Is there a way to fix directory maps on SSD's?

[wnlewis]

Is there a way to at least temporarily fix the directory maps on SSD drives?

I have three Samsung EVO 840 SSD's in my Sawtooth (AGP) G4 Mac. Two of the SSD's are 1 Tb and one is a 250 Gb. All three have bad directories.

For all three of them to go bad suggests that I have done something that I shouldn't have done.

Are there any "fixit" methods or software that absolutely SHOULD NOT be used? Hopefully I have not used any of those methods or software.

Thanks for any suggestions.

 

[eyoungren]

Try looking for DiskWarrior 4. By Alsoft, works on PowerPC.

 

[Raging Dufus]

@eyoungren gave you the best solution for your problem, DiskWarrior. You'll have to get off your wallet though, it's not cheap, but might be worth it to you. As far as the source of your problem, maybe you did something you shouldn't have - we'd have to know what you do/what apps you use/etc to be able to speculate on that.

But I'm more suspicious of hardware failure in this particular case. It seems unlikely that three different SSDs - especially a known good brand like Samsung - would all fail in the same way at the same time. It's more likely that some common hardware element caused the failures. Your Sawtooth doesn't support SATA drives natively, so what kind of adapter(s) are you using with these SSDs? Are they all connected to a single PCI SATA card? Are they on individual SATA to PATA adapters and connected to one or more of your Sawtooth's IDE buses? What's your hardware situation?

 

[eyoungren]

@eyoungren gave you the best solution for your problem, DiskWarrior. You'll have to get off your wallet though, it's not cheap, but might be worth it to you. As far as the source of your problem, maybe you did something you shouldn't have - we'd have to know what you do/what apps you use/etc to be able to speculate on that.

But I'm more suspicious of hardware failure in this particular case. It seems unlikely that three different SSDs - especially a known good brand like Samsung - would all fail in the same way at the same time. It's more likely that some common hardware element caused the failures. Your Sawtooth doesn't support SATA drives natively, so what kind of adapter(s) are you using with these SSDs? Are they all connected to a single PCI SATA card? Are they on individual SATA to PATA adapters and connected to one or more of your Sawtooth's IDE buses? What's your hardware situation?

In my old job I had a ram stick go bad. I didn't know it at the time, but it took out the hard drive 'B' tree. And THAT is how I came to find out about Disk Warrior.

 

[Raging Dufus]

In my old job I had a ram stick go bad. I didn't know it at the time, but it took out the hard drive 'B' tree. And THAT is how I came to find out about Disk Warrior.

I've had the need before, and almost bought it, but my inner cheapskate always got the best of me

I haven't exhausted my supply of stupidity though, so it's bound to happen sooner or later.

 

[Macbookprodude]

Disk warrior is your friend. Even have OS 9 version too. The best utility to have for any Mac 😀😀

 

[wnlewis]

I have tested two of the SSD's in my cMP 5,1. I put them - one at a time - into an Icy Box enclosure and installed them with the Windows SSD as the only other drive.

The cMP boots natively into Windows 10. I bring up Samsung Magician and the first two EVO 840's checked out good. HOWEVER, one of the 1 Tb SSD's reports as a 1.83 Tb drive. The other 1 Tb drive reports as a 2.3 Tb drive. The actual amount of data on each drive is well below the limit of the drive, under 50%. So, the directory maps have been hammered.

When the SSD's are installed in the G4, they interface through a FirmTek/SeriTek four port PCI card. The drives go directly to the card through SATA cables. The G4 reports the drives as SCSI drives. Although the drive size limits are essentially non-existent by doing that, I am trying to keep the sizes reasonable (186 Gb or less).

OS 9.2.2., OS 10.4.11, and OS 10.5.8 can all see the drives and work with them. 9.2.2 is limited as to doing more than just getting or copying files to the 10.4.11 and the 10.5.8 partitions, and 10.5.8 can't use any of the 9.2.2 programs.

I did have 10.4.11 using a classic copy of 9.2.2 installed on the 10.4.11 partition. It had been that way for several years with no problem. It was a bit slow, but very reliable.

Recently, I installed 9.2.2 on one of the 1 Tb drives in its own partition - formatted in extended, but not journaled. I had 10.4.11 use that when running in Classic mode. That ran like a scalded cat. And when running in 9.2.2 mode natively, it runs even faster.

