Mac Geeks

[Steve Rupp]

Last night I downloaded a movie from itunes. For some reason it downloaded like shit and kept stopping. Finally when it was done, it said the download was not complete and it might contain corrupt files. I played the movie anyway and it seemed to work fine.

So here's the problem, the movie plays fine this morning and then after I paused the movie the computer completely freezes up. I couldn't force quit anything and had to force shut down the computer. I have my itunes library and my aperture library on my LaCie external HD and was not able to eject that either. After I shut down the computer I unplugged the HD. Restarted the computer, plugged the external back in and nothing. Restarted a couple more times plugged it back in and nothing every time. I use a firewire 800 and switched to the firewire 400 and still nothing. Nothing like this has ever happened and I'm starting to get a little freaked out.

Anybody have any suggestions?

 

[DiscoNomad]

Leave the hd un plugged while you the following:

1) Restart
2) Open /Applications/Utilities/Disk Utility.app
3) Select Macintosh HD and click "Repair Disk Permissions"
4) Restart once finished
5) Then once you are booted up again Restart again...
6) As soon as you hear the bong sound hold down: Apple, Option, P, R
7) Hold them down until you hear the bong sound 3 more times.
8) On the last bong release the keys and let the Mac boot normally. Power cycle your external Hd and then plug it in...should mount on the desktop.

If it doesn't then call Apple Care and post here. Good luck. Don't worry Macs aren't immune from mistakes but there is always a very clear and constant reason for why they do things. Im happy to help in anyway.

 

[Steve Rupp]

what do you mean by power cycle the external HD? it's powered by the firewire.

I did the procedure and it still doesn't mount on the desktop. I guess it's to the next step.

 

[chris snell]

Steve, based on the description you gave me (showing in System Profile but not mounting), it sounds like the drive itself has failed or is about to. There are some low-level disk recovery software packages that might be able to save some data. They often use a boot disk to boot into a flavor of Linux or similar and try to read blocks off the drive. If the drive has failed catastrophically, that might not be possible anymore.

One place to look for clues is your system log. Applications -> Utilities -> Console will let you view it. Watch the log as you plug in the drive and see if the logs tell you anything.

I've recovered drives in the past by pulling the actual SATA drive out of the firewire case and plugging it up to a PC's internal SATA bus. I booted up a NetBSD image and used dd(1) with the conv=noerror flag to rip raw data off without regard to read errors. I took this data stream and passed it off to FTP and sent it to another machine on the network. Then I used g4u to load the image back onto a fresh disk. Then I let the system disk utility (or fsck or CHKDSK, whatever was appropriate) fix the NUL'ed out files and then use something like GParted to resize the old image to fit the new, presumably larger disk.

If the data is very valuable, you can send it to a recovery firm and they will ship your data back to you on a fresh drive. Not cheap at all but if the data is important enough....

 

[Steve Rupp]

Damn I hope it's not fucked. I have an appointment tomorrow at the mac store. Maybe they can figure something out. Otherwise there's a place here in Seattle that sounds like they might be able to help.

http://progressivetech.com/

 

[knewsom]

LaCie drives are crap, I'm afraid. I've had dozens of them die on me. G-technology, FTW.

...just picked up one of these a few weeks ago, to replace my dog-slow DROBO, and I absolutely love it, though it ain't whisper quiet.

 

[bigred]

Should have bought a PC

 

[Steve Rupp]

If I can get the data off this thing, I'm just going to get a new internal HD and keep everything on that. Then I'll get something reliable and use time machine. After I'm done editing photos I'll just export them as JPEG and keep them somewhere else and not on the aperture library.

I'm still glad I don't have a PC. I really don't believe this is the mac's fault.

 

[group captain mandrake]

Should have bought a PC

Damn, you beat me to it.

 

[chris snell]

Steve, get a RAID-protected array if you can. It's well worth it.

 

[love_kills]

PC whateva. I love the apple sticker on my disco and my golf

 

[Steve Rupp]

Chris, you're speaking a different language my friend

 

[Steve Rupp]

Well, I brought the drive to the Apple store and the guy couldn't do a thing with Disc Warrior. He basically told me it was completely fried and the next option was to send it to California for forensic disc recovery.

