Disk repair utility: Catalog error found
3. Rebooted mac with techtool deluxe cd.
4. Enabled all tests (including volume structure test)
5. All tests check out fine save for volume structure: which is what I expected
6. prompted me to "repair" drive, clicked "ok"
7. After repair successfully completed rebooted mac
8. Kernel Panic upon reboot
9. After multiple reboots, restarted from Tiger install disk.
10. According to Tiger install disk, main hard drive is "unmounted" and un-journaled
11. Re-started again from TechTool Deluxe Cd
12. Ran Tests again (this time only Volume Structure) Passed
TechTool completely recognizes my hard drive, and everything on it (correct amount of space used etc. While OSX says I have nothing on it, and refuses to boot normally without the aid of a CD. What are my options at this point?

Hi Jason, and a Warm Welcome to the Power Mac G5 Forum!
There is some(!) discussion of this problem here
http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=120264&start=0&tstart=0
And some stable door here
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=301269
You could try (if you haven't already) using the Disk Utility on the 10.4 retail disk to Mount and Repair the boot drive
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?path=DiskUtility/10.5/en/duh1018.html
You may be able to use Firewire TDM to access the drive, if you have another Mac
http://docs.info.apple.com/article.html?artnum=58583
and try Disk Utility from there - and maybe rescue your data, if you need to.
I haven't read it all the way through... but the early posts seem to have ended in an Erase and Install of OS X; Disk Warrior did not appear to help - but is a useful Utility to have, so may be worth a try
http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/index.html
and highly-recommended by many in this Forum.
You can download and burn a current TechTool CD here
https://support.apple.com/techtooldeluxe/main?id=dl
- if you have AppleCare, of course.
Good Luck.

Repairing volume with techtool deluxe

My MBP is on the protection plan which means I have techtool deluxe. The software has found an error in the volume. The directions for the software state to restart the mac from the appple menu and hold down the C key while starting the MBP with the cd in the drive. This supposedly is going to start the MBP from the cd and start techtool deluxe's repair programs. My problem is that when I restart holding the C key my MBP just starts up normally. Am I not doing it correctly? Does C key mean the apple/cmd key? Does C key mean the ctrl key?
Has anybody ever used techtool deluxe to repair a bad volume?

Do not use TT Deluxe to repair your drive. It is not compatible with Intel Macs. Instead use Disk Utility. Do the following:
Repairing the Hard Drive and Permissions
Boot from your Leopard Installer disc. After the installer loads select your language and click on the Continue button. When the menu bar appears select Disk Utility from the Utilities menu. After DU loads select your hard drive entry (mfgr.'s ID and drive size) from the the left side list. In the DU status area you will see an entry for the S.M.A.R.T. status of the hard drive. If it does not say "Verified" then the hard drive is failing or failed. (SMART status is not reported on external Firewire or USB drives.) If the drive is "Verified" then select your OS X volume from the list on the left (sub-entry below the drive entry,) click on the First Aid tab, then click on the Repair Disk button. If DU reports any errors that have been fixed, then re-run Repair Disk until no errors are reported. If no errors are reported click on the Repair Permissions button. Wait until the operation completes, then quit DU and return to the installer. Now shutdown the computer for a couple of minutes and then restart normally.
If DU reports errors it cannot fix, then you will need Disk Warrior (4.1 for Leopard) and/or TechTool Pro (4.6.1 for Leopard) to repair the drive. If you don't have either of them or if neither of them can fix the drive, then you will need to reformat the drive and reinstall OS X.

My iMac is running REALLY slow - could my hard disc be dying?

