[G4] Files on external HD corrupted by Panther

[Anthony Kluck]

Hi again,

First, this is a great list; I'm glad to have found it. The discourse 
on digitizing vinyl had a few bits of info I didn't know already (I use 
CD Spin Doctor, btw and am satisfied with it), and the explanation of 
the process was very good. I am passing that along to a friend who has 
expressed interest in making CDs of some albums unavailable on 
commercial CD and this explained it easier than I could!

I just upgraded my G4's OS from 9.2.2 to 10.3.9 and have an external 
Fantom 80 Gig hard disc where I back up and store a lot of my junk; 
it's connected to the G4 via Firewire. A bad thing has happened: 
somewhere during the installation or thereafter, Panther seems to have 
corrupted quite a few of my files (stuff I'd archived there but hadn't 
backed up further, presuming the hard disc to be satisfactory as 
storage (Murphy's Law kicked in...)). The files are now black icons and 
Panther appears to have turned various, seemingly random, files (jpegs, 
Photoshop files, iTunes Library, et.al.) into Unix executable files 
that have zero K (in essence, wiping them out).

Has anyone experienced this before? Is there a way to salvage the 
files, or have I been hosed, and is this merely a symptom of a larger 
problem? I ran the disc repair utility in OS X which could not finish 
whatever repair it wanted to make to my Fantom (wouldn't cite a 
reason); it advised reformatting the disc altogether. I'd hate to do 
that, but if I must I must.

Thanks in advance for any input, folks.
Tony