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Killed the Hard Disk?

mikora7

mikora7

macrumors member
Original poster
Jul 5, 2007
78
0
Illinois
We just upgraded to leopard and my son was dying to load 8ootcamp and Windows XP onto it so we 8ought an external harddrie, partitioned it and ran time machine to create a 8ackup. We started 8ootcamp and partitioned the hard disk and started the Windows XP install. When the places to install XP appeared, instead of waiting for me to check the install guide (which might hae alerted us to the pro8lem) he selected the disk place and told it to install. When it said it couldn't install there, he picked another one where it appeared to install, 8ut afterwards, when it reinstarted, it got into an endless startup loop. Een worse, when we finally got the pc disk out it wouldn't start up anymore from the mc format. We put in the leopard disk to start up, got it to 8oot as a mac and we assumed we could re-format it with leopard. Instead, it says there is no disk there at all. When we went into the Disk utility program to erify the disk, it cn't find it and disk repair cannot find it either. We did finally notice that at the ottom of the utility program it does recognize that the disk is there, ut it is locked and says it's not writale. Sorry for the typing errors, ut I'm on my laptop which has the two keys etween c and n roken.
So haye we completely killed my sweet mac? Or is there a way to restore the hard disk eyen though it says it cannot 8e written to?
 
It sounds like he might have chosen the OS-X partition by mistake.

When you are in Disk Utility (from your OS-X restore disk), select the internal drive and the Partition tab. Select "single" partition, click the "option" button and make sure "GUID" is selected as the partition table. You might have been just trying to "erase", instead of creating a new partition.

Once that is done, you should be able to "Restore from Time Machine" (or words to that effect). Your Time Machine backup should show up and let you get back to "square one".

On your next attempt, the correct partition should show up as the "C:" drive, and you can double check by verifying the partition size. It will need to format, especially if you are using NTFS.
 
Keeping my fingers crossed that this will work. I thought we did try to re-partition things, 8ut may8e we didn't. I will try it out first thing in the morning and let you know if I could do it. Thanks!
 
Wait, should we use the Leopard install disk? Or should I go ack to the disks that came originally with the computer? Or does it not matter?
 
Just remem8ered... there is no internal hard driye that shows up. That was one of the pro8lems we had. I know it's there 8ut only 8ecause it's name (all in num8ers and letters) appears in the list on the left of the options, where the disk driyes appear) yet we can't select it or modify it. At the 8ottom of the utility window it says the driye is locked and cannot 8e written to.
This was using the Leopard install disk. Will using a different disk work to correct this?
 
mikora7 said:
Just remem8ered... there is no internal hard driye that shows up. That was one of the pro8lems we had. I know it's there 8ut only 8ecause it's name (all in num8ers and letters) appears in the list on the left of the options, where the disk driyes appear) yet we can't select it or modify it. At the 8ottom of the utility window it says the driye is locked and cannot 8e written to.
This was using the Leopard install disk. Will using a different disk work to correct this?
Click to expand...

"Drive locked" sounds like the Leopard DVD is selected. The old drive could show up with a name like "disk0".

If it still doesn't show up, try resetting the PRAM by holding down "cmd-opt-p-r" on startup, until you hear the startup chime a 2nd time.
 
Some more information...

With the install disk not in (original one) we get a grey screen with a flashing folder that has a ? on it. When we put in the dvd, it goes to a screen that asks us to choose English. We do, it goes on to select destination and then it stops. There is no destination to select. Zapping the PRAM didn't help.
When we go to startup disk in the menu, we are given two choices. One is the Mac OS X disk and the other is network setup.
When we go to disk utility these options appear. There is the install disk that we put in and above it, the internal dvd drive. Above that, there is disk0s1 (greyed out) and above that is 232.9 gb st3250824as.....
If we click on disk0s1 we get more information at the bottom of the utility window that looks like this:

Mount Point: not mounted
Format: -
Owners Enabled: -
Number of Folders:-

Capacity: 128.9GB (138,377,041,408 bytes)
Available: -
Used: -
Number of Files: -

When we click on the top choice, 232.9 GB ST3250824AS Q Media
we get this information at the bottom:

Disk Description: ST3250824AS Q Media
Connection Bus: Serial ATA 2
Connection Type: Internal
Total Capacity: 232.9 GB (250,059,350,016 Bytes)
Write Status: Read/Write
S.M.A.R.T. Status: Verified
Partition Scheme: Master Boot Record

Does this help?
 
More information:

When we select Disk0s1, there are four choices on the right side of the window: First Aid, Erase, Raid and Restore. At the top, the choices are New Image, Info and Mount. Should I try to remount it? Or is there nothing to mount since the format, folders, used, and files are all blank?