In terms of drive repair software, the newest version of DiskWarrior that I have is DVD Rev. 810. That uses OS 10.5.3. I have to be careful with it on 9.2.2. It does have the best directory map repair capability.

The next newest disc that I have is ver. 3.0, OS 10.2.3, that is my pretty much universal go to for 9.2.2 and 10.4.11. It is no good for 10.5.8.

I will look for and try to buy a copy of Version 4 (unless that is the same as DVD Rev. 810).

In addition, I have Drive Genius 2 which is very good in some areas not covered by DiskWarrior.

Two or three years ago I was able to use TestDisk to fix the directory map on a hard drive on the G4. Unfortunately, the drive was going bad and failed just a bit after that. TestDisk, is a white knuckles, make sure everything is perfect, because if it isn't, there's no going back, sort of software.

I can do testDisk, though I'd rather not.

When I put in either Disk Warrior or Drive Genius, the programs get to a certain point and the beach ball just seems to sit and spin forever. It is possible that I have not been patient enough.

In terms of the G4 hardware, the processor is a 1 GHz Sonnet upgrade sitting on the Rev. 2 motherboard (the second one for the Sawtooth (AGP) G4's that allows for the installation of a dual processor upgrade. The RAM is matched 256 Mb 1333 to give 1 Gb of memory.

Other than the internal speaker shorting out - external works fine - there have been no hardware problems, other than the usual of having to replace power supplies now and then. The SSD's don't put as much load on it, so I think it should be good to go for a while longer.

I have the standard video card going via the DVI port to an HP24 display. The image is a bit spread out, but I have not looked at ways to correct that just yet. The mouse is a Kensington four button trackball with scroll ring. The keyboard is a general Walmart wired PC keyboard - not wonderful, but it will do until I can afford another extended keyboard and a Wombat interface (I have a Tinkerboy interface for the Extended that I do have, but it has some keys that don't function, and the number pad does not seem to work (Tinkerboy interface?)).

I've been concerned about not messing with the SSD's because I don't have good knowledge about how much I can try before they give up. I was not sure that I would not ruin a card just by putting it in the cMP. So I took the one with the least information (least loss if everything went wrong) and tried it.

The Samsung Magician software (which I run under Windows 10 on the cMP) gave the first SSD a relatively clean bill of health, except for reporting that the size was screwy and way over the actual size. The amount of information on each card (after the first one, I tried another. I've yet to try the third) seemed about right. So it appears to confirm corrupted maps.

I will be glad to answer any further questions or try different things. Let me know what information to supply.

 

[Raging Dufus]

I have tested two of the SSD's in my cMP 5,1. I put them - one at a time - into an Icy Box enclosure and installed them with the Windows SSD as the only other drive.

The cMP boots natively into Windows 10. I bring up Samsung Magician and the first two EVO 840's checked out good. HOWEVER, one of the 1 Tb SSD's reports as a 1.83 Tb drive. The other 1 Tb drive reports as a 2.3 Tb drive. The actual amount of data on each drive is well below the limit of the drive, under 50%. So, the directory maps have been hammered.

When the SSD's are installed in the G4, they interface through a FirmTek/SeriTek four port PCI card. The drives go directly to the card through SATA cables. The G4 reports the drives as SCSI drives. Although the drive size limits are essentially non-existent by doing that, I am trying to keep the sizes reasonable (186 Gb or less).

OS 9.2.2., OS 10.4.11, and OS 10.5.8 can all see the drives and work with them. 9.2.2 is limited as to doing more than just getting or copying files to the 10.4.11 and the 10.5.8 partitions, and 10.5.8 can't use any of the 9.2.2 programs.

I did have 10.4.11 using a classic copy of 9.2.2 installed on the 10.4.11 partition. It had been that way for several years with no problem. It was a bit slow, but very reliable.

Recently, I installed 9.2.2 on one of the 1 Tb drives in its own partition - formatted in extended, but not journaled. I had 10.4.11 use that when running in Classic mode. That ran like a scalded cat. And when running in 9.2.2 mode natively, it runs even faster.

In terms of drive repair software, the newest version of DiskWarrior that I have is DVD Rev. 810. That uses OS 10.5.3. I have to be careful with it on 9.2.2. It does have the best directory map repair capability.

The next newest disc that I have is ver. 3.0, OS 10.2.3, that is my pretty much universal go to for 9.2.2 and 10.4.11. It is no good for 10.5.8.

I will look for and try to buy a copy of Version 4 (unless that is the same as DVD Rev. 810).