I have a 27" iMac with a Core i7 chip and 8GB of RAM.
It has always worked really fast with absolutely everything I have tried with it.
It worked fast in Snow Leopard. I upgraded it to Lion in September and it still worked fast (though a tiny bit slower perhaps than Snow Leopard).
In the last week, the machine's speed has slowed to an absolute crawl and I am almost constantly getting the spinning beach ball.
By a crawl, I mean that opening iTunes can take five minutes. Opening the Applications folder inside Finder can take five minutes. During times of this slowness, the spinning beach ball animates and I can move the mouse cursor, but I cannot get any response from the machine.
The machine is so slow that it is basically unuseable - I cannot wait five minutes to open a document!
What is really odd is that the computer will be really slow for 4-5 minutes, and then for perhaps 40 seconds or so I will get maybe one minute where things work at normal speed, before the speed drops back to a crawl.
Even restarting the computer takes an age.
My theory is that something in the computer has malfunctioned - either the motherboard or the hard disc.
I have run a few disc utilities (Disk Utility, Apple Hardware Diagnostic, TechTool 5), and the SMART status of the hard disc appears to be good and all reports check back successfully - although they all take longer than I'd expect. Whether that means the hard disc is really fine or not, I'm not clear.
I had one other hard disc die on me once, and that just died and was gone, but if my hard disc is dying then the problem it is showing is intermittent, i.e. it is only working part of the time.
At present I am making a backup of the iMac hard disc by having booted the iMac in Firewire Target Disk mode and manually copying files across. However, so far it has only managed 1GB of about 432GB and is estimating that it will take 2 days to complete the task.
Has anybody got any advice - is the hard disc or the motherboard a likely culprit?
The machine is under warranty at least, but I can't figure out whether to drag the machine into an Apple Store, or to phone AppleCare and get them to pick it up. If the machine would be repaired while I waited at the Apple Store then that would be great but I doubt this would happen.
Any advice?
P.S. I checked for runaway processes... nothing to find in Activity Monitor. CPU is about 5% max. Lots of free RAM. Hard disc is only half full.

mccltd wrote:
How do you load lion onto an exteranl disk and boot from it as I would like to give that a try.
I presume its an external usb drive?
thanks
Hi,
I used an external hard disc - Western Digital MyBook 500GB drive.
All you do is run the Lion installer, which you can redownload from the Mac App Store if you've bought it. As part of the Lion installer it asks which drive you want to install to.
To save having to redownload the Lion installer every time, once the download has completed from the Mac App Store, but before you have run the installation process, you can extract the disc image and retain it for future use (if you don't extract the disc image, then it gets deleted at the end of the installation process and you'd have to redownload it again next time).

TechTool Deluxe destroyed my Volume

Hi... I stupidly used the TechTool Deluxe v 3.03 (that came with my Apple Care Plan) on my G5 Dual running Tiger 10.4.7.
Basically - I installed a Microsoft Office update last night. This morning I was greeted with a black screen over my desktop and application screen that contained the text "kernel panic".
I restarted my Mac and then ran Disk Utility to repair permissions etc.
(Obviously it wouldn't do it as it was my startup disk.)
So I started up from my G5 install disk (10.4) and tried running Disk Utility from there. It was unable to repair - stopping part way through and mentioning something about a bad or illegal "exit" or something.
Alongside the G5 install disks was the Apple Care branded TechTool Deluxe CD (v3.03). I figured - if it's good enough for Apple to be giving out with its 3 year extended warranty...
So I inserted that and ran it on my drive - which - apart from the Disk Utility 'error' - had been working fine. (I know - if it works, don't fix it, right?)
I ran the test - watched it go through the pretty icons until it got to the Volume test... 2 hours later it was stilll on task 5 of 6 and had completed 126543789 of 6457382546 tasks.
At the end of all that - it came up with a diagnosis - which was pretty similiar to all the other disk utility screens. You've got x when you should have y. This is bad. The fact that you have j when you should have p is not so bad. But you should fix this.
So I pressed the 'fix' button.
When I restarted after the TTD assault was over - I was greeted with a tiny rectangular black screen in the centre of my display and no cursor. Eventually the fan started screaming and spinning louder and harder so I shut the computer down. Nothing I could do seemed to have any effect.
That was 15 hours ago.
Since then I have started the G5 in Target Mode and tried to repair it with Disk Warrior. Disk Warrior tells me that, in essence, another utility has destroyed the volume file structure and cannot repair it. I have tried to repair it using an updated version of TTD. This seemed to fix the problem - went through the whole file thingy and a recommendation and did the repair.
To no avail.
I made a disk image from a version of TTD downloaded from Apple at https://support.apple.com/techtooldeluxe/main?id=dl and tried to start the G5 up from that and run the utility. Same thing: it ran the tests and made recommendations - which I agreed to. It made its repairs. I restarted - but nothing - just that black screen and a the threat of my tower taking off - judging by the noise the fan was making.
Now I have searched all over the web for a solution to this.
I found a thread at a macintouch forum that covered an identical issue. (http://www.macintouch.com/readerreports/technicalsupportissues/topic3006.html)
One of the posters claimed to have found a magic cure for what everyone at Apple was telling him was a dead duck issue. "Dead hard drive. Sorry about the TTD thing, but we don't suggest you use it. And we knew that this problem existed. But we still gave you an ill-suited version of TTD as a 'perk'(incentive) for buying the extended warranty...
Apparently someone at Micromat had a way of fixing this problem. I quote:
"To resolve the issue I removed the Attributes file from the structure and then let the drive recreate a new Attributes file. Once a new Attributes file was created, the hard drive remounted on the desktop as expected. I did run the soon-to-be released TechTool Deluxe 3.0.4 on this hard drive afterwards and it encountered a volume bitmap issue which it was able to repair successfully."
Does anyone have any suggestions? Help? Please!
Of course - explaining how Apple can knowingly supply a defective Apple-branded tool (bearing no warnings or System Version limitations) that does exactly the OPPOSITE of what it is being used for (destroying instead of repairing) is going to be very difficult.
Right now I would love to be able to recover my life's work. Music. Photos. Writing.
Thanks!
G5 Dual 2.5GHz, 2.5 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7)
G5 Dual 2.5GHz, 2.5 GB RAM Mac OS X (10.4.7)

