My friends G4 is dead

[Pamani]

Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 DP (MDD) Specs (M8573LL/A)

when he turns the computer on he get a message saying the hard drive directives are damaged. so we're guesing he needs a new harddrive. i know some mdels cant take for than 128 gb HDs. what is the most cost effective way of fixing it.

thanks

 

[sickmacdoc]

Apple Power Macintosh G4 1.25 DP (MDD) Specs (M8573LL/A)

when he turns the computer on he get a message saying the hard drive directives are damaged. so we're guesing he needs a new harddrive. i know some mdels cant take for than 128 gb HDs. what is the most cost effective way of fixing it.

thanks

MDD G4s do not have the limitation of 128Gb first off, so you can go up as far as you wish- which for IDE drives, like it requires, is 750Gb.

Secondly, if the directories are damaged that is not a sure bet that the drive is in need of replacement by any means. Have you tried to run "Repair Disk" in Disk Utilities yet? It may or may not be able to correct directory problems depending on their severity. If it is not able to, a commercial program called Disk Warrior almost certainly could, as it rebuilds the entire directory structure on a corrupted drive but it is not free....

While there is some chance that the drive is physically failing, just having directory corruption is far from a sure sign that that is the case, so start with Repair Disk and see what comes of it before replacing the drive!

BTW- If the system is not booting at all, you can run Disk Utilities while booted up with your System Restore disk #1 or a retail OS installer disk.

 

[Pamani]

awesome, ill relay this message to my friend. thanks!

 

[minik]

How about booting into single-user mode and type fsck -f?