In addition, I have Drive Genius 2 which is very good in some areas not covered by DiskWarrior.

Two or three years ago I was able to use TestDisk to fix the directory map on a hard drive on the G4. Unfortunately, the drive was going bad and failed just a bit after that. TestDisk, is a white knuckles, make sure everything is perfect, because if it isn't, there's no going back, sort of software.

I can do testDisk, though I'd rather not.

When I put in either Disk Warrior or Drive Genius, the programs get to a certain point and the beach ball just seems to sit and spin forever. It is possible that I have not been patient enough.

In terms of the G4 hardware, the processor is a 1 GHz Sonnet upgrade sitting on the Rev. 2 motherboard (the second one for the Sawtooth (AGP) G4's that allows for the installation of a dual processor upgrade. The RAM is matched 256 Mb 1333 to give 1 Gb of memory.

Other than the internal speaker shorting out - external works fine - there have been no hardware problems, other than the usual of having to replace power supplies now and then. The SSD's don't put as much load on it, so I think it should be good to go for a while longer.

I have the standard video card going via the DVI port to an HP24 display. The image is a bit spread out, but I have not looked at ways to correct that just yet. The mouse is a Kensington four button trackball with scroll ring. The keyboard is a general Walmart wired PC keyboard - not wonderful, but it will do until I can afford another extended keyboard and a Wombat interface (I have a Tinkerboy interface for the Extended that I do have, but it has some keys that don't function, and the number pad does not seem to work (Tinkerboy interface?)).

I've been concerned about not messing with the SSD's because I don't have good knowledge about how much I can try before they give up. I was not sure that I would not ruin a card just by putting it in the cMP. So I took the one with the least information (least loss if everything went wrong) and tried it.

The Samsung Magician software (which I run under Windows 10 on the cMP) gave the first SSD a relatively clean bill of health, except for reporting that the size was screwy and way over the actual size. The amount of information on each card (after the first one, I tried another. I've yet to try the third) seemed about right. So it appears to confirm corrupted maps.

I will be glad to answer any further questions or try different things. Let me know what information to supply.

Thanks for that write-up, it's very detailed. Most people don't give us near that much to work with.

Let's focus on the SeriTek card, that seems the most likely culprit since all your SSDs were connected to it. It makes the most sense that it's either that, or something's amiss with the particular PCI slot you're using; or perhaps your whole PCI bus/PCI controller is failing. But the most likely problem is the SeriTek card itself. The best way to test that is to remove it from the G4, and put it into another Power Mac with PCI slots (if you have one). Then use it for a few days and see if it corrupts any other drives; if so, that's clearly the culprit. You mentioned having to replace the G4's power supply, it's possible that whenever the last PSU went out it damaged the card; that can happen. In any event, I'd stop using that card until I could verify through testing that it's not a problem.

As far as the drive repair software, I can't help with that, because I've never used any of them. But I can tell you what I would do: get a different drive(s) to boot your G4 from, with enough space to accommodate the data you have on those SSDs. The replacement(s) will have to be IDE/PATA, or you'll have to get some SATA/PATA drive adapters to connect them to your G4's IDE bus. Partition it/them however you need to. Then, do a clean install of all the versions of Mac OS you want on the G4, and perform all the updates. Since your SSDs' health checks out in the Samsung software, I'd put them back in the cMP and boot it into Target Disk Mode (hold down T at startup), and use the Mac OS Migration Assistant from the various OS's on the G4 to see if you can pull that data out of the bad directories into what should be a good directory structure on your G4's replacement drives. If that works, you can then reformat the SSDs and clone everything back over; or you could just leave the G4 the way it is and use those SSDs for something else. Before I did any of that though, I'd see if I could clone the SSDs in their current state, just to be safe.

I realize my suggestions are costly and time/labor intensive, but those are the lengths I would go to if I absolutely needed to: (a) have a working Power Mac G4, and (b) recover all the data on those SSDs. Maybe someone else will have some better solutions, or maybe you do just need to be patient with the drive repair software - you're the best judge of that. Good luck!

 

[repairedCheese]

I have tested two of the SSD's in my cMP 5,1. I put them - one at a time - into an Icy Box enclosure and installed them with the Windows SSD as the only other drive.