I was contacted by Marc Moorash from Alsoft, who guided me through the following process. (Well - at least up to Step 10 below).
The whole process probably took an hour from start to successful finish. I was on the phone to him for about 3 minutes!
1. Connected damaged G5 to Powerbook via Firewire 400 using Target Mode.
2. Launched Disk Warrior 3.03 from CD on the Powerbook
3. Selected the drive (Unknown Disk) to be repaired
4. Held down Ctrl+Opt and clicked on the DiskWarrior shield next to "Directory"
5. A hidden screen popped up asking for a password. It gave an 8 character hint:
6. The tech support asked for the hint and then supplied me the password.
7. A new menu appeared, called "Support". In that menu there was an option: "Clear Corrupted Volume Header ", which I selected.
8. I was then asked to click "Rebuild" and to call out each Step in the process to the tech support guy.
9. It almost immediately jumped to Step 5: Locating directory data.
10. Evidently this was good...as it meant that it had bypassed the error message I was getting previously.
11. Eventually DiskWarrior finished analyzing the volume and presented me with the option to preview the rebuilt volume:
12. I clicked on the "Preview" button and DW created a locked disk in the Finder.
13. I checked the volume: everything was fine.
14. I clicked on the "Replace" button.
15. My hard drive appeared on the desktop, and in the DiskWarrior menu.
16. I am now backing up all the data that I thought I had lost.
Thanks to Marc Moorash and the tech support team at Alsoft.
No thanks to AppleCare and TechTool Deluxe.

Techtool deluxe issue

hi, i bought the apple care protection plan when i bought my macbook and they gave me a CD which ran fine on tiger but a week later when apple sent out the leopard CD it stopped working. a year later my macbook seems to be running very slowly and was wanting to use techtool to sort everything out but when i install it and attempt to open up the application it doesnt appear. i tried downloading it off the apple website but it says my serial number (w87410raz5z) is not under protection even thought ive called apple about this and they say it is fine it is registered
is there anyone who can sort his out for me so i can use techtool or figure out how to fix it? or does anyone have any other ideas of speeding it up?
much appreciated
sean

Check to see if you need to update Techtool Deluxe http://support.apple.com/kb/TA26636
I would also run the repair disk option from your install disc. To use the Install Mac OS X disc, insert the disc, and restart your computer while holding down the C key as it starts up.
Select your language.
Once on the desktop, select Utility in the menu bar.
Select Disk Utility.
Select the disk or volume in the list of disks and volumes, and then click First Aid.
Click Repair Disk. When done, click Repair Permissions. When done restart your computer.