Do I need to purchase a new hard drive?
 
mikora7 said:
More information:

When we select Disk0s1, there are four choices on the right side of the window: First Aid, Erase, Raid and Restore. At the top, the choices are New Image, Info and Mount. Should I try to remount it? Or is there nothing to mount since the format, folders, used, and files are all blank?

Do I need to purchase a new hard drive?
Click to expand...

Good info. Thanks.

What happens if you select "232.9 GB ST3250824AS Q Media"?

  • With that selected you should get the "Partition" tab.
  • When in "Partition", change "Volume Scheme: to "1 Partition".
  • Set the Format to "Mac OS Extended (Journaled)".
  • You can now get to the "Options" button. Click that, and change the partition map to "GUID Partition Table" (I noticed the drive did say it was "Master Boot Record" (MBR) - that's why you can't boot back to OS-X (aside from it being erased)).
  • After selecting "OK" to select "GUID", you should be able to click "Apply".
Now, you should have a volume under "232.9 GB ST3250824AS Q Media" as "Untitled 1", Partition Map Scheme "GUID Partition Table".

Quit Disk Utility. go to "Restore from Time Machine Backup" and follow the instructions.

Hope that helps. The good news is it doesn't look like there's anything physically wrong with the drive.
 
Thanks Gr8fly! We will try this in a minute. I hope it works. My friend called Apple Technical Support and all they could say was to send it in to an Apple Repair Center.
 
Okay, we did what you said and ejected the Leopard Disk. When we told it to start up from Macintosh HD and restarted it, we got an error in code that says

panic(cpu 0 caller 0x004384FF): "unable to find driver for this platform: \"ACPI\".\n"@/SourceCache/xnu/xnu-1228.12.14/iokit/Kernel/IOPlatformExpert.cpp:1407
(That is the first line. It goes on to say...)

Debugger called: <panic>
Backtrace (CPU 0), Frame : Return Address (4 potential args on stack)(then there are 7 lines that start with 0x2f5d3 followed by)


Backtrace terminated-invalid frame pointer 0

BSD process name corresponding to current thread: Unknown

Mac OS version:
Not yet set

Kernel version:
Darwin Kernel Version 9.7.0: Tue Mar 31 22:52:17 PDT 2009; root:xnu-1228.12.14~1/RELEASE_I386

System uptime in nanoseconds: 201626009


Then that's it. It gives us a black window that asks us to restart the system. When we do that, we get the same message. What do we do now?
 
You have to have the Leopard DVD in the machine at the time.

In the same menu that you find Disk Utility, you should also see n option to restore from backup. Select this option and follow the on screen instructions.

Depending on the size of the Time Machine backup, it could an hour or so.
 
Ok sorry about what your son did to your computer but why are you typing all of your 'B's with the number 8?:cool: Its wicked annoying!:mad:
 
TheShinyMac said:
Ok sorry about what your son did to your computer but why are you typing all of your 'B's with the number 8?:cool: Its wicked annoying!:mad:
Click to expand...

I apologize again, but on my laptop, the B and the V keys do not work so the 8 is the closest thing to a B and the lower case y is closest to a v that I can find.
 
G4DP said:
You have to have the Leopard DVD in the machine at the time.

In the same menu that you find Disk Utility, you should also see n option to restore from backup. Select this option and follow the on screen instructions.

Depending on the size of the Time Machine backup, it could an hour or so.
Click to expand...

I did try this first. It said everything was succesfully restored and it appears to copied all the data back to the internal hard drive but when it restarted, it wanted to reinstall Leopard. Three times we restarted it and told it to start up from the internal disk drive (now called Macintosh HD) and each time it restarted saying it needed to reformat that drive so we took the Leopard disk out to see what would happen. I probably wasn't very clear about that. So the string of code we got was after Time Machine had restored everything and it was supposedly successful.
One more thing, my dh did try to tell the computer to re-install Leopard onto that hard drive and got an error that it couldn't do it. I can't remember the exact wording, but I will do it again for you if it's needed. I think it said something like it couldn't make the drive a start-up disk?
Also, if needed, I can post the information from disk utility that I had posted earlier today, now updated.

If there is anything I can post that will help, please let me know. And thanks for all of your helping!
 
mikora7 said:
I did try this first. It said everything was succesfully restored and it appears to copied all the data back to the internal hard drive but when it restarted, it wanted to reinstall Leopard. Three times we restarted it and told it to start up from the internal disk drive (now called Macintosh HD) and each time it restarted saying it needed to reformat that drive so we took the Leopard disk out to see what would happen. I probably wasn't very clear about that. So the string of code we got was after Time Machine had restored everything and it was supposedly successful.
One more thing, my dh did try to tell the computer to re-install Leopard onto that hard drive and got an error that it couldn't do it. I can't remember the exact wording, but I will do it again for you if it's needed. I think it said something like it couldn't make the drive a start-up disk?
Also, if needed, I can post the information from disk utility that I had posted earlier today, now updated.

