External Firewire problem
 

I am having problems accessing an external firewire drive that I have had for a few years now. In the past, I have had difficulties mounting the drive. I would turn it on, and absolutely nothing happened. The drive would spin up, but it would not mount. Usually, the drive would mount without incident after I cycled power. Tonight, when I attempted to mount the drive, and again it would not mount. I cycled power, and this time, the drive did not mount and Finder warned me not to disconnect drives without first un-mounting. I had not received this message before me in the past when cycling power.

I ran Disk Utility, and was able to verify the external drive. However, it is unable to see any files or directories. I went to the mount point in Terminal, and was able to verify that the files and directories are still there, I just can't see them anymore in Finder.

This afternoon, I downloaded the latest Apple security patch, so I am wondering if perhaps there might be a permissions problem. Disk Utility does not give me the option of repairing the permissions on the external drive. Is there a way to do this in Terminal? If not, is there a way to back up to DVD in Terminal? The external drive is larger than my internal, so I can not use cp or mv for all of my files.

This drive was originally formated on an older iMac running OS9 that I no longer have. Initially there were problems, and somehow, the drive was originally formated as HFS. I was able to use Disk First Aid to change the formating to HFS+.

An interesting note: Disk Utility would not let me unmount the external drive until I had navigated Terminal out of the drive.

What you want to do is Disk Utility > First Aid tab > select the external drive and click "Repair Disk" (not Verify anything, and not Repair Disk Permissions). Repeat this step until no problems are found.

Running the "Repair Permissions" script on an external drive is meaningless. Don't bother.

Hmmmm. I've never seen that. Do you need to retrieve files from this drive? After you've got any important files off of it that you need, I'd advise erasing and reformatting the drive. Or, if it's as old as you say it is, you may want to think seriously about just replacing it.

Trevor

I just tried that and was told that no repairs were necessary.


Yes, I do need to retrieve these files. Since repairing permissions would be a waste of time, now I need to back up the drive. I could back up a 5-6 GB at a time to my internal drive, then burn to DVD. I need to brush up on how to do recursive moves in Terminal. I'll reformat the external drive, once I have everything backed up. Would a Finder 'alternative' such as Midnight Commander help? The drive is mounted, and I can get in with Terminal, only Finder won't see the bloody thing.

A related problem- for some reason, when I upgraded my G4 to Tiger, Classic did not install. I do still have a few legacy Classic applications that I need to use every now and then. I had been running Classic from the external drive, so of course, now I can't get at that. Is there a way to install Classic on my internal drive without wiping everything? Until then, I'll need to balance my checkbook by hand (Don't mention GnuCash- double entry bookeeping gives me a headache).

Yes, all you need is an OS 9 Install disc (or an OS X Install disc that includes OS 9) and you can install OS 9 on the same drive as you currently have OS X.

Trevor

Well, I have began transfering files this morning. At first, I thought the drive was not going to mount at all. I had to cycle power three times before I was able to get in. Is there a way that I can tell if it is the drive or the firewire box that is starting to die? Also, does anybody have any ideas as to why Finder can't access the drive, while Terminal can?

Is there a way that I can have this thread moved to the Hardware and Peripherals forum?

Moved.

Trevor