Hard Disc Not Exist

To start at the beginning; Just under 3 years ago, my ex wife bought my daughter (then 12) an HP G56-105SA.
A year ago my daughter moved back in with me, and brought it with her.
Just the lap-top and power supply. No Recovery discs; no manuals; just the bits she used.
Last week... she had teen-age hissy-fit, because it didn't work... this became MY problem.
Of course, being ancient and obtuse and a PAIR-RENT...I am probably missing the obviouse, like that it's almost Christmas, and what she really wants is a new i-pad.... but she ent getting one... not off me least ways, so I'm stuck trying to fix this thing, so she can do her home-work, and be doubly ungreatful!
So to the facts.
1/ I started by switching it on.... which resulted in black screen and 'No Bootable Device' message.
2/ Turned PC over, undid HDD cover; removed HDD, and cable; re-seated & replaced; turned on again. No Change.
3/ Removed HDD - Plugged into spare SATA slot on my desk-top.
Curiousely, it threw up four drived;
E: which appeared to be a ghost, with nothing on and capacity of the discs full 250Gb.
F: Which was her C: Operating System partition; aprox 170Mb with all windows directories present and accessible.
M: HP Restore
N: HP Tools
As suspected... her C-Drive (My F) was chocka-block with barely 3% free space.
3.1/ I took my life in my own hands... and deleted six seasons of 'Glee'..... and transfered the less than a dongle sized directory called 'Home Work' to my desk-top. I emptied her recycle bins.
3.2/ I ran disc tools on my (Win XP) desk top; and applied Disc Clean Up. Took a while, and I dont think freed much.
3.3/ I ran disc tools....... and applied Scan Disc, full scan and fix... and 24 hours later it told me it had fixed things!
3.4/ I ran De-Frag... and another 24 hours later.. it looked reletively healthy; with about 40% free space.
4/ Returned Hard disk to Lap-Top.... pressed start.... same black screen! Pressed f2, used diagnostics; got 'Hard disc Not Exist'
5/ Asked Daughter if she had the HP Factory Restore discs..... she looked at me as only a teenager looking at ancient, obtuse, and utterly STOOOPID pair-rent can.... you know, like she had discovered something unsavory on the sole of her shoe, she had never seen before...... with added contempt.
Phone calls and text messages in her bedroom followed; the unhelpful conclusion of which was... "Mum says, you just run Recovery from the Hard Drive" ... aparently she had argued that actually when teh computer was first switched on, it would have asked to 'make' recovery DVD's.... but aparently her big-brother had sorted that all out, and said you didn't need them, as it was... on the hard drive.... Can ANYONE tell me why I married the woman? I'm SURE there must have been a reason... but for the life of my I cant think what it could have been!
6/ I returned HDD to my desk-top. I found the pdf user manual, and found the 'make restore disc' instructions & tried running the make program on my desk-top.... it refused telling me what I already knew... my desk-top isn't an HP G56!
7/ HASSLED as home-work was now due, and she couldn't print it off my Desk-Top, as I dont have the latest version of MS Office she uses at school..... I went back to basics; pulled Windows 7 install disc from the draw, went to HP support and down-loaded ALL the driver files for an HP G56-105SA...
8/ WIPED THE LAP-TOP HARD DRIVE - in XP on desk-top, removed all partitions, then re-formatted the disc, ready for 'fresh' install of Windows 7 and 7 alone, without all the HP factory pre-installs.... get it running, and then worry about installing whatever software she wants/needs after seperately; and with bit of luck, without partisions or extraniouse would-you-like-fries-with-that programs cluttering it up; might give a bit more space so takes a bit longer till its clogged with 'glee' again.
9/ Inserted HDD in Lap-Top. Switched on... opened DVD draw; switched off. Inserted Windows 7 disc; switched on.
ALL looked very promicing, and Got windows back-ground, USB mouse, and win 7 install prompts... up to "Select partition to install operating system'.
HDD showed in the drop-down box as 'Disc 0' with full 250Gb available and healthy
BUT message below "Windows 7 cannot install on this divice - Not bootable" clicking for details... said check bios to ensure HDD management enabled.
10/ Switched off, went into bios... NO options for doing anything with HDD as far as I could see; while 'system diagnostics' chucked out error message "Hard disc Not Exist"
11/ Repeated Windows install... and at prompt tried putting in DVD of down-loaded HP Drivers to load a disc controller... told me there were no drivers on the DVD ( they were all executables I presume intended to be run after Windows install)
12/ My 'data' Hard-Drive was sat on teh desk where I had removed it to plug in her lap-top disc. JUST for reference... I removed her Lap-top HDD and plugged my Desk-Top HDD in to see if the lap-top would recognise ANY disk... answer no it didn't.
SO... it would appear that the Lap-Top HDD is 'OK' we have fault on the Lap-Top, which recognises the HDD under windows install... but not under the Bios.
I found this forum looking for hints where to go next, and did find this thread: http://h30434.www3.hp.com/t5/Notebook-Lockups-Freezes-Hangs/my-laptop-says-my-hard-disk-does-not-exi...
BUT, whils seemingly the same problem... that was fixed by my first intuative check, taking the HDD out and replacing it.... but ent solved this one.
So what next? I'm starting to run out of inspiration... and no chance is she having a new lap-top this christmas!

