[X-Unix] Start, re-start? again & again?

[Alex]

On Wednesday, Feb 11, 2004, at 13:30 Canada/Eastern, CP wrote:

> What if I hook my external 160 GB drive (after installing the OS on 
> it, it should start from that… right?

Depends on the type of ext'l drive and on the Mac. I believe most G4s 
and later can boot from FireWire devices -- not sure about USB.

Bottom line? If fsck couldn't fix the drive, stop trying to boot from 
it, you can only make things worse.

If you need to recover files from the drive (that should teach you to 
back up religiously!), either boot from the ext'l drive, or get a 
second int'l drive and use that as a boot device. Recover as much as 
you can, then use DiskWarrior, or, if you don't have it, just 
reinitialize the damaged drive. You can also boot from the DW CD and 
run it, but, although DW is an excellent tool, it may not work in this 
instance and it is conceivable you'll lose data. You could also try to 
boot from an OS 9 CD, if your Mac supports it.

If you don't need to recover files, just boot from your OS install 
disc, reinitialize the drive and reinstall the system.

f