The cMP boots natively into Windows 10. I bring up Samsung Magician and the first two EVO 840's checked out good. HOWEVER, one of the 1 Tb SSD's reports as a 1.83 Tb drive. The other 1 Tb drive reports as a 2.3 Tb drive. The actual amount of data on each drive is well below the limit of the drive, under 50%. So, the directory maps have been hammered.

When the SSD's are installed in the G4, they interface through a FirmTek/SeriTek four port PCI card. The drives go directly to the card through SATA cables. The G4 reports the drives as SCSI drives. Although the drive size limits are essentially non-existent by doing that, I am trying to keep the sizes reasonable (186 Gb or less).

OS 9.2.2., OS 10.4.11, and OS 10.5.8 can all see the drives and work with them. 9.2.2 is limited as to doing more than just getting or copying files to the 10.4.11 and the 10.5.8 partitions, and 10.5.8 can't use any of the 9.2.2 programs.

I did have 10.4.11 using a classic copy of 9.2.2 installed on the 10.4.11 partition. It had been that way for several years with no problem. It was a bit slow, but very reliable.

Recently, I installed 9.2.2 on one of the 1 Tb drives in its own partition - formatted in extended, but not journaled. I had 10.4.11 use that when running in Classic mode. That ran like a scalded cat. And when running in 9.2.2 mode natively, it runs even faster.

In terms of drive repair software, the newest version of DiskWarrior that I have is DVD Rev. 810. That uses OS 10.5.3. I have to be careful with it on 9.2.2. It does have the best directory map repair capability.

The next newest disc that I have is ver. 3.0, OS 10.2.3, that is my pretty much universal go to for 9.2.2 and 10.4.11. It is no good for 10.5.8.

I will look for and try to buy a copy of Version 4 (unless that is the same as DVD Rev. 810).

In addition, I have Drive Genius 2 which is very good in some areas not covered by DiskWarrior.

Two or three years ago I was able to use TestDisk to fix the directory map on a hard drive on the G4. Unfortunately, the drive was going bad and failed just a bit after that. TestDisk, is a white knuckles, make sure everything is perfect, because if it isn't, there's no going back, sort of software.

I can do testDisk, though I'd rather not.

When I put in either Disk Warrior or Drive Genius, the programs get to a certain point and the beach ball just seems to sit and spin forever. It is possible that I have not been patient enough.

In terms of the G4 hardware, the processor is a 1 GHz Sonnet upgrade sitting on the Rev. 2 motherboard (the second one for the Sawtooth (AGP) G4's that allows for the installation of a dual processor upgrade. The RAM is matched 256 Mb 1333 to give 1 Gb of memory.

Other than the internal speaker shorting out - external works fine - there have been no hardware problems, other than the usual of having to replace power supplies now and then. The SSD's don't put as much load on it, so I think it should be good to go for a while longer.

I have the standard video card going via the DVI port to an HP24 display. The image is a bit spread out, but I have not looked at ways to correct that just yet. The mouse is a Kensington four button trackball with scroll ring. The keyboard is a general Walmart wired PC keyboard - not wonderful, but it will do until I can afford another extended keyboard and a Wombat interface (I have a Tinkerboy interface for the Extended that I do have, but it has some keys that don't function, and the number pad does not seem to work (Tinkerboy interface?)).

I've been concerned about not messing with the SSD's because I don't have good knowledge about how much I can try before they give up. I was not sure that I would not ruin a card just by putting it in the cMP. So I took the one with the least information (least loss if everything went wrong) and tried it.

The Samsung Magician software (which I run under Windows 10 on the cMP) gave the first SSD a relatively clean bill of health, except for reporting that the size was screwy and way over the actual size. The amount of information on each card (after the first one, I tried another. I've yet to try the third) seemed about right. So it appears to confirm corrupted maps.

I will be glad to answer any further questions or try different things. Let me know what information to supply.

I'm going to have to agree with @Raging Dufus and suggest you find another home for your data. Just from the drives seeming to fail at the same time, that alone made me suspicious of hardware failure, and the way the tools seem to be reacting to your drives, I would be doing the best to keep them away from this particular computer. If you can, transfer your data using another computer entirely. Backup what you can, at the very least make sure that backup isn't connected to the G4, and then you can afford to risk any kind of drive repairs.

And since it does sound like everything runs through that SATA controller, that's likely to be the suspect part. It's possible it could be a power supply issue, but it's easier to rule out the FirmTek/SeriTek card first.

 

[weckart]

The EVO 840 series is known to be a flop in the Samsung stable. The first thing to do is get the drives in a Windows PC and make sure the firmware is up to date, unless Samsung has made an OSX version of its toolkit. Basically, I would look to replace the disks in any case.