teflon-mike wrote:
Follow the instructions on this tutorial page to make a DBAN on a usb flash drive that is at least 1GB.
OK, followed instructions; down-loaded and ran executable. Selected DBAN v2.2 from drop down as instructed (only option with DBAN in title); 2nd dialogue asked for ISO file, entered DBAN in download dir; it asked to create, clicked 'y', then selected 4GB USB flash as destination, and 'run'. Went into a command screen, and 'did-stuff' with two error messages; first saying something couldn't be found; second that DBAN 2.2 'not supported'.
Popped dongle into the Lap-top anyway; files were written to it; entered Bios and set Boot order to USB-Floppy first... returned "BootMNGR is Missing" & prompted re-start.... A USB thumbdrive (or flash disk) is not a dongle. That is a different technology for licensing firmware contained in a usb device.
So, tried & failed, BUT.. the lap-top hard drive is 'blanked' It's been scanned, formatted, un-partitioned & reformatted, and shows as a factory fresh HDD would out the packet. So do I really need to use DBAN to 'nuke' it? Yes. it is a good plan to nuke the hard disk. It sounds like you need a different tutorial than the one I provided.
then do a Windows 7 install. This time use the Microsoft store's Windows 7 DVD\USB download utility to make a usb installer.
Thanks; but I dont really want to buy another licence for an operating system (I actually dont much like!) I already have licences for, already have DVD's for, but not bought through Microsofts Down-Load platform so I dont have anything in my purchase history and so would have to buy as if new JUST to get a version that loads through a USB port.. when its loading hapily enough from DVD... just not happy to install to the HDD, its actually recognising, and I'm just as likely, I presume, to get the same problem, of it refusing to install to HDD from a new USB drive version as my existing DVD version, for the expense and trouble.... unless I'm missing a leap in the logic here?
The Microsoft DVD\USB download utility name is actually a misnomer. I don't know why Microsoft called it that. It is actually a usb installer and DVD installer creation utility. It does not require you to purchase anything. Use the license that you already have when using the USB installer during a Windows 7 installation. There is no need to buy another. Licenses are always diistinctly seperate from the installation disk(s) or ISOs. It is the same thing as a DVD installation disk except much faster.
You don't necessarily need to use an ISO image as suggested in the following video. You can also use your Windows 7 installation DVD as a source for the Windows 7 DVD\USB download tool.
Any other suggestions, any-one?
****Please click on Accept As Solution if a suggestion solves your problem. It helps others facing the same problem to find a solution easily****
2015 Microsoft MVP - Windows Experience Consumer

User account on external hard disc frequently gets corrupted - reasons?