If there is anything I can post that will help, please let me know. And thanks for all of your helping!
Click to expand...

So, you were able to re-partition the drive: 1-partition GUID?

Then, you quit Disk Utility. At that point, you should have gone back to the menu and selected "restore from Time Machine backup" - not go to back to the installer.

The panic is suspicious - double check the drive is partitioned using the GUID map.
 
I will recheck. I believe we did follow your instructions completely, but if we goofed somehow, can I just go back and follow them again?
 
mikora7 said:
I will recheck. I believe we did follow your instructions completely, but if we goofed somehow, can I just go back and follow them again?
Click to expand...

Just go back to the point where you have booted on the Leopard DVD and run Disk Utility. You can start over, there. (I'm assuming your Time Machine backup is still intact... )

As G4DP mentioned, restore from Time Machine should take awhile. Probably more than an hour, and shouldn't require any interaction.
 
Okay, I am almost positive that I followed these same steps earlier today when we did it, but I am doing it again. I partitioned it again and now the former one is still there but changed to disk0 and greyed out (unmounted) and the new one is black. I have told Time Machine to restore the data. I will probably let it run and check it in the morning. Hopefully it'll work this time. If it doesn't I'll post the info in detail for you.
 
It's still a no-go.
I swear I followed the instructions correctly. I booted up the computer from the Leopard DVD, got to the select a destination screen, and when it said it couldn't install OS X onto the harddrive, I selected disk utility, told it to partition 1 section using GUID (as described in my above post), applied, quit utility, and went back to the installer menu. I selected Restore System From Backup under the utilities menu and it went into the Time Machine restore process.
When I got up this monring, it said it had restored successfully and that I needed to restart to start up from the restored system. Instead it started up from the Leopard DVD again. When we go through the istalller screens again, when we get to the Select a Destination screen and I click on my hard drive, it says "You cannot install Mac OS X on this volume. Mac OS X cannot start up from this volume."


Now what? Would it work if I went back to my Tiger disks and try to install from those?
 
It sounded like it restored correctly, but when it booted from the DVD, you got back into the installer. It won't install on your freshly restored volume, because it's undoubtedly a newer version (10.5.1 vs 10.5.7, for instance).

When you restart, hold down the "option" key and select your internal volume. Once back in your restored volume, go to System Preferences > Startup Disk and select your internal drive. That will make sure it finds it first on the next boots.

Another way is to hold down the mouse key on startup until the DVD ejects. It should find your internal drive and boot. Then (just to make sure the default is correct) go to Startup Disk per above.

I think you're almost there..... :)
 
I started it, held down the mouse button until the dvd ejected. Once the dvd was out, it gave us a white screen and then instead of finding the internal drive, we got the code that I wrote out here a few posts above in red. So it still isn't reading the internal drive as a bootable drive...
 
mikora7 said:
I started it, held down the mouse button until the dvd ejected. Once the dvd was out, it gave us a white screen and then instead of finding the internal drive, we got the code that I wrote out here a few posts above in red. So it still isn't reading the internal drive as a bootable drive...
Click to expand...

What is the exact model of the iMac? I might have been operating under the assumption it was an Intel model.

If it's PPC, then, the partition map needs to be APM (Apple Partition Map). I apologize if that's the case - it's a bit of complacency on my part as the majority of questions and issues are for the Intel platform (it's been almost 3 1/2 years now, since the transition). That doesn't make PPC Macs any less useable at all - in fact, both of my servers are G3 and G4 models.

In that case - one more time back to the beginning, except substitute "Apple Partition Map" in place of GUID.
 
gr8tfly said:
What is the exact model of the iMac? I might have been operating under the assumption it was an Intel model.

If it's PPC, then, the partition map needs to be APM (Apple Partition Map). I apologize if that's the case - it's a bit of complacency on my part as the majority of questions and issues are for the Intel platform (it's been almost 3 1/2 years now, since the transition). That doesn't make PPC Macs any less useable at all - in fact, both of my servers are G3 and G4 models.

In that case - one more time back to the beginning, except substitute "Apple Partition Map" in place of GUID.
Click to expand...

It is an Intel Core 2 Duo, Boot ROM version IM 51.0090.B09, SMC Version 1.9f4.
 
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