Samsung Evo SSD hard drive problems with TLC NAND chips

There is a problem with the EVO family of SSD hard drives from Samsung. Early drives contained low quality TLC NAND chips which regularly fail causing data loss

www.dataclinic.co.uk

 

[Project Alice]

Try looking for DiskWarrior 4. By Alsoft, works on PowerPC.

@eyoungren gave you the best solution for your problem, DiskWarrior. You'll have to get off your wallet though, it's not cheap,

I could have sworn that DW4 was on the Macintosh Garden. I just searched for it and could only find 3.
I guess it’s still for sale if you contact Alsoft. If someone can verify this or verify that they no longer sell it I can upload it. I bought V4 on eBay a few months ago for like $25.

DW3 works on PPC also, which is up. The 2005 CD that is on there should work. I think it states incompatibility with Leopard but I’m pretty sure I’ve used it on there. It is bootable into a Tiger environment anyways.

 

[wnlewis]

I cleaned the FirmTek/SeriTek V4 card. After I did that and booted the computer with DiskWarrior V3, DiskWarrior came up but could find no drives. Previously the drives were there. So that seems to point toward the FirmTek/SeriTek card.

I have put the FirmTek/SeriTek card in a different slot (the one previously occupied by a USB/FireWire add on card). Still no drives and the USB mouse and keyboard do not come up.

I put the USB/Firewire card in the slot previously occupied by the FirmTek/SeriTek card. Now I have active mouse and keyboard.

DiskWarrior ver. 3 has come up. It sees the drives. It reports that the directory maps on each of the partitions are too badly damaged to be repaired.

I have had good results using TestDisk (a freeware program by CGSecurity). You have to have a stable disk, running 10.4.11 or above, to run it on a PowerPC.

It searches for the partitions and give the necessary information. Then using the information, you manual rebuild the directories.

If the information is not entered correctly, you go back and do it over (non-destructive test and rebuild procedure). If the disks appear after the process, then the damage has been satisfactorily corrected.

I plan to:
• Get a new FirmTek/SeriTek card. The current one is more than five years old.
• Get at least two new 2 Tb SSD's.
• Clone the drives into larger spaces.

Since some of you do not seem to care for the EVO 840 SSD's, what do you like? I run 9.2.2, 10.4.11, 10.5.8, and attempting run Linux on this computer. So the SSD will have to be able to accommodate those systems.

There do not seem to be disk health programs for non-Intel computers. And the Samsung Magician is a good program which I can run on my cMP under Windows 10.

The current Samsung EVO 840 SSD's are pushing two to three years each. The Magician software pegs their "goodness" at about 94%.

Once the directories have been fixed, then it will be time to clone each partition on to the new SSD's.

I have a very strong feeling that the smallest of the three SSD's had an "overcrowded" partition: It had no more than about 20% to 25% "headroom".

When I partitioned the 1 Tb drive that was almost empty, and made a 9.2.2 drive on it, installing all of my 9.2.2 software and some very large CAD packages, then made it the "go-to" drive for running classic on the small drive under 10.4.11, I started to see problems everywhere.

Could be coincidence. I think the FirmTek/SeriTek card must go. And, until I get the info moved, and the older drives re-formatted and checked with Magician, I will be likely not to use those drives.

There is still the possibility that the PCI bus controller could be going flaky (not a happy thought). But try first things first.

 

[B S Magnet]

I cleaned the FirmTek/SeriTek V4 card. After I did that and booted the computer with DiskWarrior V3, DiskWarrior came up but could find no drives. Previously the drives were there. So that seems to point toward the FirmTek/SeriTek card.

I have put the FirmTek/SeriTek card in a different slot (the one previously occupied by a USB/FireWire add on card). Still no drives and the USB mouse and keyboard do not come up.

I put the USB/Firewire card in the slot previously occupied by the FirmTek/SeriTek card. Now I have active mouse and keyboard.

DiskWarrior ver. 3 has come up. It sees the drives. It reports that the directory maps on each of the partitions are too badly damaged to be repaired.

I have had good results using TestDisk (a freeware program by CGSecurity). You have to have a stable disk, running 10.4.11 or above, to run it on a PowerPC.

It searches for the partitions and give the necessary information. Then using the information, you manual rebuild the directories.