Dear all,
I have recently written a question regarding a problem with my user account; in this question I have described that I have my data for my user account on an external hard disc (USB2 hard disc), and that all data in this account seemed to be deleted one day (in fact, it was simply set to a wrong path, see below); user V.K. has helped me out of the problem - the problem could be solved by renaming the external hard disc and setting the path to my user data folder in the "user account" settings to my old folder on the renamed disc; You can find our discussions here: http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?threadID=1513799&tstart=0 By the way, I use OS X 10.5 (newest version).
Now, several months later I find myself in the situation that the problem returns frequently, although I do not yet see regularities or the reason; each time the described renaming-procedure helps, but anyway it is annoying, and some programs who have data on my user account folder (such as Linotype FontExplorer X - latest version!) even fail to notice the change and have to be very reset with lot of effort.
Now, as I can not imagine that I am the only one who uses a user account on an external drive, I start wondering what am I doing wrong. Did anybody else ever experience problems like these? Does it also occur when the user account is stored in a network (on a server) - which must be a very common workplace setup? Is there anything known about the reasons?
I do not understand what causes this problem; and also, the problem seems to be very intricate - I do not know enough about the internals of Mac OS X, but (if You look into my old post cited above), if You simply try to reset the user path in the user account settings to the folder on the NOT renamed disc, the account stops to work completely, and the user cannot log into it at all; somehow, there seem to be different "stages" of corruption of the account on the external drive - I think that this may help somebody with detailled knowledge to understand the problem, but I am out of the game here... also, all the old names of the external drive keep to be mounted in the "Volumes"-folder on Macintosh HD - although they don't exist anymore.
I have formatted the external drive to "Mac OS Extended"; is this okay - or should it better be formatted to "Journaled"? The drive is a 500 GB external drive from LaCie - I think it should be okay (I have two of them - one for TimeMachine - the drives themselves work reliably, it appears).
Is there anybody who can help - or anybody with a similar setup and who could tell me whether or not he ever experienced a similar problem, and what he did against it (if necessary)? Thanks in advance!!!
With kind regards and greetings from Berlin,
Björn

Aside from starting over, losing whatever you've done on the new machine, see Pondini's Transferring files from one User Account to another. If you haven't done much and can afford to lose that data, I suggest starting over, following the steps in Pondini's Setup New Mac guide. That should result in just one user account.

Data Recovery AFTER TechTool Deluxe "Repair" ?

Hello,
I have a PB from Fall 2005 (1.5 Ghz, 512 Ram, superdrive, 80 GB) running 10.4. Recently, performance really started to lag, so I began diligent monitoring and ordered an external HD to perform a more comprehensive backup. For the last week, although SMART status was verified on the internal HD, I've been running on a bootable external drive (that was too full to perform a full backup of the current system). When the new external drive arrived yesterday, I installed 10.4 onto a fresh partition and prepared to copy all my files over from the internal drive. Of course, in the midst of this process, but before I could begin the file transfer, the internal drive decided to die and list SMART status as failed. From previous TechTool and other diagnoses, I believe the issue was just a horribly corrupted directory rather than any real physical damage (despite being forced to use numerous hard shut downs due to a stalled, all-but-frozen system in the recent past).
Now, here's the crux of my question: I ran TechTool Deluxe (the version that is packaged with Apple Care) and again it reported a bad directory. I had to safe boot on the external drive to get the computer to complete log in, otherwise it stales as it "searches for local drives." So the drive was not mounting, but it was recognized by both Disk Utility and Tech Tool. Feeling that it was my only option, I decided to go ahead and let Tech Tool repair the volume structure. Tech Tool was "successful" but now I am left with a hard drive that mounts but only shows my applications and library folders, along with a folder full of gibberish index files. No system folder, no users folder.
Is there a way to step back from this repair? Apple Support suggested trying to use Disk Utility again to verify the disk, but I'm highly dubious. I've heard of Alsoft DiskWarrior and ProSoft's Data Rescue II--but I don't know if either are something that will work after-the-fact now that Tech Tool has done its damage. I also talked to Drive Savers and they're quoting $500-2400, with $1600+ the cost of anything approximating full recovery.
Any suggestions on methods, preferred vendors, etc? I've backed up sporadically and have fresh copies of most of my key documents, and 75-90% of my music, but I'd lose all my photos and my crucial contacts, emails, and calendars.
I've done some searches and found slightly similar issues to my particular problem (ie http://discussions.apple.com/thread.jspa?messageID=1150247?).
I'll be monitoring this closely if I left any details out that would help in providing a recommendation.

