- Joined
- Jun 8, 2011
- Messages
- 43
- Reaction score
- 1
- Points
- 8
- Location
- Norwich, UK
- Your Mac's Specs
- Mac Pro 3,1 Dual Quadcore 2.8GHz 12GB Snow Leopard / G4 PowerMac (AGP/Sawtooth), 1.4GHz 2GB Leopard
Hello all - my first post here (and rather a long one, I'm afraid!)
I have a G4 Graphite (AGP graphics / Sawtooth mobo) PowerMac with the following spec:
OS: OSX 10.3.9 Panther (I know...don't laugh! ;D)
CPU: 1.4GHz Sonnet upgrade card (installed years ago and running flawlessly ever since)
RAM: 2GB PC100
Graphics Card: Rage 128Pro AGP
Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-118L
System Drive: 80GB ST380011A (HFS+ Journalled) with 60 GB free space
Storage Drives:
1 x 120GB Maxtor 6Y120P0 (HFS+ not Journalled) with 53GB free space
1 x 120GB Maxtor 6Y120L0 (HFS+ not Journalled) with 98GB free space
External Drive:
640GB Hitachi 0A38114 SATA HDD (HFS+ Journalled) in a USB2 drive caddy. Approx 340GB free space.
The machine also has a Mac-compatible PCI card providing 4 x USB2 sockets. The external HDD caddy is connected to this.
Here's my problem. I have done a lot of searching both on this forum and generally on the web, but so far have not found a solution.
I live in London, UK. Last week we had a thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt struck very close by - we estimate just a couple of streets away. Frightened the living daylights out of us!
Fortunately there didn't appear to be any immediate after-effects: mains power was still on and all of our domestic electrical devices were still working. I had to re-boot my Draytek Vigor 2600 ADSL router to re-establish connection, but otherwise all seemed fine. I carried on working at my Mac (which is powered via a surge protector)
As I worked, I realised that the machine could no longer keep track of what was happening on the external 640Gig HDD. Shortly after, I got the dreaded grey curtain with the "You need to re-start your machine" message. I did so.
On re-booting, I found that the external HDD was not mounted. Disk Utility could see it, knew exactly what it was and could identify its volume. I was even able to run a disk repair on it and it said that the file system was fine, but using the "Mount" button had no effect.
By connecting the 640Gig drive in its caddy to my partner's Windows laptop and using a handy freeware utility called "HFS Explorer" (which provides read-only access to HFS+ volumes), I was able to see all of the drive's contents and back up all of the really essential stuff across my network to one of the Mac's internal storage drives - phew!
However, I was still stuck with the fact that the Mac would not mount the external drive. I did hours of research and the only advice that offered any real hope was to do a complete power down and CUDA re-set routine - so that's what I did. I even went so far as to remove the PRAM battery, discharge the Mobo capacitors (by holding in the power button) and leave the machine for half an hour before putting the PRAM battery back in and pressing the CUDA button.
According to Apple's instructions, this procedure should have re-set everything, and I'd be able to tell because the system clock would say 00:00 on January 1st 1970 - but when I hooked everything back up and re-booted, the clock showed the correct time and date - and, crucially, I still can't mount that external drive.
I'm left wondering just what damage might have been done by that lightning strike. I don't know whether my Mac now has damaged hardware, damaged firmware, or whether the external drive has somehow lost the block of data that enables the Mac to see it as a mountable volume.
One thing I haven't yet tried is to connect the external drive and its caddy to somebody else's Mac and see if that machine can see it as mountable. I plan to do that in the next few days - at least that will help establish whether it's the drive (or caddy) that's iffy or whether it's my beloved venerable 12-year-old G4 baby that's compromised (sniff).
If anybody has any wisdom they can throw at this, I'd be very grateful for any help you can offer.
Cheers,
Ken
I have a G4 Graphite (AGP graphics / Sawtooth mobo) PowerMac with the following spec:
OS: OSX 10.3.9 Panther (I know...don't laugh! ;D)
CPU: 1.4GHz Sonnet upgrade card (installed years ago and running flawlessly ever since)
RAM: 2GB PC100
Graphics Card: Rage 128Pro AGP
Optical Drive: Pioneer DVR-118L
System Drive: 80GB ST380011A (HFS+ Journalled) with 60 GB free space
Storage Drives:
1 x 120GB Maxtor 6Y120P0 (HFS+ not Journalled) with 53GB free space
1 x 120GB Maxtor 6Y120L0 (HFS+ not Journalled) with 98GB free space
External Drive:
640GB Hitachi 0A38114 SATA HDD (HFS+ Journalled) in a USB2 drive caddy. Approx 340GB free space.
The machine also has a Mac-compatible PCI card providing 4 x USB2 sockets. The external HDD caddy is connected to this.
Here's my problem. I have done a lot of searching both on this forum and generally on the web, but so far have not found a solution.
I live in London, UK. Last week we had a thunderstorm, and a lightning bolt struck very close by - we estimate just a couple of streets away. Frightened the living daylights out of us!
Fortunately there didn't appear to be any immediate after-effects: mains power was still on and all of our domestic electrical devices were still working. I had to re-boot my Draytek Vigor 2600 ADSL router to re-establish connection, but otherwise all seemed fine. I carried on working at my Mac (which is powered via a surge protector)
As I worked, I realised that the machine could no longer keep track of what was happening on the external 640Gig HDD. Shortly after, I got the dreaded grey curtain with the "You need to re-start your machine" message. I did so.
On re-booting, I found that the external HDD was not mounted. Disk Utility could see it, knew exactly what it was and could identify its volume. I was even able to run a disk repair on it and it said that the file system was fine, but using the "Mount" button had no effect.
By connecting the 640Gig drive in its caddy to my partner's Windows laptop and using a handy freeware utility called "HFS Explorer" (which provides read-only access to HFS+ volumes), I was able to see all of the drive's contents and back up all of the really essential stuff across my network to one of the Mac's internal storage drives - phew!
However, I was still stuck with the fact that the Mac would not mount the external drive. I did hours of research and the only advice that offered any real hope was to do a complete power down and CUDA re-set routine - so that's what I did. I even went so far as to remove the PRAM battery, discharge the Mobo capacitors (by holding in the power button) and leave the machine for half an hour before putting the PRAM battery back in and pressing the CUDA button.
According to Apple's instructions, this procedure should have re-set everything, and I'd be able to tell because the system clock would say 00:00 on January 1st 1970 - but when I hooked everything back up and re-booted, the clock showed the correct time and date - and, crucially, I still can't mount that external drive.
I'm left wondering just what damage might have been done by that lightning strike. I don't know whether my Mac now has damaged hardware, damaged firmware, or whether the external drive has somehow lost the block of data that enables the Mac to see it as a mountable volume.
One thing I haven't yet tried is to connect the external drive and its caddy to somebody else's Mac and see if that machine can see it as mountable. I plan to do that in the next few days - at least that will help establish whether it's the drive (or caddy) that's iffy or whether it's my beloved venerable 12-year-old G4 baby that's compromised (sniff).
If anybody has any wisdom they can throw at this, I'd be very grateful for any help you can offer.
Cheers,
Ken