Troubleshooting Apple Hard Drive update for Mac OS 9: Users losing entire volumes
Users should approach the Apple Hard Drive update for Mac OS 9, which purportedly improves hard drive longevity with some G4 Macs, with extreme caution.
The download attempts to update a particular IBM drives installed in many G4 Power Macs, after which - for some unlucky users - the drive disappears from the system and cannot be repaired or even located by various utilities. One reader writes:
"In Mac OS X, using Disk Utility, I can see the drive. However, it is listed only as 'media, 0.00 kb' and no repairs or formatting can be done. I called applecare, but they were not very helpful. I intend to call them again tonight when I have more time. Hopefully this drive is covered under my AppleCare protection plan."
Unfortunately, these drives may not be covered under either warranty or AppleCare. A poster to Apple's discussion boards claims:
"Firmware updaters of all stripes are always chancy. Some small percentage of devices will fail completely. [...] This is why Apple uses firmware flash updating so very seldom, the risk is high."
Some readers have even tried placing the damaged drives in external FireWire enclosures, where the disk refuses to spin up.
If you do choose to proceed with this questionable update, make sure to completely back up your data first, and do not attempt the updater on mission-critical machines.
Feedback? Late-breakers@macfixit.com.Resources
problem.
I updated my IBM Desktar DTLA-307045 46 GB and it totally wiped it out. It won't even spin up now. Applecare will not cover this drive, even though it came with my computer when purchased through an Apple retailer. I was not pleased.
Luckily, IBM still covers this drive under warranty until October, so they told me to send them the drive and they will replace it. Likewise, they recommend I rip Apple a new one.
I was most interested to read this post. Two days ago
the exact same thing happened to me, only I wasn't
even using the drive with OS 9 on it. I have two
separate internal drives installed in my G4/450, the
native 27 GB drive which came with the G4 has OS
9.2.2 installed on it and was partitioned into two. The
other drive I installed a few months ago and has OS X
Jaguar and is my startup drive. I haven't even accessed
my OS 9 drive for weeks. The other day I was creating a
new web site using GoLive 6 on my OS X drive when all
of a sudden I noticed my desktop do a little flicker and
then my two drive icons for my OS 9 partitions
disappeared from the desktop. I was only using one of
the partitions to save and backup working projects on,
which I later transfer to an external firewire drive as
double backup, and I had just created a new folder for
the new project I was about to start on when moments
later this happened. I tried everything to resurrect the
drive, and experienced the same exact results as
originally posted here. Only difference is, I had not
used, nor intended to use, the Apple Hard Drive update
for Mac OS 9. Is it a coincidence that these drives are
disappearing at the same time, or is there some logical
explanation? Could there be some virus that might
have been set off to take out the drives with the Classic
OS installed via OS X? Fortunately, I ordered my
machine with DVD RAM and have my entire OS 9 drive
backed up on a DVD RAM disk so it didn't even stress
me out, but what the......? Is this definitely an OS 9 thing
and has nothing to do with OS X??
NightFox
I was most interested to read this post. Two days ago
the exact same thing happened to me, only I wasn't
even using the drive with OS 9 on it. I have two
separate internal drives installed in my G4/450, the
native 27 GB drive which came with the G4 has OS
9.2.2 installed on it and was partitioned into two. The
other drive I installed a few months ago and has OS X
Jaguar and is my startup drive. I haven't even accessed
my OS 9 drive for weeks. The other day I was creating a
new web site using GoLive 6 on my OS X drive when all
of a sudden I noticed my desktop do a little flicker and
then my two drive icons for my OS 9 partitions
disappeared from the desktop. I was only using one of
the partitions to save and backup working projects on,
which I later transfer to an external firewire drive as
double backup, and I had just created a new folder for
the new project I was about to start on when moments
later this happened. I tried everything to resurrect the
drive, and experienced the same exact results as
originally posted here. Only difference is, I had not
used, nor intended to use, the Apple Hard Drive update
for Mac OS 9. Is it a coincidence that these drives are
disappearing at the same time, or is there some logical
explanation? Could there be some virus that might
have been set off to take out the drives with the Classic
OS installed via OS X? Fortunately, I ordered my
machine with DVD RAM and have my entire OS 9 drive
backed up on a DVD RAM disk so it didn't even stress
me out, but what the......? Is this definitely an OS 9 thing
and has nothing to do with OS X??
NightFox
APPLE HAS DONE IT AGAIN. I installed this on my 450 MHZ AGP Sawtooth
G4 and both my IBM 27 GB internal master and IBM 45 GB slave drives
became invisible and wouldn't mount. Starting from the OS X installer
disk caused kernel panics while starting from Diskwarrior 2.1 (OS 9.1)
was OK however neither internal drive was seen by Diskwarrior.
Disconnecting the slave drive allowed the master to mount satisfactorily.
The 45 GB slave drive and it's contents has been transformed into a door
stop. Fortunately, I backed up all my data onto an external firewire drive
so that all is not lost. DO NOT USE THIS UPDATER
- by MacFixItUser June 28, 2003 11:29 PM PDT
- My first one (40 gig) failed three weeks after I got my G4 (and
- Like this Reply to this comment
-
(6 Comments)before I'd gotten around to completing the backups... aarrgh).
Second one failed ten months after that. Same symptoms as with
the firmware update, though the first failure announced itself with a
lovely repeated "sree-sree-scree-scrEEECH-*chunk*" as well.
Both were covered under AppleCare, but when I was told that they
would only replace the second one with yet another Deskstar, I
opted to buy a replacement (needless to say, *not* an IBM.)