Issues reformatting...

[luffx]

Here is my situation...

I believe I had bad sectors on my drive, and while halfway through reformatting, it crashed...

So now, when I boot to the HD, I get the prompt to insert the 2nd Install CD, but it never finishes (because it hits a bad sector). So I want to write Zeros to the drive. and thus I pop in the Tiger install disc...

With the Tiger install disc in my drive, I boot to it, but it gets to the blue screen and locks up.

So I can't finish the install with the original discs, I can't write zeros using a Tiger disc.

Any ideas? I was trying to reformat it using commands in Single-user mode, but my bashing needs some work

It is a 1.67Ghz Powerbook G4.

Thanks in advance!

 

[emptyCup]

This sounds like a hardware problem and not a problem you're making in Bash. You need to verify the physical drive itself or take it to someone who can. Start by calling Apple. Good luck.

 

[mischief]

Here is my situation...

I believe I had bad sectors on my drive, and while halfway through reformatting, it crashed...

So now, when I boot to the HD, I get the prompt to insert the 2nd Install CD, but it never finishes (because it hits a bad sector). So I want to write Zeros to the drive. and thus I pop in the Tiger install disc...

With the Tiger install disc in my drive, I boot to it, but it gets to the blue screen and locks up.

So I can't finish the install with the original discs, I can't write zeros using a Tiger disc.

Any ideas? I was trying to reformat it using commands in Single-user mode, but my bashing needs some work

It is a 1.67Ghz Powerbook G4.

Thanks in advance!

I'm assuming that you have the "c" key held down when attempting to restart from the Disk yes?

If so than you may also have a bad optical drive or a scratched disk. If the disk is OK I'd suspect the optical drive itself. Being that your machine doesn't want to boot from the system disk I'd guess Optical. You did buy AppleCare yes?

 

[luffx]

I'm assuming that you have the "c" key held down when attempting to restart from the Disk yes?

If so than you may also have a bad optical drive or a scratched disk. If the disk is OK I'd suspect the optical drive itself. Being that your machine doesn't want to boot from the system disk I'd guess Optical. You did buy AppleCare yes?

I know the Optical Drive is fine, It was able to read other bootable discs. And yes, I have used 'C' to force disc start-up, also have used 'alt' for the boot selection screen. Also I have 2 tiger discs, and they both do the same thing....they get to the language selection screen and lockup.

I was able to make some progress by using single-user mode to remount the drive as read/write, and cleared a few things so it would stop asking for the 2nd disc...

I was able to get to the initial setup screen, and so I selected to erase & write zeros. It was working fine for a few minutes, then it locked up. And is now @ the same point again.

Seeing how it's a HD issue, I need to find a way to flag the bad sectors so they aren't used by the OS.

If I can't do that, then it's simply time for a new HD.

Thanks.

 

[luffx]

I found a fix...at least until I decide to buy a new HD

I recalled the bad sectors corrupting certain OS components, but not any of my Apps/docs/etc. And thus I ran a scan, and found that the bad sectors were in the beginning of the drive.

So I partitioned the drive into two. the first 13g separated from the rest, and so I proceeded to install the OS on the 2nd partition. All of my apps/docs/etc are installed and everything is running smooth.

Thanks for everyone's input =D

~Luf.