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286
 
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 29/12/2008 23:19:49
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| Well, after many years of fault free Mac computing I suffered my 1st major crask!!! Everything was running smoothly and I put the Mac to 'sleep' (similar to Windows hibernating) whilst I went out. Came back, woke Mac up to find it had frozen solid. Could even get to 'Force quit' (equivalent of Windows Task Manager) so had to be the silver power button to switch of. On re-start the Mac got to the 1st window with the Apple logo then shut down.... repeatedly. Basically it couldn't find the HDD, wasn't even spinning it up. Stuck OS X Install DVD in and booted OK from that. I have a HDD as a back-up on my desk so I re-booted from that - this is affectively a mirror of the internal HDD and is bootable. Cut a long story short I re-formatted the internal HDD and copied the external disk back to the internal. After 40 mins to do this I'm now back running as normal from the internal disk. Have no idea what went wrong but suspect it must have been something to do with waking up from sleep. Don't think its hardware related as I run S.M.A.R.T disk reporter in the background and there was definitely no warning. The moral of the story is two-fold: a) Macs aren't infallible as some (mainly Mac owners) would believe, and b) always back up your HDD regularly (last did mine a week ago so nowt lost). I have a question which those who know more about Windows can answer. Can you directly copy a Windows installation to another HDD and run from ther, and then if necessary, copy it back again as a complete bootable install? Can't seem to remeber whether you can as normally the advice is to do a complete re-install under these cicumstances. You can do this using 'Disk Utility' in OS X which saved me a couple of hours yesterday afternoon at least. Is there likely to be this facility in Vista. Am just curious thats all...... Will let you know if the Beast kills itself again......
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286
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 08/12/2008 19:59:53
Posts: 406,
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Did you really need to reformat your entire hard drive? I've had the same occurr to me, and I've solved it by rebooting from a CD, then shutting down the Mac in the usual way, then starting it again - it almost always works. As soon as I'm back up and running, it's a good idea to rebuild your permissions with Disc Utility, and if you have it, use Disc Warrior to optimise your HDD. This works a treat, and without reformatting your entire drive.
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286
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 29/12/2008 23:19:49
Posts: 287,
Visits: 1,581
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Hi Ian
No, that didn't work. I used Disk Utility from Install DVD and external HDD - neither could repair or recover the main drive. In fact, the 'macintosh HD' icon in 'Disk Utility' was greyed out. Nor did the Macintosh HD appear on the desktop either. It must have wiped the Boot Sector out somehow.
It wasn't a major problem as a quick format & erase from Disk Utility takes 10 seconds and the total re-install from the external drive just under 40 minutes. It was just a bind to have to do it.
I gather from our IT bod at work that Norton's Ghost does something similar to OS X if you need to do a complete re-install of Windows & its apps. It'd be nice if Vista could do similar when it's released. The ability to hit the back-up button and copy your whole installation to disk & then back again if main disk crashes is great. Don't know how long it would have taken to do clean install of OS X and then re-install all my apps, probably several hours.
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286
Group: Forum Members
Last Login: 08/12/2008 19:59:53
Posts: 406,
Visits: 751
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Something else to try is to reinstall the operating system without reformatting the hard drive. If you have a boot problem, it could be corrupted files in the OS. Reinstalling without erasing what you already have solves this without deleting your apps and files, though you need to use Software Update afterwards to take advantage of OS patches and fixes released after your CD or DVD was issued.
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