If the information is not entered correctly, you go back and do it over (non-destructive test and rebuild procedure). If the disks appear after the process, then the damage has been satisfactorily corrected.

I plan to:
• Get a new FirmTek/SeriTek card. The current one is more than five years old.
• Get at least two new 2 Tb SSD's.
• Clone the drives into larger spaces.

Since some of you do not seem to care for the EVO 840 SSD's, what do you like? I run 9.2.2, 10.4.11, 10.5.8, and attempting run Linux on this computer. So the SSD will have to be able to accommodate those systems.

There do not seem to be disk health programs for non-Intel computers. And the Samsung Magician is a good program which I can run on my cMP under Windows 10.

The current Samsung EVO 840 SSD's are pushing two to three years each. The Magician software pegs their "goodness" at about 94%.

Once the directories have been fixed, then it will be time to clone each partition on to the new SSD's.

I have a very strong feeling that the smallest of the three SSD's had an "overcrowded" partition: It had no more than about 20% to 25% "headroom".

When I partitioned the 1 Tb drive that was almost empty, and made a 9.2.2 drive on it, installing all of my 9.2.2 software and some very large CAD packages, then made it the "go-to" drive for running classic on the small drive under 10.4.11, I started to see problems everywhere.

Could be coincidence. I think the FirmTek/SeriTek card must go. And, until I get the info moved, and the older drives re-formatted and checked with Magician, I will be likely not to use those drives.

There is still the possibility that the PCI bus controller could be going flaky (not a happy thought). But try first things first.

Offhand, which FirmTek SeriTek card is this? Is it the 1V4? If so, is it running the 5.1.3.1V4 firmware revision?

 

[eyoungren]

DiskWarrior ver. 3 has come up. It sees the drives. It reports that the directory maps on each of the partitions are too badly damaged to be repaired.

Part of the benefit of DW is that there are options. If you hold down OPTN when you click on 'Repair Drive' you will see that the process changes to 'Scavenge'. That puts DW into a more aggressive mode in finding the directory and repairing it.

If that does not work, there exists some Alsoft DW commands that their tech support do not reveal. These may be available through a Google search, IDK.

This, however, is why I moved on the DW 4. It's a little more capable, although DW 3 telling you the directory is that bad is pretty serious. I've never seen that before.

 

[wnlewis]

The EVO 840 series is known to be a flop in the Samsung stable. The first thing to do is get the drives in a Windows PC and make sure the firmware is up to date, unless Samsung has made an OSX version of its toolkit. Basically, I would look to replace the disks in any case.

Samsung Evo SSD hard drive problems with TLC NAND chips

There is a problem with the EVO family of SSD hard drives from Samsung. Early drives contained low quality TLC NAND chips which regularly fail causing data loss

www.dataclinic.co.uk

The smallest drive is a 250 Gb SSD: P/N MZ7TE250HMHP. I was not sure what was the date on the article from data clinic?

 

[wnlewis]

I could have sworn that DW4 was on the Macintosh Garden. I just searched for it and could only find 3.
I guess it’s still for sale if you contact Alsoft. If someone can verify this or verify that they no longer sell it I can upload it. I bought V4 on eBay a few months ago for like $25.

DW3 works on PPC also, which is up. The 2005 CD that is on there should work. I think it states incompatibility with Leopard but I’m pretty sure I’ve used it on there. It is bootable into a Tiger environment anyways.

DVD revision 810 appears to be the first version of DW 4 and the last that will run on a PowerPC G4, if it can run 10.5. I have rev. 810 so that I could repair problems with my 10.5.8 partition.

I think that revision 3 may be the better option, since most of my partitions are 9.2.2 or 10.4.11.

 

[wnlewis]

Offhand, which FirmTek SeriTek card is this? Is it the 1V4? If so, is it running the 5.1.3.1V4 firmware revision?

To the best of my knowledge the firmware on the FirmTek/SeriTek card is the latest release available for that card. It came as a download that I installed.

 

[wnlewis]

Part of the benefit of DW is that there are options. If you hold down OPTN when you click on 'Repair Drive' you will see that the process changes to 'Scavenge'. That puts DW into a more aggressive mode in finding the directory and repairing it.

If that does not work, there exists some Alsoft DW commands that their tech support do not reveal. These may be available through a Google search, IDK.

This, however, is why I moved on the DW 4. It's a little more capable, although DW 3 telling you the directory is that bad is pretty serious. I've never seen that before.