Hi,
Thanks for your comments. I actually have not been able to boot from the "repaired" drive. It no longer mounts and disk utility reports it had a "fatal hardware error." I can still mount fine from either of my two external drives. Here's the current update. I downloaded the demo of Data Rescue II from Prosoft and am letting it performa thorough scan of my hard drive. It was about 2 hours from completion after 10 hours of scanning when I left for work this morning. If it turns up anything, I'll go ahead and buy the full version. If not, unless this board turns up anything else, yes, it looks like DriveSavers (or a similar alternative?).

External hard disc not recognized

I have been using a WD external hard disc with Time Machine. Today I had it plugged into a USB powered hub when the house electrical power briefly went off then on, twice. A message appeared stating that device was removed incorrectly (or words to that effect). Now the HD does not appear on the desktop. It is recognized in "about this computer" as a USB device. It is not recognized in disc utility and thus can not be mounted.
All suggestions appreciated.

Answered my own question. Working now. Connected directly to computer USB and ignored it for a couple of hours and now it is visible on the desktop and appears to be working.

My 5 yr old 2 GHz Intel Core Duo 20" iMac, right after I disconnected an external HD that had been on the desktop (i.e. I forgot to eject it properly), started displaying video anomalies (lines); testing (TechTool Deluxe 3.1.3) indicates the video is f

My 5 yr old 2 GHz Intel Core Duo 20" iMac, right after I disconnected
an external HD that had been on the desktop (i.e. I forgot to eject it
properly), started displaying video anomalies (lines); testing
(TechTool Deluxe 3.1.3) indicates the video is failing.
The graphics card is an ATI Radeon X1600. Is this reasonably
replaceable? If so, is the "MPC ClientPro 434 All In One ATI MXM X1600
PCIe 128MB Video Card" I found on eBay (for $25, used) essentially the
same unit?
My soldering skills are, sadly, poor.
And it only dawned on me a couple days ago that because this iMac does
not have a Core 2 Duo processor, it will not be able to enter the
"Lion" generation.
Thanks,
Patrick
PS Are manuals for this model available? I have a copy of the Peachpit
Apple Training Series "Desktop and Portable Systems, Second Edition"
but it only goes up to the G5 20" iMac. There doesn't appear to be a
3rd or later edition in the series.

My 5 yr old 2 GHz Intel Core Duo 20" iMac, right after I disconnected
an external HD that had been on the desktop (i.e. I forgot to eject it
properly), started displaying video anomalies (lines); testing
(TechTool Deluxe 3.1.3) indicates the video is failing.
The graphics card is an ATI Radeon X1600. Is this reasonably
replaceable? If so, is the "MPC ClientPro 434 All In One ATI MXM X1600
PCIe 128MB Video Card" I found on eBay (for $25, used) essentially the
same unit?
My soldering skills are, sadly, poor.
And it only dawned on me a couple days ago that because this iMac does
not have a Core 2 Duo processor, it will not be able to enter the
"Lion" generation.
Thanks,
Patrick
PS Are manuals for this model available? I have a copy of the Peachpit
Apple Training Series "Desktop and Portable Systems, Second Edition"
but it only goes up to the G5 20" iMac. There doesn't appear to be a
3rd or later edition in the series.

Time Capsule and external Hard Disc

Hi,
I have a problem with my Time Capsule (1 TB) and External Hard Disc (1 TB). The external HD is connected via USB. The idea is to have use the device as a shared HD in my network. First it worked perfect. After upgrading to Snow Leopard i have following problem.
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
Can anybody help?
Thank you.

Emma1609 wrote:
Hi,
hi emma, and welcome to discussions
Once the external HD is turned on my Time Capsule is not longer recognized. I can't connect to Time Capsule and make any backups. It is also no longer appearing in the Airport settings.
you could try a power cycle on your devices. turn off modem, TC, and HD for, say, 10 minutes. turn the modem back on for 2 minutes, followed by the HD, followed by the TC.
then go airport utility > manual setup > disks. see if your HD is showing beneath the TC

Mac book air not reading files on external hard disc.