I took it in to progressive tech, actually down the street from the Apple store, and they ended up recovering the files. Not only did they recover the files, they were able to keep my libraries setup the way they were. Very happy with those guys. If geek factor has anything to do with intelligence, then this is the place to go to. Those guys know what they're doing.

I think I'll get a new HD for the macbook and a time capsule and keep everything on the computer. I'll also use an external and just transfer the RAW files right from the card to the HD before importing to Aperture.

 

[ptschram]

I feel for you Steve.

I had a hard-drive fail on one of the shop computers (think critical diag machines). I replaced the hard-drive and had a horrible time finding an operating system that had the drivers for a ten-year old toughbook.

While I finally got it going on my own, it was pretty hairy there for awhile and I did end up buying a new(er) toughbook as a back-up.

PCs might not be Macs, but they do what I need them to do.

 

[chris snell]

Dang, Steve. That sucks. At least you got your data back.

I still recommend checking out an external RAID. That's just two or more disks set up with redundancy so you don't lose anything if one dies. I like the Synology devices but the G-Techs are good, too.

 

[kk88rrc]

Chris (or anyone) can you explain a RAID drive to me? I understand the concept but do you have to do anything to set one up. Also the difference between RAID 0 and 1.

I currently use 2 externals & just do manual backups of important files mostly photos & music. Since I switched from film to digi the drive has filled up fast and it's time for a new storage.

Currently looking at the G-Raid and B&H has some good prices on them. Simple question, if it's a 1TB RAID consisting of 2 mirrored drives does that mean each drive is 1TB or is it really only a 500gig drive??

 

[chris snell]

RAID stands for Redundant Array of Independent Drives. A simplified explanation: a RAID drive (AKA "RAID set") works by storing your files on multiple drives simultaneously. So, when you copy a photo to your RAID set, that file exists on at least two physical disks. If any one disk dies, your files are still safe. You would just replace the failed disk and it would be reconstructed from the redundant data on the other disk.

For setup, it depends on how you are doing your RAID. If you buy a commercial off-the-shelf array like the Synology, they often come from the factory with the RAID already set up. They have a web-based interface that you can use to tweak the settings if you desire. It is also possible to make a RAID of any two identical disks within/attached to your computer. This is called "software RAID" and you typically use the operating system to set this up. Most home users are not going to mess with software RAID and will just opt for a hardware solution.

RAID 0 vs RAID 1 vs RAID 5.

RAID 0 is called "striping" and isn't redundant at all. With a RAID 0 set, your file gets split between two (or more) drives. When your computer reads that file, it reads from both drives simultaneously, thus speeding things up considerably. RAID 0 is much faster but if you lose any drive in the set, your data is completely lost.

RAID 1 is called "mirroring". In a RAID 1 set, your file gets copied to two drives and is therefore redundant. You can lose one drive and still access your data. You don't get any additional speed from RAID 1, however, because the computer reads only from one of the drives. If you mirror two 1 TB drives, you will get a 1 TB array.

RAID 5 is a little more difficult to explain. With RAID 5, you take three or more disks and spread the files out across them. You also spread "parity" information across them. Using this parity information, the RAID set can still recover files in the event that you lose a disk. RAID 5 makes reading files a little bit faster than RAID 1 but writing files is very slightly slow because the computer has to create the parity information.

RAID 10 is another option. It's basically a combination of RAID 1 and RAID 0. You get more speed but you also have redundancy. You need at least 4 disks for RAID 10 and the total number of disks has to be an even number. RAID 10 is very popular for performance computing, database servers, etc. If you have the money, go for RAID 10.

A graphical explanation:

http://home.comcast.net/~kevin-e-kline/wsb/media/1298685/site1012.jpg

 

[stevenr]

Another thing to look into is redundancy. I have had too many external drives fail to know not to keep important data in just one location.

 

[AU_88]

Should have bought a PC

You know, if you would come up from bill gates dick for long enough, maybe you'd see the light.

 

[chris snell]

Another thing to look into is redundancy. I have had too many external drives fail to know not to keep important data in just one location.

Outstanding answer!