12-02-2009, 04:44 AM
Asking the collective intellect for advice on this...
Friend brought me her PBG4 12"1GHz. Wouldn't boot. I think it's Panther. Maybe Tiger.
I tried it. She was right. Zapped PRAM, started to boot. "Yay!" I thought. "That was easy!"
BUT- I noticed a LOT of HD activity and it took a LONG time trying to boot. There is something wrong I thought. It gets as far as loading her desktop picture and then it hangs. HD activity continues.
My first thought is, the OS got hosed somehow. I don't hear any obvious clicking or sounds of distress from the HD but that doesn't mean it's not failing. And if it is failing, I wanted to ask the collective (that's you guys) what the protocol should be for trying to recover data. Of course nothing is backed up. I have paused recovery operations until I can get some advice. I want to avoid stressing a failing drive (if that is what the problem is).
My goal is to recover her user folder. I have a spare HD I can upgrade into that machine, and I have OS install disks. I can replace a HD in that machine, no problem. It's the data I'm worried about.
It does go into FW disk mode but I haven't hooked it up to a good mac yet. Is this the way to go, and run Disk Util on it? Probably needs a runthrough with DW also? How would you proceed?
Friend brought me her PBG4 12"1GHz. Wouldn't boot. I think it's Panther. Maybe Tiger.
I tried it. She was right. Zapped PRAM, started to boot. "Yay!" I thought. "That was easy!"
BUT- I noticed a LOT of HD activity and it took a LONG time trying to boot. There is something wrong I thought. It gets as far as loading her desktop picture and then it hangs. HD activity continues.
My first thought is, the OS got hosed somehow. I don't hear any obvious clicking or sounds of distress from the HD but that doesn't mean it's not failing. And if it is failing, I wanted to ask the collective (that's you guys) what the protocol should be for trying to recover data. Of course nothing is backed up. I have paused recovery operations until I can get some advice. I want to avoid stressing a failing drive (if that is what the problem is).
My goal is to recover her user folder. I have a spare HD I can upgrade into that machine, and I have OS install disks. I can replace a HD in that machine, no problem. It's the data I'm worried about.
It does go into FW disk mode but I haven't hooked it up to a good mac yet. Is this the way to go, and run Disk Util on it? Probably needs a runthrough with DW also? How would you proceed?