05-09-2006, 12:51 AM
(Well, hello to everybody, as I've been away for a long time doing other projects. It is refreshing to visit here, and I'll try to not vanish for 2 months again.
)
I had the damndest thing happen to the boot HDrive on my G5 2.3GHz Dual Core yesterday. My computer had been acting kind of screwy but only doing certain things, first symptoms being application and window crashes. For example, when I would try to arrange my bookmarks in Safari, it would crash...just by clicking on a bookmark. Strange, I thought...
It was about time to do a monthly maintenance with DiskWarrior anyway, so I got out my DWarrior CD, started up the G5 with it, and let it rip. My lord, it was taking a long, long time to do its job, so I started looking at the splash screen while I worked on my PBook. It took something like 15 minutes to "Locate Directory information" (step 5) on the boot HDrive; then it took another 20 minutes to rebuild the Directory (through step 10), which was very suspect. Normally I'd be done in 12-15 minutes total. And then, for the first time ever, I saw the evil message: "Overlapped files found...15,000(x) etc) as DWarrior counted up all the overlapped files. I just about fell over when I saw that message, because I remember reading about it at the DM Forum, when I believe it was FranX had the same problem.
It stopped counting at 20,350 files, finally, and started in on "Step 11, relocating overlapped files" which I'd never seen before, in all the years of using DWarrior (6 or 7 years). Then it went into "Reparing Disk" mode, another 1st, and took about 7-8 minutes extra, finally stopping after a total workout of 57 minutes, a record elapsed time for v.3.0.3 in my experience. I was then presented with a very detailed report, which encouraged me to inspect the (vast) changes in my files which would occur, both in number, attributes, and composition, if I pushed the "Replace Directory" button.
In addition, DWarrior noted that "Only after the Directory is replaced, the damaged and overlapped files would be relocated on the hard drive." Another 1st time thing for me...never saw that message before either. I inspected files that were going to be changed in "Preview" mode first, then I looked at all of the overlapped files, which DWarrior had listed alphabetically, and I noted that most (almost all of them) were Core System Files, which totally freaked me out. I could just see myself losing the HDrive with this exercise, but then again this was DiskWarrior talking.
So I thought, what the hell, go for it and let DiskWarrior repair the dang drive, and I clicked on "Replace". First it did its normal thing, replacing the Directory, taking about 7 minutes to do the job (about 1 minute is normal), then another screen came up and it said "Relocating overlapped and damaged files." That didn't take long, maybe 2 minutes, and it was finally done. I tried to save the DWarrior Report to my desktop, but it just quit and restarted, NOT a good sign. But after much protest and chugging about, my desktop came up (took about 3 minutes or so), and I breathed a long sigh of relief!
First thing I did was open Safari and clicked on a bookmark in "Show All Bookmarks" mode, and I'll be darned. It was fixed. Safari didn't crash. THANK YOU DiskWarrior! The reason I detailed this whole scenario for the Macresource.com forum is simple: if you ever have overlapped files, or symptoms like I experienced which indicate this problem, get out DiskWarrior v3.0.3 CD, start up your Mac with it, and let it go to work. Chances are you'll be lucky and DWarrior will repair your HDrive. I also mean to advise you all to use DiskWarrior as as preventive maintenance tool.
If I'd have waited much longer, and the overlapped files became worse, maybe things would have been too screwed up for DiskWarrior to fix. So use DiskWarrior on a monthly basis, no matter what other routine you may have, as it can, and will repair almost any problem.
________________
)I had the damndest thing happen to the boot HDrive on my G5 2.3GHz Dual Core yesterday. My computer had been acting kind of screwy but only doing certain things, first symptoms being application and window crashes. For example, when I would try to arrange my bookmarks in Safari, it would crash...just by clicking on a bookmark. Strange, I thought...
It was about time to do a monthly maintenance with DiskWarrior anyway, so I got out my DWarrior CD, started up the G5 with it, and let it rip. My lord, it was taking a long, long time to do its job, so I started looking at the splash screen while I worked on my PBook. It took something like 15 minutes to "Locate Directory information" (step 5) on the boot HDrive; then it took another 20 minutes to rebuild the Directory (through step 10), which was very suspect. Normally I'd be done in 12-15 minutes total. And then, for the first time ever, I saw the evil message: "Overlapped files found...15,000(x) etc) as DWarrior counted up all the overlapped files. I just about fell over when I saw that message, because I remember reading about it at the DM Forum, when I believe it was FranX had the same problem.
It stopped counting at 20,350 files, finally, and started in on "Step 11, relocating overlapped files" which I'd never seen before, in all the years of using DWarrior (6 or 7 years). Then it went into "Reparing Disk" mode, another 1st, and took about 7-8 minutes extra, finally stopping after a total workout of 57 minutes, a record elapsed time for v.3.0.3 in my experience. I was then presented with a very detailed report, which encouraged me to inspect the (vast) changes in my files which would occur, both in number, attributes, and composition, if I pushed the "Replace Directory" button.
In addition, DWarrior noted that "Only after the Directory is replaced, the damaged and overlapped files would be relocated on the hard drive." Another 1st time thing for me...never saw that message before either. I inspected files that were going to be changed in "Preview" mode first, then I looked at all of the overlapped files, which DWarrior had listed alphabetically, and I noted that most (almost all of them) were Core System Files, which totally freaked me out. I could just see myself losing the HDrive with this exercise, but then again this was DiskWarrior talking.
So I thought, what the hell, go for it and let DiskWarrior repair the dang drive, and I clicked on "Replace". First it did its normal thing, replacing the Directory, taking about 7 minutes to do the job (about 1 minute is normal), then another screen came up and it said "Relocating overlapped and damaged files." That didn't take long, maybe 2 minutes, and it was finally done. I tried to save the DWarrior Report to my desktop, but it just quit and restarted, NOT a good sign. But after much protest and chugging about, my desktop came up (took about 3 minutes or so), and I breathed a long sigh of relief!
First thing I did was open Safari and clicked on a bookmark in "Show All Bookmarks" mode, and I'll be darned. It was fixed. Safari didn't crash. THANK YOU DiskWarrior! The reason I detailed this whole scenario for the Macresource.com forum is simple: if you ever have overlapped files, or symptoms like I experienced which indicate this problem, get out DiskWarrior v3.0.3 CD, start up your Mac with it, and let it go to work. Chances are you'll be lucky and DWarrior will repair your HDrive. I also mean to advise you all to use DiskWarrior as as preventive maintenance tool.
If I'd have waited much longer, and the overlapped files became worse, maybe things would have been too screwed up for DiskWarrior to fix. So use DiskWarrior on a monthly basis, no matter what other routine you may have, as it can, and will repair almost any problem.
________________
