Calling Mac Experts!

Hi all,

I know that there are a bunch of mac experts on this forum, so thought I'd post about a problem that I have with my (first and only) mac. (Yup, I'm a switcher)

Looking for a little advice on my new powerbook which appears to have
some disk issues.

When in OS X (10.2.4) iPhoto just unexpectedly quits, and I can't seem to
get access to the 'Pictures' directory via the Finder.

Booting into Single user Mode (cmd-s) allows me to do a 'fsck' of the
drive, but this appears to fail to do anything useful.

Here's the FSCK output:

# /sbin/fsck -y

** /dev/rdisk0s9

** Root file system

** Checking HFS Plus volume.

** Checking Extents Overflow file.

** Checking Catalog file

   Overlapped extent allocation (file 242929d)

disk0s9: 0x8 (UNDEFINED).

   Keys out of order

(4, 6233)

** Rebuilding Catalog B-tree.

disk0s9: 0x8 (UNDEFINED).

If I mount (mount -uw /) the disk and naviagate to my home directory -
trying a 'ls -al' in the 'Pictures' directory, nets me the following:

disk0s9: 0x8 (UNDEFINED).

disk0s9: 0x8 (UNDEFINED).

Not terribly helpful, I'm sure you'll agree.

I tried searching apple and google for comp.sys.mac.system, but not a lot
comes up with much use.

I tried booting the OS X CD but it hangs at the grey apple logo screen.

I'm nervous, since the Pictures directory has all of my digital photos
from my month long holiday in it, and I'm scared I'll lose the lot (~
1,200 pictures).

I don't care about anything else - any advice on how to get the data off
the machine, so that I can rebuild it?

Cheers,

Paul H

Did you Google for "overlapped extent allocation"? There's a reasonable amount of hits for it, and most places seem to suggest that DiskWarrior is what you want to fix it.

Also, try booting into OS9 (hard drive or CD) and run its disk repair utility.

You might also try opening a Terminal and running ``sudo find / -inum 242929'' (assuming I'm reading the fsck output correctly) and see what that file is. Delete it if you don't need it. Or try to copy (``cp'') it to another location (check the new file's contents first) and delete it. Then do your fsck maneuver again and see what happens.

Regardless, try that Google search I linked above and read what they have to say.

Thanks for the hits, I had tried searching for that, but only in newsgroups.

I don't have OS9 on the machine - it only comes with OS X, so I can't boot into that to run anything, unfortunately...

I will certainly go and try disk warrior, I've seen it mentioned several times. Can I run this on OS X? I read somewhere that it's ok to work on OS X partitions but needs to run in OS 9.

I'm trying the find command to see what that comes up with.

I will call apple support tomorrow, but I was just wondering if people had a few ideas first.

Paul.

I will certainly go and try disk warrior, I've seen it mentioned several times. Can I run this on OS X?

From its web site:

In order to repair a Mac OS X disk, you must start your computer from a Mac OS 9.x disk, such as the DiskWarrior CD.

One other question.. is it possible to see the console when booting from CD? I'm concerned about my inability to boot from the mac OS X CD as well.

Paul.

I don't know, but I'll bet you'd have to do some OpenFirmware stuff to make it happen. I doubt that it's very difficult, but it'll likely be more than just holding down a few keys during boot. Then again, that's just a guess.

Ok, thanks. Unfortunately you can't boot the Powerbook 12" from the Diskwarrior CD, so that's, unfortunately not an option.

Just in case you are interested, the file that was cross-allocated was : /users/paulhaigh/com.apple.recentitems.plist.

It was overlapped with /var/log/system.log

I've removed it in single user mode, but the UNDEFINED error remains.

fsck still can't do anything.

Cheers,

Paul.

Ok. You can see the console booting off the hard drive by pressing Cmd-V, but it doesn't work with CD's, since you also have to press 'C' to boot from that, and the cmd-v seems to stop that having any affect.

Paul.

Maybe that's related to ``Keys out of order''. Try running fsck a few times in a row. There's apparently been a report that that will fix it. Otherwise, I think you're back to DiskWarrior or maybe Norton SystemWorks.

Try holding Option-Command-O-F (that's four keys at once) during boot. You should get a text screen. Put in your OS X CD. Type ``boot cdrom''. When it starts booting, hold Command-V.

That might work.

Thanks for the tip.

I just got it to boot, by doing something very similar. Hold down 'Option' until boot menu comes up, then select CD - then do Cmd-v.

That works a treat.

However, DFA can't do anything with the disc either, but interestingly the (UNDEFINED) errors don't appear int he DFA window, which makes it look like the undefined errors are coming to the console, rather than from 'fsck'.

That means that it's possibly a hardware issue...

Oh well, apple Tech Support opens at 8am tomorrow, let's see what they say.

Cheers,

Paul.

Just in case anyone cares, Apple support have said that they have no idea what the error message is, means or does., but according to apple the only solution is to erase the drive partitions and re-install OS X.

Cheers,

Paul.

Someone else reported that Apple told them the same thing and then managed to fix it himself.

It's ridiculous that Apple claims that they don't know what that means. They have the source code to the application that is emitting that error. I'd suggest looking harder.

I have to say that I'm not impressed with apple support.

However, I may have found a way out of my hole, although I don't know for sure yet..

There is a product http://www.prosoftengineering.com/products/data_rescue.php that claims to get your data without going via the catalog - we'll see.

I need a different HD to boot from first, but hopefully it will be able to save my data..

Cheers,

Paul.

There is a product...

I used Data Rescue very succesfully back in the OS 9 days to recover most data from some very trashed drives. It may also requires you to boot from an OS 9 CD however :-( It can take a very long (hours to days) time to scan a drive for files.

-Mike

Well, it appears to run fine OS X now..;) I've got it booted from a fresh OS X install on an external firewire drive, which appears to be working ok. I've not done a thorough scan yet, but I fully expect it to take some time, but if it can get my data back ... I'll wait!! Anyway, I'll let you know how it turns out. Here's hoping for a more positive mac experience from this point onwards. Paul.

Genius Product.

Saved all my data, I'm very impressed. I can now reformat the mac and be happy again!

Thanks for all of the suggestions chaps!

Cheers,

Paul