I did not know that. Thanks. Is that available in DW version 3?

I had it tell me that when two identical Barracuda 750 Gb hard disks failed within about three weeks of each other. I was able to get most of the information off and on to one of the SSD's but some of the information was not retrievable.

Do you know a good disc recovery company that can recover programs as well as data?

DW DVD rev. 810 includes the first release of DW 4, but I do not believe that it has anything for OS 9.2.2. It is like Drive Genius 2 and should not be used to optimize 9.2.2 partitions.

 

[eyoungren]

I did not know that. Thanks. Is that available in DW version 3?

I had it tell me that when two identical Barracuda 750 Gb hard disks failed within about three weeks of each other. I was able to get most of the information off and on to one of the SSD's but some of the information was not retrievable.

Do you know a good disc recovery company that can recover programs as well as data?

DW DVD rev. 810 includes the first release of DW 4, but I do not believe that it has anything for OS 9.2.2. It is like Drive Genius 2 and should not be used to optimize 9.2.2 partitions.

DW3 has all the stuff I mentioned. That's where I learned it. I had a drive fail on me once and the tech walked me through all that. I'm loyal to Alsoft because when none of that worked, they paid for me to ship them my old drive and a new drive and they saved my data. They then paid to ship my new drive back to me.

DriveSavers: https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com

I have never used them but they used to advertise in Mac magazines. Just be aware that anyone you find to save your data is not going to be cheap.

 

[B S Magnet]

To the best of my knowledge the firmware on the FirmTek/SeriTek card is the latest release available for that card. It came as a download that I installed.

OK, so it sounds like you’re running 5.1.3 on the 1V4.

On FirmTek’s download page, you may have noticed how the PPC-specific PCI-card downloads are broken into two sections, with a separate family of cards requiring 5.3.2 and an added note that firmware versions must match when installing more than one SeriTek card on one machine. That’s there because a few years back, I went back and forth on email with a FirmTek engineer when we discovered (or rather, they confirmed) that running, say, the 1V4 (requiring 5.1.3) and a 2SE4 (requiring 5.3.2) on the same machine — what I was trying — was not possible. Since the 2SE4 was intended to be for an external RAID project I wanted to add, I ended up having to sell it, which was kind of a disappointment. The 1V4 has run pretty much flawlessly since I bought it used in 2014.

Last thought: although it sounds a possible 1V4 failure (maybe a failing controller?), have you, by process of elimination, swapped out the SATA cables?

 

[Macbookprodude]

Even Alsoft still sells Diskwarrior for OS 9 !

 

[weckart]

Even Alsoft still sells Diskwarrior for OS 9 !

Not sure they still have stocks of v2.11 but if you want v3 or v4 you'll still have to pay the full $99. There was some griping about that on Macintoshgarden.

 

[Macbookprodude]

I believe they have from OS 8 to OS 9.. which would be V2.11

 

[wnlewis]

OK, so it sounds like you’re running 5.1.3 on the 1V4.

On FirmTek’s download page, you may have noticed how the PPC-specific PCI-card downloads are broken into two sections, with a separate family of cards requiring 5.3.2 and an added note that firmware versions must match when installing more than one SeriTek card on one machine. That’s there because a few years back, I went back and forth on email with a FirmTek engineer when we discovered (or rather, they confirmed) that running, say, the 1V4 (requiring 5.1.3) and a 2SE4 (requiring 5.3.2) on the same machine — what I was trying — was not possible. Since the 2SE4 was intended to be for an external RAID project I wanted to add, I ended up having to sell it, which was kind of a disappointment. The 1V4 has run pretty much flawlessly since I bought it used in 2014.

Last thought: although it sounds a possible 1V4 failure (maybe a failing controller?), have you, by process of elimination, swapped out the SATA cables?

I have four cables so I will try different cables.

What I would like would be a program like TechTool Pro that can tell me if some part of the computer is failing.

 

[wnlewis]

DW3 has all the stuff I mentioned. That's where I learned it. I had a drive fail on me once and the tech walked me through all that. I'm loyal to Alsoft because when none of that worked, they paid for me to ship them my old drive and a new drive and they saved my data. They then paid to ship my new drive back to me.

DriveSavers: https://drivesaversdatarecovery.com

I have never used them but they used to advertise in Mac magazines. Just be aware that anyone you find to save your data is not going to be cheap.

That is true. I was affiliated with DriveSavers when I was selling Macintosh computers and Apple items.