[iBook] interesting HD behaviour

[RP McKay]

On 20/9/04 8:51 am, "Angus Wallace" <angus.wallace at flinders.edu.au> wrote
(in part):

> I booted the Panther install cd, and went into the disk repair program - it
> said
> there were errors on the disk that it was unable to fix..

and

> What's the consensus - does this sound like a hardware problem? I realise that
> this is quite a detailed question for this list. Can people suggest things to
> try?

You are on the right track with trying Disk Utility first as this is the
lowest risk utility and can deal with most small issues...To repair the disk
though you will need a fairly up to date Panther install CD or you can use
BootCD to create a bootable CD with the latest version of Panther (or
whatever you are using) and other self contained programs:

<http://www.versiontracker.com/dyn/moreinfo/macosx/15196>

DiskWarrior is generally known to be a great tool for repairing disk
directories like those you mention with little risk. I think that it also
has the SMART tools to warn of impending HD failure. The link is here:

<http://www.alsoft.com/DiskWarrior/>

But first to ask the obvious questions:

How much free space do you have on the disk still? Is it near full?

Do you routinely run the cron jobs to get rid of the unix log files that can
build up? (or leave your Mac on 24/7) If not then run them:

sudo periodic daily weekly monthly
Password (of admin user)

This can take several minutes until the command line comes back with a new
prompt.

Do you also run disk utility repair permissions before and after new
installations of software or after compiling which really makes a mess of
things? This is also considered to be good housekeeping and keeps the bugs
at bay...

Have you also tried using fsck in single user mode on startup to repair the
disk? Use man fsck in terminal to find out more or use one of the many tools
with a GUI for these tasks and more such as cocktail.

Hope this helps some,

Richard
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