Member Avatar for ThPoleOfJustice

Hey there.

Recently installed OS X on my beige G3 (I know, I know.) In the process, I cannibalized an old hard drive from a Windows machine.

Here's my issue: the "new" HD worked fine for a few days. Then it crashed, then it crashed HARD...had to reformat. Ran Norton, it found a bad sector. OK, fine.

Norton blocked off the bad sector, but then everything I downloaded to the disc was corrupt. Ran Norton again, now suddenly, the bad sector's not bad anymore (it's not seeing it anymore!)

After running Norton every few hours (I'm in the middle of doing some very computer-intensive work,) it finds "major" problems, which are things like bad volume bitmap, or allocations. Thing is, I fix 'em, and even if I do nothing to the disc afterwards, the next time I run Norton, the same things are bad!

Now (finally!) here's my question: is it the obvious thing, do I have bad hardware? Or is this an issue with installing old (reformatted, of course) Windows HDs that is going to follow me if I install another one? I've got a line on a used 4 gig (I don't need THAT much space, and besides, I'm poor :P) but I don't want to waste my time if it's just gonna do this junk again.

Thanks for any insight :)

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Dani AI

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Agreeing with : the symptoms point to hardware rather than an OS incompatibility. Intermittent bad sectors and repeated directory corruption that come back after “repair” are classic signs a disk is failing. Reused Windows drives will work in a Beige G3 once properly prepared, but they won’t behave reliably if the media or electronics are going bad.

Practical next steps to prove it and avoid wasting time:

  • Run the drive maker’s surface/long test (bootable SeaTools is useful) to catch remapped/read errors: SeaTools.

  • Check SMART attributes for reallocated sectors, pending sectors, or read error counts. smartmontools can do this: smartmontools and see S.M.A.R.T. basics here: S.M.A.R.T. (Wikipedia).

  • Force a full read of the device to expose errors (on a machine where the device node is known):

    sudo dd if=/dev/rdisk0 of=/dev/null bs=1m

    Read errors here indicate failing media even if a file-system tool “repairs” the directory structures.

If diagnostics fail, replace the drive. If they pass, check cabling, power connectors, and jumper/master settings on PATA drives, and try the drive in another machine to rule out the Mac’s controller. For a clean Mac setup on a PowerPC G3, repartition the disk with an Apple Partition Map and format as Mac OS Extended (HFS+) before installing OS X. If directory damage persists after confirming hardware is sound, use a Mac-specific directory-repair tool such as DiskWarrior to rebuild the catalog: DiskWarrior.

Final note: repeatedly running repair tools on a drive that shows hardware errors is only temporary. Back up any important data immediately and plan to replace the drive if any of the hardware tests report problems.

Member Avatar for hzink

Now (finally!) here's my question: is it the obvious thing, do I have bad hardware?

Barring any additional information - YES!

Additional information being details like:

- brand of hard drive
- speed
- capacity
- age of drive

Harry

Member Avatar for ThPoleOfJustice

Ah yes, it's been so long since I've done computer support I forgot about that kind of thing :)

Old 2 Gig Seagate, dunno how fast.

I suppose my question was whether or not this sort of flaw was inherent in using ex-Windows HDs with Mac. I'm gonna go ahead and get the old 4 gig I mentioned, and give it a shot.

Thanks!

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