Whenever I connect my external hard disc ( Transcend 1 TB, Ms DOS) to my macbook air (OS X 10.9.3, 1.3 GHz intel core i5, 4GB 1600 MHz) its icon appears on the desktop but I can not open the files saved on it. When I try to open the music files lets say, this message appears: "You can’t open the application because Microsoft Windows applications are not supported on OS X." Also, it worked properly a while ago. What shall I do?

What file extension(s) do these music files have at the end of their names?

"Volume Structure Failed" in TechTool Deluxe

I tried to run Disk Utility on my laptop last night and it said that it "stopped reapiring "XXX" because the following error was encountered. The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)" It said there was an invalid catalog record type and volume check failed.
I then ran the lastest update of the TechTool Deluxe CD. Everything passed except the Volume Structure.
There were some "used nodes" and "free nodes" that differed--those numbers showed up in green as "favorable changes". "Leaf Record Count" showed up in red as an "unusual change". When I go to repair, it says that "unusual values in the volume structure have been dectected. Before repairing the volume structure, it is suggested that you back up your data. FAILURE TO BACKUP YOUR DATA MAY RESULT IN PERMANENT LOSS OF DATA!".
I do have a Retrospect Backup on my external drive, but I'm still a little nervous about clicking the "repair" button. How likely is data loss with this particular error that it's trying to repair?
I'd like to call Apple Support (I'm still under AppleCare for another week or so), but I'm not sure if they have Saturday hours.

Okay, here's what I ended up doing. I did end up calling Applecare Tech support, but mostly only to inquire about potential coverage if I needed it--since I was one week away from the expiration of Applecare. They opened a "case" for me and Applecare would remain in effect for 30 from the opening of the case. This was good news.
I tried using Disk Utility to repair the problem but it wouldn't work. I had repaired permissions and attempted to run “Check and Repair Disk”. Disk Utility said that it “stopped repairing ‘xxx’ because the following error was encountered. The underlying task reported failure on exit (-9972)”. It then said that there was an invalid catalog record type-volume check failed-volume was not repaired.
A friend of mine has DiskWarrior for Panther so we were going to try that before trying the TechTools Deluxe CD that I had just updated from the Apple site.
Went over today to do that. Unfortunately, we couldn't get the computer to boot up with the DW disk. It would boot up with the Install disc & TTD, but not DW. We tried booting with the option key. It did show that we could boot from "utility CD", but the minute we hit the arrow key after selecting it, we got a circle with a slash through it. We called DW support and they said that my computer was newer than the CD. This was strange since my friend's larger G4 Powerbook was only a couple of weeks older than mine and DW works fine on hers.
Anyway, we ran TTD and let it repair. Ran DU again and it still showed a problem that it could not repair. Ran it again--same thing. Ran TTD again--just to test. It showed that there was nothing that needed repairing. Ran DU yet again--3rd time for the afternoon. Did repair permissions first, then Repair Disk. Strangely enough, now it said the volume was fine and needed no repairing.
So, at least for the moment, things seem okay. Not sure exactly which step worked or if it was just a combination, but I'm just happy that it finally passed DU check.
I will continue to monitor for the next few weeks.

Leaving room on Hard Disc for downloading Rental Movies.

Using the Sync mode vs Streaming. How do you Sync music and playlists to the AppleTV and leave enough room for Rental Movie Downloans...need to save about 10 GB for HD movies.
SUGGESTION: Seems like we need a selection on the Apple TV Summary page in iTunes which would allow us to specify the hard disc space to be kept vacant.
Automatic mode and Custom mode fills the AppleTV to the brim.

I have checked my settings. It appears that in either Custom Sync or Auto Sync, if you are syncing any music at all, the software will automatically fill in any unused hard disc with more music. The only way I can see to leave unused disk space is to not sync any music. Or, just not use syncing and use just Streaming by selecting "Add Shared iTunes Library" from the "Computers" area of the "Settings" screen on the Apple TV.
Could you be more specific with suggestions?

TechTool Deluxe appearantly deactivated my hard disc

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