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Everything seemed to be going along normally. I left my MacPro running and watched a TV show. when I went back to the computer it had shut down and the blue LED in my OWC external FW drive was flashing madly, so I turned it off.
I restarted and when the boot was complete I turned on the external drive and it was quickly recognized, but I then noticed that one of my internal hard drive icons was missing from the desktop.
The drive was visible in DU, so I ran Disk Utility's Verify & Repair and got the following message: Invalid node structure
Volume check failed
Error: File system verify or repair failed
All of a sudden, my system shut down as I sat there. The TV which is on another outlet, the room lights and the rest of the house weren't affected, seeming to rule out a brief power outage??? But that's what it seemed like.
My computer, monitor etc. are plugged into a large Belkin UPS, which is fairly new. I don't know what my next step is, for the moment my computer is running normally (I hope).
I don't know what to do about the 300gb Maxtor drive which, for the moment seems to be out of commission or dead forever.
I'm worried about the other drives. Should I be? Any way to check?
I'll gladly accept any helpful ideas because I've never faced this problem before, that I can remember. (I say that because, no doubt, BGnR will probably remind me that 10 years ago I posted the about same problem)
It's been one of those days where one mechanical device after another crapped out on me. Please, help! :banghead:
TIA,
GeneL
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How large is the UPS? What kind of monitor? The Mac Pro is not exactly light on its current draw, add the draw of a monitor, especially a larger one and you could have been keeping the UPS pretty close to its max. More than a couple or three years on the life of the UPS and the battery could be toast. The sudden shut down is exactly what I got with a 4 year old battery in my UPS, and I keep its load below 50%. It works fine now that I replaced the battery.
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Joe, you think that the UPS is to blame?
I will have to check the rating of the UPS in the morning. My monitor is a Dell 2005FPW widescreen.
I'll call Belkin in the morning, as well, since I think there might be some kind of coverage for the hard drive.
I'm just not sure how long I've had the UPS, because it was a warranty replacement for a previous Belkin unit. I wonder if this one has an extended warranty?
I'm just wondering if I'm risking damage to the rest of my system by using it without an answer to why it shut down? Seems fine for the moment.
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Also, check for a swollen battery in the UPS or signs of melting around the edges of the case. Belkins are not known for their reliability.
(Personally, I think they got out of the UPS business because they were spending outrageous sums on repeated warranty-replacements.)
...
Anyway, you might as well start with the Hardware Test disc/partition from the installer discs and run the extended tests.
Then start up from the OS installer disc and run the Disk Utility from there to check every drive in the tower.
Assuming that the other drive(s) is/are okay, I'd then run Disk Warrior on the "bad" drive and see what it comes up with.
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Looks like Belkin decided to jump back into the UPS business about a month or so after posting that no UPS products were available and the category line was discontinued on their web site. Now they sell some of them as "Datacenter" or "networking" solutions, but they list part numbers for smaller units. But most of the items can not be ordered direct from Belkin yet and do not list a MSRP. Part numbers are starting to show up as available from some sellers though.
As for reliability, I never had a problem. But others like MacMagus did report problems. As for possibly being the problem in this case, all it took to shut down my system before I replaced the battery was a dip in the AC supply below about 105 V. The AVR would try to kick in, the battery voltage would immediately drop, and the UPS would shut down since it could not deliver the replacement current to the load on it. It did not do that before when the unit was new, and since I replaced the battery a couple months ago, it rides right through dips like that.
As for your monitor, Dell lists its normal power consumption at about 75 W with USB ports in use. But says its power supply can have a max draw of about 1.6 A or about 150-160 W. But the killer spec as for the LCD display being plugged into the UPS is the following. "Inrush current 120V: 30A (Max.)". I have seen laser printers and motors that did not have as large of a possible inrush current, points to poor PS design with no use of current limiting elements. Beyond that, is what the "etc." is referring to in your phrase of "My computer, monitor etc. are plugged into a large Belkin UPS".
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> As for reliability, I never had a problem... The AVR
> would try to kick in, the battery voltage would
> immediately drop, and the UPS would shut down
> since it could not deliver the replacement current to
> the load on it. It did not do that before when the
> unit was new...
I can't tell if you were being sarcastic with that first statement or if you honestly don't see the contradiction in what you wrote.
> Looks like Belkin decided to jump back into the UPS business
If you check their site you'll see they have been ditching their UPSes at clearance prices and are sold out of all but one model.
See also:
http://forums.macresource.com/read/1/544340
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Not being sarcastic, you completely took out the bit about this being with a dead, 4 year old + battery in the UPS. The battery voltage would be "normal" while being charged, but would not hold up under discharge. As also mentioned, it works fine with a brand new battery in it. By the way, that is also exactly what an APC UPS did back where I worked when its battery pack needed replacing. Never mind the other APC UPS there that failed less than 2 years old when an undersized capacitor in its power supply blew up.
As for the post you bring up, that notice I started the thread off with is no longer on the Belkin site. If you compare the models, they also are different from the previous models. As for clearance prices, I have not seen any such while checking the site, and the models appear to be in current stock at non-blowout prices at quite a few on-line sellers
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Thanks for all the input, folks. I'm not even sure that the Belkin UPS is the culprit. So far this morning, everything seems normal, other than the drive missing from my desktop.
As has become a more frequent occurrence with me, I didn't get to sleep until about 5 AM, so I'm terribly tired and slow this morning.
MacMagus' suggestions seem appropriate to me, except that since the UPS is kind of buried under my desk and a bit hard to get to, so I just don't have the energy to pull everything out right now. The other tests will also have to be put off for the moment.
Using the Apple Hardware Test which requires unplugging everything except the monitor, keyboard and mouse will make me address getting down and pulling all the devices that I have plugged into the UPS. Boy! that's going to be a struggle for me, but a necessary one. Perhaps, if I can find the energy, I can label the various wires that I have plugged into the UPS. At this point, I haven't a clue as to which is which.
One question though, Mac, can I use my older (3.0.3 Tiger) version of DW to check the bad drive which was still using 10.4.4? I'm currently running 10.5.5 on my MacPro and I can't afford to upgrade DW right now.
Mavis is calling me to come eat my oatmeal, so I'll have to check back in a little while.
Thanks for taking the time to assist me. I only wish that one of you guys lived close and could come by to do the "heavy lifting." I'm in pretty sad shape right now.
Be well.
GeneL
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DW 3.0.3 is certified to work with Tiger. You should be fine running it on 10.4.4 so long as you boot from the DW CD and not from your 10.5 startup disk. It's not designed to run while booted from a Leopard volume.
...
Speaking of unplugging everything except the monitor, keyboard and mouse: If the hardware test gives you a clean bill of health and the shutdown happens again, your USB and FW devices are the prime suspects and disconnecting them is the next troubleshooting step.
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MacMagus wrote:
DW 3.0.3 is certified to work with Tiger. You should be fine running it on 10.4.4 so long as you boot from the DW CD and not from your 10.5 startup disk. It's not designed to run while booted from a Leopard volume.
Whoops! The only drive that has 10.4.4 on it is the one that's not working.  I guess that I'm out of luck, as far as using DW to try to fix the drive. Are there any other methods of possibly recovering the drive?
Otherwise, I'm so exhausted that I can't even think about troubleshooting right now.
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